Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Toll Brothers (TOL), Housing

Shares of luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) are higher in early trading despite posting a decline in its quarterly profit. It looks like the company is still looking for the light at the end of the tunnel as lower sales and increased write-downs resulted in weak earnings results.

During the first quarter, Toll Brothers said it swung to a loss of $96 million, or 61 cents per share as the weak U.S. housing market put a curb on demand and builders were forced to slash home prices. In addition, the company reported that the number of signed contracts for new homes dropped 46% to $573.1 million from the same period last year.

Included in the company’s numbers were pre-tax write-downs of $245.5 million. Excluding that, the largest U.S. luxury home builder’s earnings would have been $57.3 million, or 35 cents per share. Analysts, on average, forecast a quarterly loss of 44 cents a share.

Continue reading Toll Brothers (TOL) posts first-quarter loss on recession concerns

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.