Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Michael Rehaut with JP Morgan.
Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan
The first question, with the continued success of the open series and you are getting orders back solidly on the positive side with better year-over-year absorption, I was wondering if you could give us a sense for the level of profitability of those new orders in terms of both gross margins and operating margins as -- I guess you are saying by, over the next several months you are going to be hitting the much higher levels of closings from these communities?
Jeffrey T. Mezger
That’s true, Michael. As I shared in my comments, we have confirmed it will be over 50% of deliveries in the fourth quarter and we expect that trajectory to continue into 2010 and beyond. While I say that, the open series is having a positive impact on margin that was reflected in the numbers that we reported and some of the detail that Bill shared today. Bill also shared we expect sequential improvement in the fourth quarter from the third in gross margin in part because of a larger share of open series deliveries.
Past that, it’s unclear. We think we will have incremental improvement from open series but we still have some lesser performing, non-open series communities that are part of the mix that would have a limiting effect on margin. So I’d say we expect incremental improvement going forward in Q4.
Michael Rehaut - JP Morgan
And just to get a little more granular in terms of the differential on at least a gross margin basis, is it 500 basis points, it is 1,000 basis points? Just to get some sense of the gap between open series and the rest of your communities?
Jeffrey T. Mezger
Well, we look at the whole bucket, Michael. I don’t know that we have the numbers between open and non-open and it gets blurry based on the mix deliveries in the quarter or in the fourth quarter, so as we shared, we attribute some of our margin improvement to the open series mix and we think it will drive a little higher margin in the fourth quarter.
Operator
Your next question comes from Ivy Zelman with Zelman & Associates.
Ivy Zelman - Zelman & Associates
Good morning, gentlemen. I wanted to understand if you could help us just a little bit, although community count, I didn’t get the number exactly quarter to quarter, I’m sure the community count went down and your sequential decline and orders. Was there in your opinion a slower-than-normal third quarter slowing? Because your market share as you’ve been gaining with the open series and your comments last quarter was that you thought you can sustain the same number of sales per neighborhood and it looks as if it slowed a little. So would you say that the market is showing any softening or is it just a timing issue because the summer or the spring was stronger than the summer and it’s as you would have expected?
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