There’s a version of this market where “buying sales” becomes the default operating system for nearly everyone.
When that happens, the question stops being whether incentives rise. They do. The real question becomes: who has the operational and balance-sheet self-control to decide where to lean in—and where to hold the line—even if it means slower near-term volume.
The even bigger question for each homebuilding enterprise is Who really are you? What are your honest-to-God core skills as an organization? And, based on that, what do you want to do and be in the months ahead?
That’s the practical story in Meritage Homes’ Q4 2025 and full-year 2025 performance: a company with an operations-forward model, a spec-heavy strategy, and a community-by-community cadence that gives it enough control to choose a more balanced pace/price posture—even in a quarter management repeatedly described as unusually tough.
Wolfe Research framed this bluntly, attributing Meritage’s perceived “outperformance” to “a well-managed conference call and a pragmatic near-term pivot, holding the line on discounts rather than chasing volume in a challenging incentive environment, leading to a better-than-feared 1Q26 Gross Margin guide.”
Softer demand, deliberate restraint, and a conversion machine
In prepared remarks, Executive Chairman Steven Hilton described Q4 as “marked by much softer-than-anticipated market conditions as affordability challenges persisted and buyer confidence deteriorated.”
He added that Q4 absorption pace fell to “3.2 net sales per month,” attributing it to “Q4 sales seasonality, a pullback in buyer urgency and a strategic decision to hold the line on incentives.”
That “hold the line” phrase matters because, for Meritage, that’s not an abstraction. Management presented it as an operational choice made in a specific competitive context.
CEO Phillippe Lord said, “As we rolled into Q4, we saw a lot of builders clearing the decks with aged inventory… incentives were going to be elevated in Q4 and [we] intentionally chose… to not chase additional sales and operate at a slightly slower volume.”
With that commitment, Lord is answering the question, ” Who are we? How are we made? What are we good at?”
The data in the earnings release puts the quarter’s slowdown in clear terms: Q4 orders of 3,224 were down 2% year over year; closings of 3,755 were down 7%; home closing revenue fell 12% to $1.4 billion; and diluted EPS declined 49% to $1.20 (or $1.67 adjusted). Home closing gross margin came in at 16.5% GAAP and 19.3% adjusted.
But here’s the operational point: even in that tougher quarter, Meritage’s spec-plus-speed machine kept turning inventory into closings at an extreme conversion rate. Hilton called out “an exceptional backlog conversion rate of 221%.” (Steven Hilton, Executive Chairman) Lord reiterated that “with 63% of Q4 closings also sold during the quarter, our backlog conversion rate was yet another all-time high for the company of 221%.” (Phillippe Lord, CEO)
That’s not a financial statement artifact. That’s a strategic operating posture: keep inventory “nearly completed,” keep cycle times short, and be able to close quickly enough that intra-quarter sales become a consistent supply of deliveries.
Flat orders, and lower revenue, margin, and community count growth
Full-year 2025 results read like an operator fighting a slower demand tape with scale and execution rather than price alone:
- Full-year orders: 14,650, essentially flat year over year
- Closings: 15,026, down 4%
- Home closing revenue: $5.8 billion, down 9%
- Home closing gross margin: 19.7% (GAAP), down 520 bps; 20.8% adjusted
- Net earnings: $453.0 million, down 42%
- Diluted EPS: $6.35 (GAAP), down 41%; $7.05 adjusted
Management’s explanation for keeping orders flat was straightforward: community count growth offset slower absorption. Hilton said full-year sales were “essentially flat compared to the prior year as we grew the ending community count 15% year-over-year to 336 communities, offsetting slower demand.”
Lord put numbers around the operational build-out: “During the quarter, we brought 35 new communities online… For full year 2025, we opened over 160 communities. In addition, we expect another 5% to 10% growth in community count in 2026.”
The underlying trade-off is evident in the release: full-year absorption pace fell 9% while average communities increased 12%. That is the definition of scaling the platform to defend volume while acknowledging that demand per community has softened.
The inventory discipline that separates “spec strategy” from “spec risk”
If housing demand drives builders to offer incentives and liquidate specs, the difference-maker becomes inventory management: how quickly you can reduce starts, work down specs, and keep the system from flooding itself.
Wolfe called out Meritage directly for bucking a pattern they see elsewhere: “MTH is taking real steps to align inventory with demand with Starts declining to 2,700 in 4Q (-24% YoY) versus 3,224 Orders and 3,755 Closings, running in contrast to many Builders still matching Starts to Sales.”
During the call, Lord confirmed the operational step-down:
“In Q4, to align with our current sales pace, we moderated starts, which totaled approximately 2,700 homes. 24% less than last year’s Q4 and 12% lower than Q3.”
