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Wednesday, September 17, 2014

About those homebuilders

http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/homebuilders-jump-on-lennars-highly-managed-earnings-report/

For starters, let’s not forget that all indications seem to indicate that the housing market hit a wall in August.   So LEN’s earnings released today are “looking in the rear view mirror” numbers.
But not only that, Lennar has blown smoke across that mirror, making it difficult to determine what’s real and what’s questionable accounting.   In fact, Lennar has not even filed an 8-K SEC disclosure, which companies typically file before they release their earnings report to the public.  I went to look for it after I scanned LEN’s press release and found several troubling aspects to the numbers they reported this morning.
The bottom line is that, despite the large contribution to LEN’s revenues from higher prices,   LEN’s gross margin was barely higher than for the same quarter last year.  Furthermore, they included several accounting “add-backs” to boost their net income.  Finally, like all these homebuilders, LEN has removed a significant portion of its interest expense from its income statement.  I won’t know just how much until they file their 10-Q.

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