Toll Brothers (TOL) posts deep losses but beats estimates

Shares of luxury home builder Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) are trading up 1.72% in the premarket following this morning's fourth fiscal quarter earnings release.

The company posted a fourth quarter loss of $81.8 million, or 52 cents per share, hurt by the slumping housing market and credit crisis. Included in the company's figures were $314.9 million pretax writedowns related to sold homes that came with no profit. Excluding that, the company's fourth-quarter earnings were 72 cents per share. Analysts had been expecting to see the home builder lose 77 cents per share.

The company also posted a 35% decline in its quarterly sales, which slipped down to $1.17 billion, slightly ahead of analysts' expectations for sales of $1.166 billion.

According to a statement from Robert Toll, chairman and chief executive officer, the year of 2007 was "the most challenging of the forty years" as Toll Brothers posted its first quarterly loss in 21 years. Looking ahead, despite its disappointing earnings, the company anticipates to sell in fiscal 2008 homes in a range of 3,900 and 5,100 at around $630,000 to $650,000 per home.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer.