You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Although D.R. Horton believes any such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there is no assurance that actual outcomes will not be materially different.
Additional information about factors that could lead to material changes in performance is contained in D.R Horton's annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Form 10-Q, all of which are or will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
drhorton.com and we plan to file our 10-K toward the end of next week.
All of this can be found at investors.
Today, we also have Paul Romanowski with us.
He was recently promoted to Executive Vice President and Co-Chief Operating Officer.
Paul has been with D.R Horton since 1999, serving as our regional Florida as our Florida South Division President for 15 years and most recently as our Florida region President for seven years.
I'd like to take a brief moment to have Paul introduce himself before we get started.
I'm excited for the opportunity to serve into my new role on the D.R Horton management team and I look forward to getting know our investors and analysts in the coming year.
Given that Paul is new to his role, he will not be an active participant today, but we are glad to have him with us and believe his extensive homebuilding experience will strengthen our executive team.
The D.R Horton team finished the year with a strong fourth quarter, which included a 63% increase in consolidated pre-tax income to $1.7 billion and a 27% increase in revenue to $8.1 billion.
Our pre-tax profit margin for the quarter improved 480 basis points to 21.3% and our earnings per diluted share increased 65% to $3.70.
For the year, consolidated pre-tax income increased 80% to $5.4 billion on a $27.8 billion of revenue.
Our pre-tax profit margin for the year improved 460 basis points to 19.3% and our earnings per diluted share increased 78% to $11.41.
We closed a record 81,965 homes this year, an increase of over 16,500 homes or 25% from last year.
While also achieving a historical low homebuilding SG&A percentage of 7.3%, our homebuilding return on inventory was 37.9% and our return on equity was 31.6%.
These results reflect our experienced teams in their production capabilities, our ability to leverage D.R Horton scale across our broad geographic footprint and our product positioning to offer homes at affordable price points across multiple brands.
Our homebuilding cash flow from operations for 2021 was $1.2 billion.
Over the past five years, we have generated $5.9 billion of cash flow from homebuilding operations, while growing our consolidated revenues by 128% and our earnings per share by 383%.
During this time, we also more than doubled our book value per share, reduced our homebuilding leverage 220% and increased our homebuilding liquidity by $2.8 billion, all while significantly increasing our returns on inventory and equity.
Housing market conditions remain very robust and we are focused on maximizing returns and increasing our market share further.
However, there are still significant challenges in the supply chain, including shortages in certain building materials and tightness in the labor market.
As a result, we continued restricting our home sales pace during the fourth quarter by selling homes later in the construction cycle to align with our production levels and better ensure certainty of home closing date for our homebuyers.
We expect to work through the supply chain challenges and ultimately increase our production capacity.
After starting construction on 22,400 homes, our homes and inventory increased 26% from a year ago to 47,800 homes at September 30, 2021.
In October, we started more than 8,000 homes, further positioning us to achieve double-digit growth and again in 2022.
We believe our strong balance sheet, liquidity and a low leverage position us very well to operate effectively through changing economic conditions.
We plan to maintain our flexible operational and financial position by generating strong cash flows from our homebuilding operations and managing our product offerings, incentives, home pricing sales pace and inventory levels to optimize our returns.
Diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 increased 65% to $3.70 per share, and for the year diluted earnings per share increased 78% to $11.41.
Net income for the quarter increased 62% to $1.3 billion and for the year, net income increased 76% to $4.2 billion.
Our fourth quarter home sales revenues increased 24% to $7.6 billion on 21,937 homes closed, up from $6.1 billion on 20,248 homes closed in the prior year.
Our average closing price for the quarter was $346,100, up 14% from last year and the average size of our homes closed was down 1%.
Net sales orders in the fourth quarter decreased 33% to 15,949 homes and the value of those orders was $6 billion, down 17% from $7.3 billion in the prior year.
A year ago, our fourth quarter net sales orders were up 81% due to the surge in housing demand during the first year of the pandemic when we had significantly more completed homes available to sell and prior to the supply chain challenges that arose in 2021.
Our average number of active selling communities decreased 5% from the prior year and was down 3% sequentially.
Our average sales price on net sales orders in the fourth quarter was $378,300, up 23% from the prior year.
The cancellation rate for the fourth quarter was 19% flat with the prior year quarter.
As David described, new home demand remains very strong and our local teams are continuing to restrict our sales order pace where necessary on a community-by-community basis based on the number of homes and inventory, construction times, production capacity and lot position.
They also continue to adjust sales prices to market, while staying focused on providing value to our buyers.
We are still restricting the pace of our sales orders during our first fiscal quarter, but to a lesser extent than during our fourth quarter.
As a result, we expect our first quarter net sales orders to be approximately equal to or slightly higher than our 20,418 sales orders in the first quarter last year.
