Toll Bros. Profit Plunges 67% As Home Sales Fall (By Peter Woodifield and Brian Louis)

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Toll Bros., the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, fiscal first-quarter profit slid 67 percent on expenses to write down the value of land after a year of plummeting new-home sales.

By Peter Woodifield and Brian Louis -- Bloomberg

Feb. 23, 2007 -- Toll Bros. (TOL), the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, said Thursday that fiscal first-quarter profit slid 67 percent on expenses to write down the value of land after a year of plummeting new-home sales.

Net income fell to $54.3 million, or 33 cents a share, from $164 million, or 98 cents, a year earlier, Horsham, Pa.-based Toll said.

Toll cut its profit forecast and lowered its estimate for home deliveries as orders slumped.

"There are too many soft markets at this stage of the selling season to call a general upturn in the new home market," CEO Robert Toll said.

"The high end of the market is still very weak," said John Tomlinson, an analyst at Majestic Research. "The land write-downs weren't as drastic as they signaled they could be, but there's a great deal of uncertainty about future write-downs."