Mr. Dugas: Pulte Homes is one of the largest residential home builders in the United States. To give you an idea of our size, this year we expect to deliver better than 32,000 homes domestically. We will be in excess of $8 billion in revenue across the country. We currently operate in 25 states and 44 markets around the country. We build homes for all major home buyer segments including first time buyers, first move-up buyers, second move-up buyers and active adult home buyers. In fact, Pulte is the recognized leader in building for the active adult segment. In 2001 we acquired Del Webb, the nation's best-known and most successful active adult builder. Beyond our domestic homebuilding operations, we maintain a mortgage company focused on serving the needs of our home buyers. We also have a small international homebuilding operation. The company was started in 1950 by Bill Pulte and we are very proud of the fact that we have been profitable for 53 straight years since that founding. We have about 10,000 people who are employees of our organization and many tens of thousands of contractors that work with us. We are a large, national, successful home building organization.
TWST: What have been the key elements of the company's success?
Mr. Dugas: There are several factors that have enabled Pulte to
be successful. The first factor is our geographic
diversification. The company began to diversify geographically
many years ago. We completed our major geographic expansion in
the mid-1990s when we grew from about 20 markets nation-wide in
the early 1990s to 40 plus markets. Today, Pulte Homes has the
largest operating footprint, with a presence in 25 states and 44
markets across the country. Given our diversity, Pulte Homes is
much better equipped to weather a downturn in a single market.
Another important factor is Pulte's unique segmentation process.
That is the term we use to talk about how we target specific
customer groups within a given geography. Most builders target
one or two buyer groups. Pulte is the only national builder with
the stated strategy to meet the needs of all buyer segments:
first time, first move-up, second move-up and active adult. As a
matter of fact, we actually target 11 specific consumer groups
that are subsets of those four that I mentioned. The third
important factor for success is our strength in the active adult
segment through our Del Webb brand. The active adult sector in
the US is the largest single demographic group, it is also the
fasted growing. So not only is it the biggest, it is going to add
the most people over the next 15 or 20 years. Our leadership
position there clearly helps to set Pulte apart.
Tickers included in this excerpt: PHM
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