-- Several key US homebuilders' earnings this year are likely to take a hit, as the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict weighs on an already-soft spring selling season, Truist Securities said Thursday.
The brokerage lowered its bottom-line estimates for the upcoming quarter and full year for six homebuilders. These are D.R. Horton (DHI), Meritage Homes (MTH), NVR (NVR), PulteGroup (PHM), Taylor Morrison Homes (TMHC), and Toll Brothers (TOL).
Truist also trimmed its price targets for the six stocks, as it factored in inflation and the erosion in consumer confidence amid higher oil prices driven mainly by the US-Israel war with Iran that broke out at the end of February.
"The timing of this war was very unfortunate," Truist analyst Jonathan Bettenhausen said in a note to clients. "While we think industry expectations for this spring selling season were already calling for a roughly down low-single-digit environment from last year, we find it unlikely that a significant deterioration in the geopolitical environment was factored into those expectations."
The brokerage said that while it's not expecting "many beats" among the stocks it covers, its favorite going into the latest quarterly print is Taylor Morrison. That stock likely has "the most bad news priced in," Bettenhausen wrote.
"We think any optimism on the spring selling season has effectively evaporated, and we have lowered our demand assumptions accordingly for (the first half) quarters, but also for the back half of the year on worse spring (build-to-order) new order demand," the analyst said.
With new home sales and new residential construction data for March yet to be released, alternative market indicators such as mortgage reports and Google Trends "do not yield encouraging demand trends, which in our view, confirms the prevailing market sentiment on demand," according to the note.
On Wednesday, the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo said US homebuilder confidence sank this month to the lowest since September amid economic uncertainty, as well as increasing building material costs and interest rates.
The White House is optimistic about reaching a deal with Iran, noting that a potential second round of talks would likely be held in Pakistan. Over the weekend, US-Iran peace negotiations in Islamabad ended without a deal. Meanwhile, a two-week ceasefire between Washington and Tehran holds.
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