"Revenue declined 14% to $2.79 billion vs. $3.24 billion a year ago, topping Wall Street's estimate of $2.49 billion."

"The drop in profits for Lennar comes after the U.S. Census Bureau reported Monday that builders sold 848,000 single-family homes in February, 18.3% fewer than the same month last year and 3.9% fewer than January this year."

""While some markets are performing better than others, the typically stronger spring selling season has not yet materialized," said Stuart Miller, Lennar's president and chief executive. "These soft market conditions have been exacerbated by the well-publicized problems in the subprime lending market.""

"Concern about problems facing many lenders in the subprime market, designed for more risky loans, contributed to a 416-point drop in the Dow average on Feb. 27."

"The company said it is continuing to pursue debt and cost reductions, lowering inventory, savings in selling, general and administrative expenses and product redesign to see margin improvement starting in the second half of the year."

"In January, Miller laid out a yearly earnings goal of $3.69 a share in hopes that the job market would stay strong, the economy would continue to be healthy and the new-home market would demonstrate "traditional, seasonal improvement.""

""Given the state of the market, we do not expect to achieve our previously stated 2007 earnings goal, and we are not comfortable providing a new earnings goal at this time," Miller said."

"New home orders were down 27% year-over-year, to 7,132. Lennar said its cancellation rate was 29%."

"The sharp drop in orders was more than expected despite higher incentives, and the company may not have seen the worst of troubles stemming from the tough lending environment, Banc of America Securities analyst Daniel Oppenheim said in a research note."

""Our sense is that the tougher
... read the whole article