And then came the inventory metric that matters when you’re spec-heavy: specs per store. Lord said: “We ended the quarter with approximately 5,800 spec homes, down 17% from approximately 7,000 specs in the prior year… The 17 specs per store this quarter was our lowest level since mid-2023.”
Wolfe captured the same story: “specs per community have declined to 17.4 versus 24.1 a year ago (-28% YoY) while specs per community are at the lowest level since mid-2023.”
But Meritage didn’t present 17 specs per store as a trophy. Lord acknowledged the mix problem:
“We still have about 50% of our specs are nearing finished or finished. We’d like that to be more around one-third… 1one-third that can move in, in 30 days… one-third that can move in 60 days, and then the other one-third, we’re just starting.”
Lord’s statement amounts to a master class in what operational excellence looks like in a spec strategy: not merely “more specs” or “fewer specs,” but the right balanced stage mix to preserve velocity without excessive finished exposure.
Margin compression, explained the way operators explain it
Meritage didn’t hide the margin mechanics. CFO Hilla Sferruzza laid out the Q4 margin pressures:
“Adjusted home closing gross margin was 400 bps lower in Q4 as compared to prior year due to greater utilization of incentives and discounts, higher lot costs and loss leverage, all of which were partially offset by improved direct costs and shorter cycle times.”
She also gave two operational signals that will matter more as 2026 unfolds:
- Direct costs are trending in the right direction: “During the quarter, we had direct cost savings of nearly 4% per square foot on a year-over-year basis… the benefits will not be visible until later in 2026 as we continue to work through our existing spec inventory that was built earlier in the year.”
- Lot-cost pressure isn’t going away tomorrow: “Our land basis in 2025 included elevated land development costs from work completed over the past several years, which will continue to impact our margins in 2026.”
In other words, the operator’s work is producing savings, but the financial statement will lag because the inventory was built earlier and because the land basis carries a longer tail.
A land-and-overhead reset that’s both defensive and opportunistic
Meritage’s Q4 included a visible “self-help” reset: land deal terminations, impairment charges, and severance costs.
In the earnings release, CEO Phillippe Lord said the company “conducted an in-depth review of our optioned land and elected to terminate certain positions to release capital to top-grade our land portfolio as opportunities become available in the marketplace.”
On the call, he expanded the logic: “The recent slowing demand environment has presented opportunities to enhance our land portfolio in specific submarkets… We observed land deals returning to the market, sometimes in more strategic locations and with more favorable structures.”
CFO Sferruzza quantified the terminations in operational terms:
“In addition to terminating over 3,400 lots… we also recorded $7.8 million in impairments this quarter on owned inventory as we adjusted pricing to local market conditions.”
And Meritage tied that reset directly to overhead recalibration and technology-driven efficiency. Lord said:
“Based on our current view of our overhead this quarter, building on a multiyear technology initiative focused on automation and process efficiencies, we are now able to achieve improved back office productivity aligned with our move-in ready all-spec strategy.”
Buybacks are strategy, not an afterthought
Meritage’s management made share repurchase a central plank of the story, repeatedly framing it as the best use of capital at current valuation.
From the earnings release: “In the near-term, we are accelerating share repurchases… as we believe this represents the most compelling use of capital given the significant undervaluation of our stock.”
On the call, Lord was even more explicit: “When our stock is trading at a significant discount to intrinsic value, the best investment I can make for our shareholders is to buy our existing enterprise at a discount.”
Meritage’s full-year capital return was $416 million, “representing 92% of this year’s total earnings.”
Wolfe tied the repurchase posture to valuation: “the company is returning significant cash to shareholders while trading below Book Value. Management clearly views the company’s shares as undervalued…” (Trevor Allinson, Wolfe Research)
The new signal investors are listening for
Meritage guided Q1 2026 home closing gross margin of 18% to 19% and diluted EPS of $0.87 to $1.13. But the more important takeaway—because it goes directly to Wolfe’s “hold the line” thesis—was how management characterized margin seasonality and near-term steadiness.
In Q&A, Sferruzza told Zelman’s Alan Ratner:
“For the most part, what we’re seeing right now is holding steady with some hopeful green shoots from the spring selling season.”
That’s the real point of Meritage as a lens into this market: when demand turns inelastic, when incentives keep creeping, and when everybody wants to clear specs, the operators who can control starts, control spec stage mix, and choose where not to chase volume will often be the first to signal whether margin can stabilize without surrendering the business model.
Meritage is telling you, plainly, that Q4 was the quarter they chose restraint—because they believed Q1 inventory returns would be better than Q4 returns. Now they’re guiding 2026 closings and revenue “in line” with 2025, “assuming no changes in market conditions.”
In a market where “every competitor is buying sales,” that “assuming” clause is the whole ballgame.
English