Lennar Earnings Show What the Fed's Rate Hike Costs

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Yesterday’s piece on the Fed’s rate hike asked what a rate increase actually does to a real company, not just the ticker on your watchlist. Lennar answered that question less than 24 hours later, and it did not wait to soften the blow first.

Table of Contents

The number that matters

Lennar’s third quarter net earnings fell 52% year over year, down to $284 million from $591 million a year ago. Diluted EPS came in at $1.19, compared to $2.29 last year, which is about as close to “cut in half” as a number gets without actually being asked to.

Revenue landed at $8.0 billion, down 9% from $8.8 billion. New orders dropped 9% to 20,879 homes and deliveries slipped 3% to 20,840 homes.

Lennar also cut its own full year delivery target, from a range of 82,000 to 83,000 homes down to 80,000 to 81,000. That is not a rounding error, that is a homebuilder telling Wall Street it does not expect the back half of the year to bail it out.

Straight from the source

CEO Stuart Miller did not dress it up much on the call. “Mortgage rates increased through the quarter, with the 30-year rate at approximately 6.8% at quarter end and even higher since,” he said.

He went further, saying conditions had “deteriorated since our last earnings call,” pointing to “mortgage rates, inflation and declining consumer confidence as buyers slow purchase decisions.” That is about as close to a builder saying “our buyers are spooked” as you will hear on an earnings call.

Miller also tried to thread the needle, insisting “the overall housing environment remains constructive as housing shortages continue to drive demand.” Sure, there is a housing shortage. There also appears to be nobody thrilled about financing one at 7%.

Why this is the Fed’s story too, not just Lennar’s

Here is where yesterday’s piece and today’s connect. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit 7.08% as of Tuesday, up 30 basis points in a single week and a one-year high. It had crossed the 7% line the day before that.

The Fed did not cut rates this week, it hiked them, its first hike since 2023. Three rate cuts late last year had briefly nudged mortgage rates lower, and this week undid a decent chunk of that progress in one move.

Lennar’s earnings call landed the same day as the Fed decision, which means a homebuilder was telling investors in real time exactly what higher-for-longer rates do to actual buyers, while the Fed was still in the room explaining why it hiked in the first place.

Wall Street Reality Check: a rate hike does not usually show up as a scary headline for months. Sometimes it shows up in an earnings call within 24 hours, if you know which company reports next.

What it means for your portfolio

Lennar’s stock closed down 2.14% the day of earnings, then kept falling, down roughly another 1.5% in premarket trading this morning. That puts a stock that traded above $139 a share earlier this year sitting closer to $77, within a few dollars of its 52 week low.

This is not only a Lennar problem. Every homebuilder on the board is selling into the same 7% mortgage environment, to the same buyers who are “slowing purchase decisions.” Lennar just happened to report first and show you the receipts.

If mortgage rates hold here or climb further, expect the next few homebuilders to report something similar. Yesterday’s dot plot piece explained why rates might not come down fast, this is what “not fast” looks like once it hits an actual earnings report.

Want to see this coming before the earnings call does: Predictive Alpha runs your stocks through TradeSmith’s AI forecasting engine, so you can see which names are exposed to rate-sensitive pain like this before the quarterly report spells it out for you.

See how Predictive Alpha forecasts react to rate-driven moves like this one.

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