"Selling homes this first quarter was certainly more difficult than one year ago," Robert I. Toll, chairman and CEO, said during a conference call announcing preliminary earnings for the company's first fiscal quarter. While the quarter-end backlog rose 22% to nearly $6 billion, signed contracts totaling a little more than $1.1 billion represented a 21% decline in comparison with the same quarter a year ago.
As a result, the company expects to deliver between 9,200 and 9,900 homes this year, down from an earlier forecast of between 9,500 and 10,200 home deliveries. The current forecast still exceeds the 8,769 deliveries completed in fiscal 2005.
Despite the decline in first-quarter contracts, revenues for the most recent quarter rose to just above $1.3 billion, a 35% increase over revenues in first-quarter 2005. In addition, Toll said, "we expect to report between $280 million and $300 million in revenues from mid- and high-rise urban projects," when the company reports final data and earnings estimates for the quarter on Feb. 23.
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