Toll quarterly loss narrows, but outlook cloudy

4/12/2008 - 12:59

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Toll Brothers Inc , the largest U.S. luxury home builder, said its quarterly loss narrowed slightly as it wrote down less inventory, but dire market conditions kept it from giving any kind of forecast.

The net loss shrank to $78.8 million, or 49 cents per share, in the fourth quarter ended on October 31 from $81.8 million, or 52 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts were expecting a loss of 47 cents a share.

Pretax write-downs fell to $175.9 million from $314.9 million. Revenues tumbled, as Toll indicated earlier in the week, to $698.9 million from $1.17 billion.

Excluding write-downs the company said it earned $38.5 million, or 23 cents per share, down from $118.2 million, or 72 cents per share.

"The most frustrating aspect of FY 2008 was that the longer it went, the worse it got -- this, no doubt, was due largely to the financial crisis which deepened over the course of the year," Chief Executive Robert Toll said in a statement.

But Toll also said the company was in a good position to take advantage of opportunities it believes will arise from the industry's distress. "We are beginning to see some deals that are appealing in terms of quality but not price," he said.

Toll said it had ended its fiscal year with more than $1.63 billion in cash and more than $1.32 billion available under a 32-bank credit facility that matures in March 2011.

It said it has no public debt maturing until the second fiscal quarter of 2011, adding that its net debt-to-capital ratio was 12.6 percent at the end of October, its lowest level ever and down from 26.8 percent a year earlier.

The company said that because of the difficult economic environment, it was not providing any earnings forecast.

On Tuesday, Toll said it expected to report a 41 percent drop in fourth-quarter home-building revenue and called for the government to focus its attention on the housing market, calling it the root of the current financial crisis, for the sake of the entire economy.

(Reporting by Christopher Kaufman; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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