Beazer Homes Posts Profit In Q4 As Homebuilding Market Improves

(RTTNews) - Beazer Homes USA, Inc. (BZH) Thursday reported a profit for the fourth quarter, compared to a loss last year, as revenues climbed benefiting from an improved homebuilding market.

Allan Merrill, CEO, said, "In the fourth quarter, we reported our first net profit from operations in many years, realizing the benefits of our path-to-profitability strategies and the impact of an improved homebuilding market.''

Net income for the quarter was $11.95 million or $0.38 per share compared to a loss of $66.23 million or $2.82 per share last year.

On average, 12 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings per share of $0.24 for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude one-time items.

Income from continuing operations was $11.33 million compared to a loss of $60.4 million last year. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $41.5 million, while it amounted to $15.1 million last year.

Total revenue increased to $438.33 million from $370.93 million in the prior year. Analysts estimated revenues of $397.20 million.

Home building revenue climbed 18.7 percent to $436.2 million. New home orders advanced 7.4 percent to 1,192 units, while average community count fell 17.2 percent to 135. Cancellation rates were 23.9 percent compared to 31.1 percent last year.

For the full year, the company's net loss narrowed to $33.9 million from $145.3 million and revenues improved to $1.29 billion from $1.005 billion.

New home orders advanced 2.6 percent despite an 18.5 percent reduction in average community count. Full year homebuilding gross margins increased to 20 percent.

Merrill added that for the full year, the firm achieved adjusted EBITDA that more than tripled from fiscal 2012, helped by improvements in average sales price, sales per community per month and homebuilding gross margins.

The company expects to report a full year of profitability for fiscal 2014.

BZH closed at $18.05 on Wednesday.