Our October net sales order volume was in line with our plans and we remain confident that we are well positioned to deliver double-digit volume growth in fiscal 2022 with 26,200 homes in backlog, 47,000 homes in inventory, a robust lot supply and strong trade and supplier relationships.
Our gross profit margin on home sales revenue in the fourth quarter was 26.9%, up 100 basis points sequentially from the June quarter.
The increase in our gross margin from June to September reflects the broad strength of the housing market and benefited from the better alignment of our sales order pace to our construction schedules.
The strong demand for a limited supply of homes has allowed us to continue to raise prices or lower the level of sales incentives in most of our communities.
On a per square foot basis, our revenues were up 7% sequentially, while our stick and brick cost per square foot increased 7.5% and our lot cost increased 2%.
We expect both our construction and lot costs will continue to increase.
However, with the strength in today's market conditions, we expect to offset any cost pressures with price increases.
We currently expect our home sales gross margin in the first quarter to be similar to the fourth quarter.
We remain focused on managing the pricing, incentives and sales pace in each of our communities to optimize the return on our inventory investments and adjust to local market conditions and new home demand.
In the fourth quarter, homebuilding SG&A expense as a percentage of revenues was 6.9%, down 70 basis points from 7.6% in the prior year quarter.
For the year, homebuilding SG&A expense was 7.3%, down 80 basis points from 8.1% in 2020.
Our homebuilding SG&A expense as a percentage of revenues is at its lowest point for a quarter and for a year in our history and we are focused on continuing to control our SG&A, while ensuring that our infrastructure adequately supports our business.
We have increased our housing inventory in response to the strength of demand and are focused on expanding our production capabilities further.
We started 22, 400, hundred homes during the fourth quarter and 91,500 homes during fiscal 2021, which is an increase of 21% compared to fiscal 2020.
We ended the year with 47,800 homes in inventory, up 26% from a year ago.
21,700, hundred of our total homes et September 30th were unsold, of which 900 were completed.
Although we have not seen significant improvement in the supply chain yet, we expect the current constraints to ultimately moderate at some point in 2022.
At September 30th, our homebuilding lot position consisted of approximately 530,000 lots, of which 24% were owned and 76% were controlled through purchase contracts.
24% of our total owned lots are finished and at least 47% of our controlled lots are or will be finished when we purchase them.
Our growing and capital efficient lot portfolio is key to our strong competitive position and will support our efforts to increase our production volume to meet homebuyer demand.
Our fourth quarter homebuilding investments in lots, land and development totaled $1.8 billion, of which $1 billion was for finished lots, $330 million was for land, and $440 million was for land development.
Forestar, our majority owned subsidiary is a publicly traded, well capitalized residential lot manufacturer operating in 56 markets across 23 states.
Forestar continues to execute extremely well on its high growth plan as they increase their lot sold by 53% to 15,915 lakhs during fiscal 2021 compared to the prior year.
Forestar's pre-tax profit margin for the year improved 400 basis points to 12.4%, excluding an $18.1 million loss on extinguishment of debt.
At September 30th, Forestar's owned and controlled lot position increased 60% from a year ago to 97,000 lots.
61% of Forestar's owned lots are under contract with D.R Horton or subject to a right of first offer under our master supply agreement.
$370 million of D.R Horton's land and lot purchases in the fourth quarter were from Forestar.
Forestar is separately capitalized from D.R Horton and had approximately $500 million of liquidity at year-end with a net debt to capital ratio of 35.2%.
With its current capitalization, strong lot supply and relationship with D.R Horton, Forestar plans to continue profitably growing their business.
Financial services pre-tax income in the fourth quarter was $103 million on $223 million of revenue with a pre-tax profit margin of 46.1%.
For the year, financial services pre-tax income was $365 million on $824 million of revenue, representing a 44.3% pre-tax profit margin.
For the quarter, 98% of our mortgage company's loan originations related to homes closed by our homebuilding operations and our mortgage company handled the financing for 66% of our homebuyers.
FHA and VA loans accounted for 45% of the mortgage company's volume.
Mortgage this quarter had an average FICO score of 722 and an average loan to value ratio of 89%.
First-time homebuyers represented 59% of the closings handled by our mortgage company this quarter.
Our multifamily and single-family rental operations generated combined pre-tax income of $742 -- $74.3 [Phonetic] million in the fourth quarter and $86.5 million in fiscal 2021.
our total rental property inventory at September 30th was $841 million compared to $316 million a year ago.
We sold three multifamily properties totaling 960 units during fiscal 2021 for $191.9 million, all of which were sold in the fourth quarter compared to two properties totaling 540 units sold in fiscal 2020.
