Toll Brothers Quarterly Revenue Increases 6% as Luxury-Home Orders Climb

Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL), the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, said fourth-quarter revenue increased 6 percent amid strong sales at its East Coast communities.

Homebuilding revenue for the three months ended Oct. 31 rose to $427.7 million from $402.6 million a year earlier, the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company said today in a statement. Analysts expected Toll to have revenue of $414.2 million, the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

“Notwithstanding a tumultuous summer on Wall Street, the financial chaos in Europe, the budget and political crises in Washington and two major storms that hobbled our core Mid- Atlantic and Northeast markets, we saw orders increase 24 percent in dollars and 15 percent in units,” Chief Executive Officer Douglas Yearley Jr. said in the statement.

U.S. new-home purchases climbed 5.7 percent in September to a 313,000 annual pace, Commerce Department data showed Oct. 26. Increased sales in the South and West helped boost the nationwide gain.

Toll rose 7.4 percent to $19.43 at the close in New York. It has gained 2.3 percent this year, the best performance in the 12-member Standard & Poor’s Homebuilding Index.

Toll will report complete earnings on Dec. 6.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Louis in Chicago at blouis1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net