Thursday, July 26, 2007
Leading Home Builder Posts $823 Million Loss 
D.R. Horton hit by $823 million loss
No. 2 homebuilder reports its first quarterly loss as a public company; revenues suffer from lower values of land and other assets.
July 26 2007: 8:03 AM EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- D.R. Horton Inc., the No. 2 homebuilder by revenues, reported its first quarterly loss as a public company Thursday after taking more than a billion dollars of charges, chiefly related to the lower value of land and other assets.
For the fiscal third quarter ended June 30, D.R. Horton (Charts, Fortune 500) posted a loss of $823.8 million, or $2.62 per share, versus a profit of $292.8 million, or 93 cents, in the year-earlier quarter.
The results included charges totaling nearly $1.28 billion, including $835.8 million for inventory impairments and an impairment charge of $425.6 million.
Homebuilding revenue fell to $2.5 billion from $3.6 billion in the year-earlier quarter, as the number of homes fell to 9,643, compared to 13,377.
Earlier this month, the company said net sales orders in the quarter fell 40 percent to 8,559 homes. The dollar value of the orders dropped 47 percent to $2 billion.
"We believe that market conditions will continue to be challenging, and our quarter-end impairment evaluations incorporated our more cautious outlook for the industry," Chairman Donald Horton said in a statement.
The company's traditional customer is a first- or second-time home buyer. It builds homes in 27 states, with sale prices ranging from $90,000 to more than $900,000.
The downturn in housing is battering results of leading homebuilders. After the close Wednesday, No. 3 builder Pulte Homes (Charts, Fortune 500) and No. 9 Ryland Group (Charts, Fortune 500) also reported losses, although both losses were slightly less than forecasts.
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