PHM PulteGroup Inc

By Joshua Jamerson 

Home builder PulteGroup Inc. reported a 21% surge in revenue in the latest quarter on rising home sales in a resurgent housing market.

Shares rose 2.3% to $20.90 in premarket trading.

The report from Atlanta-based Pulte, one of the nation's largest home builders, comes after the government last week reported that U.S. housing starts hit their highest level in nine years in 2016, when an estimated 1.17 million housing units were started, up nearly 5% from 2015.

"We believe that continued favorable trends in the economy, job growth, demographics and consumer confidence can more than offset the impact of modestly higher rates, allowing the housing recovery to continue at a steady pace," Chief Executive Ryan Marshall said in prepared remarks Thursday.

U.S. builders remain highly confident about the market for newly built single-family homes, but their optimism slipped in January from December, when the National Association of Home Builders's housing-market index hit the highest level in more than a decade the prior month.

For the fourth quarter, PulteGroup reported closings rose 9% to 6,197 homes, with average sales price up 11% to $391,000. Unit backlog increased 10% to 7,422 homes, with the value of the backlog climbing 20% to $2.9 billion.

Over all, PulteGroup reported a profit of $273.2 million, or 83 cents a share, compared with $228.3 million, or 64 cents a share, a year prior. Revenue grew to $2.49 billion from $2.06 billion.

Analysts, polled by Thomson Reuters, expected 31 cents a share on $1.74 billion in revenue.

Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 26, 2017 09:21 ET (14:21 GMT)

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