Lennar Corp Q1 earnings: 'housing market fundamentals remained strong'

Lennar Corp (NYSE: LEN) is trading down in extended hours on Wednesday after reporting lower-than-expected revenue for its first financial quarter.

Lennar's guidance for its fiscal second quarter

Investors are concerned because the guidance did not particularly impress either. $LEN now expects to deliver up to 19,500 homes in the second quarter.

New orders, it added, will fall between 20,900 and 21,300 in Q2. Stuart Miller – the co-chief executive of Lennar Corp said in a press release today:

The homebuilder expects average sales price to be around $422,500 in the second quarter helping gross margin on home sales to come in at 22.5%. Lennar stock that currently pays a dividend yield of 1.21% is up close to 60% at writing versus its low in late October.

Notable figures in Lennar's Q1 earnings release

• Earned $719 million versus the year-ago $599 million
• Per-share earnings also improved from $2.06 to $2.57
• Repurchased 3.4 million shares in total in Q1
• Total revenue jumped 13% year-over-year to $7.3 billion
• Consensus was $2.22 a share on $7.41 billion in revenue
• Delivered 16,798 homes – up 23% versus last year

Lennar received 18,176 new orders for homes – up 28% and ended its first quarter with a backlog of 16,270 homes, as per the earnings report. Co-CEO Miller also said on Wednesday:

In January, $LEN raised its dividend and authorised another $5.0 billion worth of share repurchase. Wall Street currently has a consensus "overweight" rating on the home construction company.

This is a developing story. Check back in a few minutes for more updates!