Hovnanian reports Q3 EPS $1.99 vs. $9.75 last year

Reports Q3 revenues $800.6M vs. $722.7M last year. “While the market environment remains challenging, we’re encouraged by our performance this quarter. We met or exceeded the guidance range for all the metrics provided for the third quarter,” stated Ara Hovnanian (HOV), CEO. “Uncertainty across global, political and economic fronts continued to weigh on homebuyer sentiment resulting in a slower sales pace than we had expected at the beginning of the fiscal year. Additionally, affordability challenges are weighing on buyer activity as home prices remain high, and mortgage rates have only seen modest declines from recent highs. We addressed these affordability headwinds with increased incentives that led to the first year-over-year increase in quarterly contracts per community this fiscal year. While our contracts for the quarter increased, QMIs decreased 5% sequentially, consistent with our goal of aligning our starts with our sales. Furthermore, consistent with our short-term strategy, we are selling through some of the lower margin homes and land to make room for newer land purchases with better margins. Our primary focus remains on pursuing growth opportunities, while improving our capital structure. Given the current market conditions, our approach to new land acquisitions relies on strict adherence to underwriting discipline. We believe we are in a period where consumers are adjusting to current home prices and mortgage rates and remain confident that the combination of pent-up housing demand and the positive long-term demographic trends for housing will drive increased demand for new homes going forward. We are seeing current land opportunities on slightly better terms than last year. Our second highest ROE and what we believe to be the highest adjusted EBIT ROI among midsized homebuilder peers for the trailing twelve-month period, demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy, and we remain focused on sustaining returns that outpace industry benchmarks.”