Shares of top-10 national homebuilder Century Communities (NYSE: CCS) got punished with a 9.7% loss through 10:10 a.m. ET on Thursday, despite beating analyst forecasts for both sales and earnings in its third-quarter report, released last night.

Heading into the quarter, Wall Street was expecting Century to earn $4.20 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue. In fact, it earned $4.44 per share and sales were $1.14 billion -- and investors are selling the stock anyway.  

On the surface, all seemed well with Century Communities in the third quarter, with deliveries of homes growing 13% year over year, sales up 19%, and net profits rising even faster than that at 27%. Co-CEO Dale Francescon described the results as "strong," and I won't quibble with that. The bigger problem, though, isn't what happened in the third quarter but what might happen in the fourth quarter and beyond.  

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Source Fool.com