Pulte Homes Inc. (PHM)
Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript
February 5, 2009 8:30 a.m. ET

Executives

Calvin Boyd – Vice President, Investor and Corporate Communications
Richard Dugas, Jr. – President & Chief Executive Officer
Roger A. Cregg – Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer
Steven C. Petruska – Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer

Analysts

Megan McGrath – Barclays Capital
Josh Levin - Citigroup
Alan Ratner - Zelman & Associates
Daniel Oppenheim - Credit Suisse
Kenneth Zener - Macquarie Research Equities
Rob Hansen - Deutsche Bank
Michael Rehaut - JPMorgan
David Goldberg - UBS
Alex Barron - Agency Trading Group
Joel Locker - FBN Securities
James Wilson - JMP Securities LLC
Susan Berliner - JPMorgan

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the fourth quarter 2008 Pulte Homes Inc. earnings conference call. My name is Eric and I will be your audio coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will facilitate the question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation. If at any time during the call you require audio assistance press “*0” and a coordinator will be there to assist you.

I would now like to turn your presentation over to Mr. Calvin Boyd, Vice President of Investor and Corporate Communications. Please proceed.

Calvin Boyd

Thank you, Eric. Good morning and thanks everyone for joining us to discuss Pulte Homes financial results for the three and 12 months ended December 31, 2008. I''m Calvin Body, Vice President of Investor and Corporate Communications.

You''ve all had a chance to review the press release we issued last night detailing Pulte''s fourth quarter 2008 operating and financial performance. On the call to discuss these results are Richard Dugas, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Petruska, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Roger Cregg, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Vinnie Freeze, Vice President and Controller.

For those of you who have access to the Internet, a slide presentation available at www.pulteinc.com will accompany this discussion. The presentation will be archived on the site for the next 30 days for those who want to review it at a later time.

As with prior conference calls, I want to alert everyone listening on the call and via the Internet that certain statements and comments made during the course of this call must be considered forward-looking statements as defined by the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Pulte Homes believes such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, but there are no assurances that actual outcomes will not be materially different from those discussed today.

All forward-looking statements are based on information available to the company on the date of this call, and the company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information in the future. Participants in today''s call should refer to Pulte''s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007 and last night''s press release for a detailed list of the risks and uncertainties associated with the business.

As always, at the end of our prepared comments we will have time for Q&A. We will wait until then before opening the queue for questions.

I will now turn over the call to Richard Dugas for his opening comments. Richard?

Richard Dugas, Jr.

Thank you, Calvin, and good morning, everyone.

Much has been written about the challenging market conditions that the housing industry continued to face in 2008 as this housing downturn enters its fourth year. Indeed, during the fourth quarter conditions for the industry got progressively worse. Unprecedented volatility in the stock market during the quarter, the continuation of tight mortgage availability, and a surge in unemployment across virtually every sector of our economy hit housing hard. These factors led to ongoing erosion in consumer confidence, further lowering homebuyer demand. Exceptionally soft demand, combined with continued high foreclosure rates that kept inventory high meant a further imbalance of supply and demand for housing, thus the very weak market conditions. I think the proper word to describe the overall environment for Q4 and for much of 2008 was uncertainty, and uncertainty breeds consumer inaction.