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Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) recorded a loss of $2.8 million or 2 cents per share in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 ended January 31, 2012 compared with a profit of $3.4 million or 2 cents per share in the same quarter of fiscal 2011 and the Zacks Consensus Estimate of a profit of 3 cents per share.

Revenues dipped 4% to $322.0 million during the quarter on a 1% fall in home building deliveries to 564 units. It was lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $358 million.

Net signed contracts rose 45% to $444.7 million and 19% to 652 units during the quarter. The average price of net signed contracts was $682,000 compared with $561,000 in the same quarter of 2011.

Toll Brothers ended the quarter with a backlog of $1.12 billion and 1,784 units, an increase of 35% in dollars and 21% in units, compared with $825.2 million and 1,472 units in the prior year.

The company's contract cancellation rate (current-quarter cancellations divided by current-quarter gross signed contracts) was 6.2% compared with 5.7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2011. These rates are consistent with the company’s pre-downturn historical averages.

Toll Brothers had 228 selling communities at the end of the quarter compared with 200 at the end of the prior-year quarter. The company ended the quarter with approximately 39,700 owned and optioned lots, compared with 37,500 lots at the end of the previous year quarter.

Toll Brothers had cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities of $719.4 million as of January 31, 2012 compared with $1.1 billion as of January 31, 2011. The company’s net-debt-to-capital ratio was 25.0% as of January 31, 2012 compared with 17.6% as of January 31, 2011.

Toll Brothers anticipates home building deliveries between 2,600 and 3,200 homes in the fiscal 2012 at an average price between $550,000 and $575,000 based on its first-quarter-end backlog and current community count.

Based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, Toll Brothers, a Zacks #3 Rank (Hold rating) stock, is engaged in the development, construction, financing, and sale of residential homes in the United States. It builds luxury, single-family detached and attached home communities; master planned luxury residential resort-style golf communities; and urban low, mid, and high-rise communities principally on the land it develops and improves.

The company operates its own architectural, engineering, mortgage, title, land development and land sale, golf course development and management, home security, landscape, cable TV and broadband Internet delivery subsidiaries. Its competitors include DR Horton Inc. (DHI), PulteGroup Inc. (PHM), Lennar Corp. (LEN), KB Home (KBH) and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. (HOV).

 
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