Builder Stocks Fall With Q2 Reports

A pair of homebuilder companies reported mixed results for their second quarters Thursday, sending shares of one up slightly and the other down, while bigger names in the industry group also fell.

PulteGroup (PHM), the No. 3 builder by market cap, rose less than 1% in afternoon trading after it beat earnings views by 2 cents per share on revenue of $1.2 billion, which was about flat from the earlier year and below the $1.37 billion analysts had expected.

But investors apparently forgave the revenue miss in favor of a more forward-looking report on the value of net new orders, which jumped 11% to $1.8 billion on a 7% gain in unit numbers, to 5,118 homes.

PulteGroup's CEO Richard Dugas noted that the value of new orders was the highest in a quarter since 2007.

Smaller builder M/I Homes (MHO) also beat views by two cents, with earnings per share coming in at 43 cents, up from 31 cents a year earlier. Homes delivered in the quarter rose 3% to 919 homes, while new contracts increased 8% to 1,100 homes. But investors didn't cheer, sending the stock down more than 2%.

Shares of PulteGroup and M/I Homes are nearly flat from where they started the year. Neither one is ranked highly by IBD, which gives PulteGroup a low 54 Composite Rating out of 99 possible and M/I a somewhat better score of 69.

Shares of better-ranked Lennar (LEN) and D.R. Horton (DHI), the No. 1 and No. 2 homebuilders by market cap, were down more than 1% in afternoon trading.