PulteGroup sold 7,095 homes during the first quarter, 11% more than the same period of 2023.

Optimism about the near future is based on the company’s backlog, the company said: 13,430 homes worth $8.2 billion are in the pipeline for building.

“We can sell more homes or we can raise prices or, as in the case in the first quarter, we can do both,” Marshall said during an earnings call with analysts and reporters.

However, Marshall said that in the past few weeks, there has been “some moderation” in buying as rising mortgage rates convince some potential buyers to postpone their purchases.

The gross profit margin for the quarter was 29.6%, up 0.5 percentage points from the first quarter of last year and 0.7 percentage points higher than the fourth quarter of 2023. The company attributed that to “ongoing strength in homebuyer demand,” but also to building in parts of the country where margins tended to be better.

The company during the quarter re-purchased $246 million worth of its own stock, a move that tends to boost, or at least support, the price of its stock.

That stock has generally been on the rise for the past year.

A year ago, shares were selling for less than $69 a share. But in late March, PulteGroup stock hit a 52-week peak of $120.62 a share.

It closed at $112.76 a share on Tuesday, afternoon, up 4.57%.

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