Lennox stock missed on both sales and earnings this morning.
Management warns that the residential market for HVAC remains soft.
Lennox International (NYSE: LII) stock tumbled 19.9% through 11 a.m. ET Wednesday after reporting merely mixed earnings this morning.
Analysts had forecast that the HVAC manufacturer would earn $7.61 per share on nearly $1.6 billion in Q2 sales. In fact, Lennox earned $7.72 per share, but sales fell short of expectations at $1.5 billion.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
Image source: Getty Images.
Lennox grew its Q2 sales 3% year over year, but operating profit was up only 2%, and earnings calculated under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were nearly flat at $7.72 per share.
Lennox blamed "continued softness in the residential end market" for the weak results, noting that 24% sales growth in Building Climate Solutions (i.e., sales to businesses) helped to "mitigate" this. Still, despite raising prices on its products, Lennox saw Home Comfort Solutions (i.e., residential sales) decline by 7% due to lower volumes.
Lennox's sales proportions are roughly 60-40 residential versus commercial, so the big bump in commercial sales was the main reason revenue grew at all.
That's the bad news. The worse news is that things don't seem likely to improve much this year. While management was able to reaffirm its 2026 sales growth forecast -- 8%, of which 5% comes from acquisitions, and only 3% is organic -- Lennox lowered its earnings forecast by about 3% to a range of $23 to $24 per share.
Unfortunately, the entirety of that range falls short of the $24.52 that Wall Street was expecting Lennox to report this year. While Lennox stock doesn't look horribly expensive at 18.4 times the new forecast, the lack of any earnings growth and the weak forecast for the year explain why investors seem supremely unenthusiastic about owning Lennox stock today.
Before you buy stock in Lennox International, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Lennox International wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $390,394!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,209,184!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 899% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 206% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2026.
Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.