New York sales help Toll Brothers more than double earnings

Price hikes in top markets help builder offset market cool-down elsewhere in US

From left: Toll Brothers' Robert Toll and Douglas Yearley
From left: Toll Brothers' Robert Toll and Douglas Yearley

Toll Brothers Inc. more than doubled its fiscal second quarter profit as the luxury home builder raised prices and increased the number of properties delivered.

Net income in the three months through April came in at $65.2 million, or 35 cents a share, up from $24.7 million, or 14 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Toll Brothers generated $860 million in revenues, a 67 percent year-over-year increase, reported Bloomberg.

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Toll Brothers countered severe winter weather and the nationwide slide in home deliveries by increasing prices and improving sales in expensive markets such as New York and California. Average prices for homes delivered by Toll Brothers reached $706,000, up from $577,000 in the second quarter of 2013. Prices for newly ordered homes also increased to $729,000 from $678,000 a year ago.

Toll Brothers revised its guidance on average home delivery prices upward to $729,000 from an earlier estimated low of $675,000. [Bloomberg]Tom DiChristopher