Consumer Discretionary
Lennar reported that nearly half of prospective homebuyers visiting its communities cannot qualify for a mortgage. The metric highlights that buyer financing constraints, not foot traffic, remain the decisive drag on home sales.
Lennar reduced construction costs per square foot by 14% since 2023, completely offsetting a 13% drop in revenue per square foot. The discipline shows how large homebuilders are maintaining margins while absorbing price cuts and financing buydowns.
AutoZone trimmed its fiscal 2028 store opening target from roughly 500 to 430 and slowed expansion in Brazil. The company is pulling back on international growth to concentrate near-term capital on the U.S. and Mexico.
Information Technology
BlackBerry cut full-year revenue and profit guidance for its Secure Communications division due to U.S.-Canada trade tensions impacting its U.S. federal government contracts. It is an uncommon disclosure of cross-border political friction directly denting enterprise software revenue.
BlackBerry’s new commercial vehicle design win with the Volvo-Daimler software joint venture commands an average selling price three times higher than legacy deployments. The premium reflects how the industry shift toward centralized vehicle architectures is expanding software content per vehicle.
Consumer Staples
General Mills observed that lower- and middle-income consumers continue to defer grocery purchases until items go on sale rather than paying shelf prices. The entrenched promo-waiting behavior indicates that packaged food volume recovery remains constrained by consumer budget strain.
In detail
Consumer Discretionary
Lennar reported that nearly half of prospective homebuyers visiting its communities cannot qualify for a mortgage. The metric highlights that buyer financing constraints, not foot traffic, remain the decisive drag on home sales.
Prospective shoppers continue exploring new housing developments across multiple regional markets, yet turning that initial interest into finalized contracts depends heavily on prospective buyers clearing strict mortgage requirements and securing upfront capital. The bottleneck sits in lending eligibility and down payment availability rather than an absence of shopper interest. This friction directly influences builder conversion rates and sales velocity. The metric would matter less if down payment programs or lending standards loosened to absorb those turned-away visitors, but continued financing hurdles will suppress transaction volumes despite ongoing community foot traffic.
Fewer families can afford to both produce a down payment and qualify for a mortgage as in many of our markets, almost 50% of our visitors cannot immediately qualify.
LEN — Stuart Miller, Executive Chairman, CEO and President (FY2026-Q3) — read it in the call
Lennar reduced construction costs per square foot by 14% since 2023, completely offsetting a 13% drop in revenue per square foot. The discipline shows how large homebuilders are maintaining margins while absorbing price cuts and financing buydowns.
When pricing per square unit contracts over a multi-year timeframe, operational survival and margin preservation depend entirely on aggressive cost reductions on the ground. By lowering building expenses faster than realized top-line unit revenue declines, large homebuilders can maintain their operating spreads despite shifting market conditions. This operational efficiency bears on the industry’s ability to protect profitability during pricing downturns. The trend would become critical if input and construction savings hit an operational floor while pricing declines persist, eroding the buffer that currently keeps builder margins intact.
If you go back to 2023 as a baseline, our revenue per square foot is down 13%. Our construction cost per square foot in the same time frame is down 14%.
LEN — Stuart Miller, Executive Chairman, CEO and President (FY2026-Q3) — read it in the call
AutoZone trimmed its fiscal 2028 store opening target from roughly 500 to 430 and slowed expansion in Brazil. The company is pulling back on international growth to concentrate near-term capital on the U.S. and Mexico.
Retail expansion strategies are shifting toward core North American markets as capital and managerial attention are pulled back from aggressive South American rollouts. Scaling back future unit opening targets and moderating international expansion rates reallocates resources toward established domestic and adjacent territories. This adjustment directly bears on total square footage expansion and long-term geographic diversification. The strategic pivot would matter more if core North American markets experience saturation or slowing returns, which would make the forfeited growth from scaled-back international store expansion far more difficult to replace.
As we are planning to open approximately 400 new stores in FY 2027, we have decided to reduce the FY 2028 target from roughly 500 stores to 430, as we do not expect to open as many international stores. Specifically, we will slow the pace of our Brazil expansion to concentrate on the U.S. and Mexico in the near term.
AZO — Phil Daniele, Chief Executive Officer (FY2026-Q4) — read it in the call
Information Technology
BlackBerry cut full-year revenue and profit guidance for its Secure Communications division due to U.S.-Canada trade tensions impacting its U.S. federal government contracts. It is an uncommon disclosure of cross-border political friction directly denting enterprise software revenue.
Public sector procurement is encountering unexpected friction as cross-border diplomatic disputes between historical trade partners directly disrupt software operations. The development highlights vulnerability for enterprise software vendors whose major contracts depend heavily on foreign federal agencies during periods of heightened bilateral dispute. This development bears on forward revenue predictability and contract renewal timelines across public sector accounts. The impact would escalate if bilateral relations deteriorate further into formal procurement restrictions, whereas a resolution to regional trade disputes would quickly normalize contract execution and restore stability to government software sales.