We sold three single family rental communities totaling 260 homes during fiscal 2021 for $75.9 million, including one sale of 64 homes during the fourth quarter for $21 million in revenue.
In fiscal 2022, we expect our rental operations to generate more than $700 million in revenues from rental property sales.
We also expect to grow the total inventory investment in our rental platforms by more than $1 billion in fiscal 2022 based on our current rental projects in development and our significant pipeline of future single and multifamily rental projects.
We are positioning our rental operations to be a significant contributor to our revenues, profits and returns in future years.
Our balanced capital approach focuses on being disciplined, flexible and opportunistic.
During fiscal 2021, our cash provided by homebuilding operations was $1.2 billion and our cumulative cash generated from homebuilding operations for the past five years was $5.9 billion.
At September 30th, we had $5 billion of homebuilding liquidity consisting of $3 billion of unrestricted homebuilding cash and $2 billion of available capacity on our homebuilding revolving credit facility.
This level of liquidity provides significant flexibility to adjust to changing market conditions.
Our homebuilding leverage was 17.8% at fiscal year-end with $3.1 billion of homebuilding public notes outstanding, of which $350 million matures in the next 12 months.
At September 30th, our stockholders' equity was $14.9 billion and book value per share was $41.81, up 29% from a year ago.
For the year, our return on equity was 31.6%, an improvement of 950 basis points from 22.1% a year ago.
During the quarter, we paid cash dividends of $71.6 million for a total of $289.3 million of dividends paid during the year.
During the quarter, we repurchased 2.3 million shares of common stock for $212.6 million dollars and our stock repurchases during fiscal year 2021 totaled 10.4 million shares for $874 million.
Our outstanding share count is down 2% from a year ago and our remaining share repurchase authorization at September 30th was $546.2 million.
We remain committed to returning capital to our shareholders through both dividends and share repurchases on a consistent basis and to reducing our outstanding share count each fiscal year.
Based on our financial position and outlook for fiscal 2022, our Board of Directors increased our quarterly cash dividend by 13% to $22.5 per share.
As we look forward to the first quarter of fiscal 2022, we are expecting market conditions to remain similar with strong demand from homebuyers, but continuing supply chain challenges that will delay home construction, completion and closing.
We expect to generate consolidated revenues in our December quarter of $6.5 billion to $6.8 billion and our homes closed by our homebuilding operations to be in a range between 17,500 homes and 18,500 homes.
We expect our home sales gross margin in the first quarter to be 26.8% to 27% and homebuilding SG&A as a percentage of revenues in the first quarter to be approximately 8%.
We anticipate our financial services pre-tax profit margin in the range of 30% to 35% and we expect our income tax rate to be approximately 24% in the first quarter.
Looking further out, we currently expect to generate consolidated revenues for the full fiscal year of 2022 of $32.5 billion to $33.5 billion and to close between 90,000 homes and 92,000 homes.
We forecast an income tax rate for fiscal 2022 of approximately 24%, subject to changes and potential future legislation that could increase the federal corporate tax rate.
We also expect that our share repurchases will reduce our outstanding share count by approximately 2% at the end of fiscal 2022 compared to the end of fiscal 2021.
We expect to generate positive cash flow from our homebuilding operations in fiscal 2022 after our investments in homebuilding inventory to support double-digit growth.
We will then balance our cash flow utilization priorities among increasing the investment in our rental operations, maintaining conservative homebuilding leverage and strong liquidity, paying an increased dividend and consistently repurchasing shares.
In closing, our results reflect our experienced teams and production capabilities, industry leading market share, broad geographic footprint and diverse product offerings across multiple brands.
Our strong balance sheet, liquidity and low leverage provide us with significant financial flexibility to capitalize on today's robust market and to effectively operate in changing economic conditions.
We plan to maintain our disciplined approach to investing capital to enhance the long-term value of the company, which includes returning capital to our shareholders through both dividends and share repurchases on a consistent basis.
Your efforts during 2021 were remarkable.
We closed the most homes in a year in our company's history, achieving 10% market share with record profits and returns and we are incredibly well positioned to continue growing and improving our operations in 2022.
We will now host questions.

user
q4 earnings per share $3.70.
qtrly consolidated revenues increased 27% to $8.1 billion.
homebuilding revenue for q4 of fiscal 2021 increased 24% to $7.6 billion from $6.2 billion in same quarter of fiscal 2020.
homes closed in quarter increased 8% to 21,937 homes compared to 20,248 homes closed in same quarter of fiscal 2020.
net sales orders for q4 ended september 30, 2021 decreased 33% to 15,949 homes.
sees 2022 consolidated revenues of $32.5 billion to $33.5 billion.
sees 2022 homes closed between 90,000 homes and 92,000 homes.

assistant