“Our existing land should allow us to grow community count 10% in fiscal year 2023.”

In context

“sting attractive land portfolio allows us to be highly selective in this process and to walk away from or renegotiate deals that no longer meet our higher thresholds. Over the past three quarters, we have walked away from over 9,000 of our option lots and many additional deals have been deferred or restructured. This cost us $12 million in forfeited options and sunk development costs, $6 million of which was in the fourth quarter. At fiscal year-end, we owned approximately 37,700 lots and controlled about 38,300 through options. This is a 6,000 lot or 7.5% reduction in total lots in the fourth quarter alone. We continue to target an overall mix of 60% option and 40% owned over the longer term. Excluding the loss allocated to our backlog, 56% of total lots were controlled through options. Our existing land should allow us to grow community count 10% in fiscal year 2023. We also control enough land for further community count growth in 2024. As a reminder, we acquired much of the land for our planned fiscal year '23 community openings prior to 2021 before land prices started inflating. In fiscal '22, we spent approximately $2.2 billion on land acquisition and development. In light of current market conditions, we expect to significantly reduce the spend in '23, which should free up capital for other uses. With over $3 billion of liquidity at fiscal year-end and substantial operating cash flow projected in fiscal year 2023, we are in a strong position to pay down debt, buy back stock and opportunistically acquire control of land that may become more attractively priced, all while maintaining a conservative and low leverage balance sheet. In the fourth qu”