For secure communications, an already dynamic backdrop in The US where Secure Communications has a substantial footprint with the US federal government is being further complicated by recent geopolitical developments. Including trade tensions between Canada and The United States. As a result, we are prudently updating our full year revenue outlook.
BB — Tim Foote, Chief Financial Officer (FY2027-Q2) — read it in the call
BlackBerry’s new commercial vehicle design win with the Volvo-Daimler software joint venture commands an average selling price three times higher than legacy deployments. The premium reflects how the industry shift toward centralized vehicle architectures is expanding software content per vehicle.
Automotive software monetization is experiencing a substantial structural step up as next-generation electronic architectures replace older vehicular platforms. Securing dramatically higher realized pricing per deployment demonstrates that modern embedded operating systems can extract significantly greater commercial value per vehicle than previous product generations. This dynamic directly bears on long-term embedded software revenue growth and unit economics across commercial vehicle fleets. The development would gain even greater significance if similar pricing multiples become standard across future automotive platform agreements, significantly accelerating software revenue expansion across the transportation sector.
In fact, for this first design win, the ASP per instance is approximately 3x higher than the customer’s current deployment of QNX operating system.
BB — John Joseph Giamatteo, Chief Executive Officer (FY2027-Q2) — read it in the call
Consumer Staples
General Mills observed that lower- and middle-income consumers continue to defer grocery purchases until items go on sale rather than paying shelf prices. The entrenched promo-waiting behavior indicates that packaged food volume recovery remains constrained by consumer budget strain.
Shopper behavior among budget-sensitive households shows stubborn persistence, with consumers consistently refusing to purchase staple grocery items at standard prices until promotional discounting occurs. This steady, entrenched habit demonstrates that financial pressure on middle- and lower-income shoppers has not abated across consecutive quarters. This ongoing dynamic bears directly on packaged food manufacturers’ pricing power, promotional spending budgets, and organic volume trajectories. The trend would matter more if widespread promotional dependence forces food companies into escalating discount wars, eroding gross margins in an effort to maintain retail volumes.
we still see the consumer being very stressed, especially the middle and lower-income consumer. And how that translates into behaviors is, yes, they are still waiting to buy products on sale rather than waiting to buy them on everyday shelf price. We haven’t seen that accelerate. We’d say it’s pretty similar to what we saw in the back half of last fiscal.
GIS — Dana McNabb, COO (FY2027-Q1) — read it in the call
Coming up
2026-09-30 · MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC (MU) — Look for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) production ramp-up, pricing momentum across DRAM and NAND, and forward gross margin guidance.
2026-10-08 · PEPSICO INC (PEP) — Look for organic volume recovery across North America snacking (Frito-Lay) and beverages versus price/mix realization. — our analysis
2026-10-01 · Accenture plc (ACN) — Look for consulting bookings growth, enterprise discretionary IT spending trends, and new generative AI bookings conversion.
2026-10-09 · DELTA AIR LINES, INC. (DAL) — Look for domestic unit revenue (TRASM) trends, premium cabin demand strength, and the impact of fuel and labor costs on operating margin guidance. — our analysis
2026-10-01 · NIKE, Inc. (NKE) — Look for Greater China sales trends, direct-to-consumer vs. wholesale channel balance, and updates on product innovation and turnaround strategy.
2026-09-30 · JABIL INC (JBL) — Look for end-market demand stability in cloud and connected devices, plus full-year margin and cash flow guidance. — our analysis
2026-09-29 · Carnival Corp Ltd. (CCL) — Look for net yield growth, forward booking curve pricing and volume, and the pace of balance sheet deleveraging. — our analysis
2026-10-06 · CONSTELLATION BRANDS, INC. (STZ) — Look for Mexican beer portfolio depletion growth and pricing power against continued weakness in the wine and spirits division. — our analysis
2026-10-01 · MCCORMICK & CO INC (MKC) — Look for volume growth inflection in the Consumer segment and gross margin performance within Flavor Solutions. — our analysis
2026-09-30 · FACTSET RESEARCH SYSTEMS INC (FDS) — Look for organic Annual Subscription Value (ASV) growth, buy-side vs. sell-side workstation retention, and full-year margin guidance. — our analysis
Companies that reported this period
7 earnings calls held between 2026-09-12 and 2026-09-26.
2026-09-17 · LENNAR CORP /NEW/ (LEN) — FY2026-Q3
2026-09-22 · AUTOZONE INC (AZO) — FY2026-Q4
2026-09-23 · CINTAS CORP (CTAS) — FY2027-Q1
2026-09-23 · GENERAL MILLS INC (GIS) — FY2027-Q1
2026-09-23 · PAYCHEX INC (PAYX) — FY2027-Q1
2026-09-24 · BLACKBERRY Ltd (BB) — FY2027-Q2
2026-09-24 · DARDEN RESTAURANTS INC (DRI) — FY2027-Q1