Green Brick Partners ended the 2023 fiscal year with record results across the board, including a full-year record for profits per share and the highest level of fourth quarter home deliveries in company history.

“2023 was an absolutely stellar year for Green Brick Partners. We closed out the year with record results that reflect our strategic advantage and our disciplined approach,” CEO and co-founder Jim Brickman said during the company’s earnings call. “We believe our ability to source and entitle land, our rigorous land underwriting, and operational improvement of our divisions and land development teams will continue to provide superior risk-adjusted returns.”

In the fiscal fourth quarter, Green Brick Partners delivered 825 homes, a 13.5% increase on a year-over-year basis, helping home sales revenue jump 4.3% to $448.5 million. The average sales price of homes delivered declined approximately 8% to $543,500 in the quarter. For the full year, homes delivered increased 7.1% to 3,123, helping sales revenue increase 3.8% to $1.77 billion.

“Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta, our two primary markets, continue to rank very high among in-migration destination cities and are among the largest housing markets in the nation. Demand in these markets remained healthy throughout 2023, benefiting from favorable demographic shifts and strong employment,” Brickman said.

As a result of limited competition on the new-home side of the market and constrained resale inventory, net new orders for the full year increased 70.1% to 3,356, a company record for Green Brick Partners.

Demand slowed during October when interest rates reached their highest levels of the year but steadily returned in November and December. Chief operating officer and executive vice president Jed Dolson said the builder was able to scale back incentives as demand returned to the market at the end of the fourth quarter. For the quarter, net new-home orders increased 60.5% year over year to 679 units. The cancellation rate in the quarter improved to 7.2% from 20.3% in the prior-year period. For the full year, the cancellation rate fell to 6.6% in 2023 from 13.8% in 2022.

The quarterly absorption rate for Green Brick was 7.6, a significant improvement from 5.5 in the fourth quarter of 2022. For the full year, the absorption rate increased 52.3% to 9.9. At the end of the fiscal year, Green Brick Partners had 770 units in backlog with a value of $555.2 million, an increase of 43.4% and 50.4%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.

For the fourth quarter, Green Brick Partners delivered profits of $73 million, or $1.58 per share, compared with $55.5 million, or $1.18 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2022. The profits per share results missed Wall Street projections by nearly $0.20 per share. For the full year, profits and profits per share grew to record levels of $284.6 million, or $6.14 per share.

“During the fourth quarter, we started 948 homes, which tripled the pace of the fourth quarter 2022,” Brickman said. “Our home starts for the last nine months have now averaged almost 900 homes per quarter. At the same time, our fourth quarter cycle times were 35% shorter year over year.”

Chief financial officer Richard Costello said spec units under construction as a percentage of total units increased sequentially to 70% in the fourth quarter.

Green Brick Partners ended the year with 23,801 total lots owned and 4,880 total lots controlled, compared with 21,481 and 4,046, respectively, at the end of 2022.

“We believe we have one of the best land positions through years of consistent strategic land acquisitions in infill and infill-adjacent submarkets,” Brickman said. “We believe our ability to self-develop in areas where land developers are scarce gives us an upper hand in generating the highest home building gross margins in the industry as well as having better control over lot scheduling, delivery, and cost.”

Brickman also announced Green Brick Partners expanded its operations into the Houston metro market in the fiscal fourth quarter.

“We are excited to announce that Green Brick recently closed its first land acquisition in Houston, which will be co-developed with one of the largest public home builders in the country,” Brickman said. “Trophy Signature Homes will have 460 homesites in the community, and we expect to start home construction in 2025.”