- What if a Recovery Is All in Your Head?
- A Taxpayer's Must Read: The Fed Waltz With AIG
- Health Care Bill Clears First Senate Hurdle
- Wall Street Jobs Slow to Return Despite Record Profits
- Investors to Goldman: Be Less Greedy
- Thanksgiving Week Stuffed With Economic News
- Real Estate Agents See Return of Foreign Buyers
- 10 Tips to Get Out of Debt
- 'New Moon' Takes Record $72.7M Box Office Bite
- How Stock Investors Can Play Holiday Travel
- Time Lapse World Series Is A Great Play
- Hirschhorn: Greed...or Fear
- My Top 10 Tech Toys for the Holidays
- iPhone a Better Gaming Platform Than Android?
- May Day For Dendreon
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Holiday Tipping: Who And How Much
- Deep Discounts Should Make It a Very Tech-y Holiday
Text Size 
Toll Brothers said quarterly home-building revenue dropped about 34 percent, less sharply than analysts were expecting, but it did not provide an earnings outlook because of the current state of the market.
Preliminary results for the third quarter ended July 31 showed home-building revenue had fallen to about $796.5 million from $1.21 billion a year earlier, the company said on Wednesday.
 |
AP |
Analysts on average had expected revenue of $717.6 million, according to Reuters Estimates.
Toll [TOL
Loading...
()
], the largest U.S. luxury home builder, plans to release final results Sept. 4.
"Our third-quarter results for revenues, contracts and backlog reflect the continued weakness in most of our markets," Chief Executive Robert Toll said in a statement.
Contracts declined 35 percent to about $469.7 million for the quarter.
The U.S. housing market has been in a tailspin for almost two years amid surging defaults on risky subprime mortgages, rising foreclosures, excess supply, lower prices and tighter credit conditions.
The slump has even helped push some builders into bankruptcy, including WCI Communities [WCI
Loading...
()
] last week.
The survivors have had to mark down the value of their inventories and take charges for walking away from land deals.
Toll estimated third-quarter pretax write-downs for operating communities, land and land options, and joint ventures at $100 million to $200 million.
To navigate the downturn, most builders have focused on accumulating cash by reducing debt and selling land acquired at lofty prices during the boom.
Toll controls 48,500 lots, down from a peak of 91,200 at the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2006.
The company ended the third quarter with about $1.5 billion in cash and about $1.3 billion available under its bank credit facility.
RELATED LINKS
With more liquidity than its peers, Toll can take advantage of land-buying opportunities later in the downturn, UBS analyst David Goldberg wrote in a note to clients.
Toll reported 195 cancellations for the third quarter, its lowest total in the past two years. The cancellation rate was 19.4 percent, down from 23.8 percent a year earlier.
"We believe this reduction in cancellations is a positive sign," Toll said.
- Toll is scheduled to appear Wednesday on CNBC's "Closing Bell."
Print
Email
- Technology can make or break a fortune in the world of alternative energy.
- Many people are facing the holidays with substantially smaller incomes. Here’s how some are adapting.
- Jim Cramer is a proponent of stocks that pay healthy dividends, and here are his top five dividend plays.
- From salt, to lip balm to envelopes, it turns out that bacon flavoring can sell almost anything.
- The homebuyer's tax credit jacked sales for a while, but 2010 is looking weak. Now what?
- CNBC’s technology reporter Jim Goldman guides you through the best gadgets to buy this holiday season.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes