June 11 (Reuters) - Lennar forecast third-quarter home deliveries below Wall Street estimates on Thursday amid a persistently weak U.S. housing market, sending its shares down 3.2% after the bell.
Single-family homebuilders like Lennar have been grappling with slowing sales as weak consumer confidence, job uncertainty and high mortgage rates weigh on demand.
The resulting push for targeted incentives such as mortgage rate buydowns to revive sales, coupled with persistent inflation, have eroded profit
margins.
Lennar delivered 20,519 homes in its second quarter, 2% more than a year earlier, but its average selling price fell about 5% to $371,000 per unit due to continued market weakness and higher incentives.
The quarter was "defined by the same stubborn headwinds that have challenged the housing market for the past several years – persistently elevated mortgage rates, constrained affordability, and cautious consumer sentiment," CEO Stuart Miller said.
Geopolitical uncertainty exacerbated the pressures and created a resurgent inflation reading of 4.2%, driven by higher energy prices, Miller added.
Miami, Florida-based Lennar expects to deliver between 20,500 to 21,500 homes in the third quarter. Analysts on average were expecting 22,353 deliveries, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Excluding special items, second-quarter profit was $1.31 per share, compared to Street expectations of $1.24 per share.
Revenue, for the quarter ended May 31, fell over 5% to $7.94 billion, missing analysts' estimates of $8.02 billion.
Lennar shares have lost nearly half their value from their September 2024 high.
(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta and Shivansh Tiwary in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das)
