"Stewart Information Services" Q2 2026 Earnings Call - Commercial Expansion and Agency Share Gains Drive Growth Amid Flat Housing Market

Conference Call Operator: Thank you for joining the Stewart Information Services second quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have an opportunity to ask a question during the question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note today’s call is being recorded. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn today’s conference over to Kat Bass, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kat Bass, Director of Investor Relations, Stewart Information Services: Thank you for joining us today for Stewart’s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. We will be discussing results that were released yesterday after the close. Joining me today are CEO, Fred Eppinger, and CFO, David Hisey. To listen online, please go to the stewart.com website to access the link for this conference call. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the company’s press release and other filings with the SEC for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. During our call, we will discuss the non-GAAP measures. For reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures, please refer to the appendix in today’s earnings release, which is available on our website at stewart.com. Let me now turn the call over to Fred.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Thank you for joining us today for Stewart’s second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Yesterday we released the financial results for the second quarter. I will kick off today’s call with an overview of our performance, followed by our outlook on the housing market. I will cover our results and strategic direction by business. After my remarks, I’ll turn it over to David for additional commentary on the results. I am very pleased with the second quarter results. We sustained our growth momentum in each of our business lines and strengthened our future earnings outlook by significantly investing in some additional business opportunities. Our results for the first half of the year reflects the efforts we have made to grow the company and improve earnings. Our year-to-date results demonstrated our success at growing both top and bottom lines.

Year-to-date, we have grown revenues by 26% grew adjusted pre-tax income by 45%, all while the housing market remains at multi-decade lows. Our momentum continued in the second quarter as we saw very strong revenue growth of over 24%. Earnings growth for the quarter was 13%, with slower growth driven by a decision to make some significant additional investments in individuals and teams to boost our organic growth initiatives in three of our title businesses. In the quarter, we made additional investments in individuals and teams of around $8 million to capture these targeted business opportunities. I’m excited about these opportunities and believe we should see the full impact of these hires over the next two to four quarters.

Even with those investments, I believe we can deliver earnings growth that will outpace revenue growth over the second half and for the full year for the overall company. I am very encouraged by our strong momentum in 2026 when considering current housing market conditions. Growth in existing home sales has been very modest again year-over-year, up 2% for the first half of 2026, but still hovering around the $4 million annual units, continuing the multi-year slump. At the onset of 2026, we expected existing home sales to improve around 6%-8%. However, given the position of interest rates as a result of the macro and geographical conditions, we now anticipate a much softer improvement, with growth more likely topping around 2% when compared to last year, keeping us solidly in the low $4 million existing house sales range.

While May and June saw some positive existing home sales momentum year-over-year, the annualized numbers remain in that 4 million to 4.1 range. Home prices continue to hold and slightly increase by around 1.5% for the quarter, even as we see more inventory coming into place, reflecting the demand still built into the system. The charge of owners of under 3% rates continues to slowly shrink, coming in about 19.5% from the high of 25% of outstanding mortgages several years ago. This implies that life events are slowly inciting some buyers into the marketplace.

Interest rates remain a critical factor for potential home buyers considering determining when they enter the market, in the first quarter, we felt the positive effects of rates moving down towards 6% range and felt a dynamic shift as they moved back up around 6.5%, which is where we are hovering throughout the second quarter. Turning to our business results, our national commercial services business continued to deliver strong growth in the quarter. Total domestic commercial premiums grew 20% year-over-year and are up 30% for the first half of the year when compared to 2025. Energy continues to be our largest asset class, followed by strength in some of our larger asset classes such as data centers, multifamily, and industrial properties.

We are proud of how we have built this business over the last two to three years, are laser focused on the continued expansion in this space. The acquisition of industry-leading talent is a critical activity for us to continue to grow our footprint, and we continue to seek opportunities to expand our talent base. In the second quarter, we made some significant investments in hiring additional teams to address some regional and sector opportunities, spending an additional $3 million-$4 million this quarter to do so. We believe in these personnel investments and anticipate we feel the full impact of these hires over the next two to three quarters as they settle into their seat and begin to contribute business. Our direct operations business unit grew consolidated residential refinance and Main Street commercial revenues by 7% in the second quarter compared to the same timeframe last year.

Residential transactions grew 3% in the quarter, slightly better than the growth in existing home sales for the quarter. Main Street commercial delivered solid growth, with revenue up more than 20% due to both transaction volumes and size. We remain focused on strengthening our position in attractive MSAs through organic and inorganic efforts and have begun to see more opportunities become available in our target geographies. In the second quarter, we invested approximately $2 million in incremental organic opportunities to acquire individuals and teams in support of our growth strategy and direct operations. Our centralized title operations, which include centralized refinance and our bulk business, confronted some tough comparables when compared to Q2 last year, as our bulk businesses particularly can be very bumpy. These headwinds impacted our overall non-commercial direct business and drove results down about 1% when compared to the second quarter of 2025.

Our agency services business delivered 25% revenue growth for the second quarter in a row, which we are especially pleased with given our agents confront the same headwinds as our direct operations offices. We are focused on growing this business through winning the business of new agents and expanding wallet share of existing agents, with the emphasis on 15 target states. We are also committed to expanding our commercial footprint in agency, and we continue to make good progress on both these priorities with residential premiums up 30% and commercial debt premiums up 16% in the second quarter when compared to the same timeframe last year. In the second quarter, we were also proactive in making additional investments in talent to take advantage of some disruptions we saw in a handful of our target markets.

We invested another $2 million-$3 million in additional customer-facing talent, which should enable us to build significant share in these target states. Our real estate solutions business grew revenues by 75% and adjusted pretax margins by 24% in the second quarter compared to last year, ending the quarter with a 13.6% margin. The year-over-year comparables in this segment benefit from their acquisition of MCS, our property preservation business, as well as our acquisition of NAN, our national appraisal network. When removing those contributions to our revenue, our legacy res business grew roughly 18%. We remain focused on continuing to expand our coverage and servicing of the top 300 lenders, and our suite of products and services is in good position and is giving us even better ability to cross-sell and win business. Moving to our international operations.

We are focused on profitably growing across our footprint of Canada, Australia, and the U.K. In the second quarter, we grew our non-commercial revenue by 4% and commercial revenue by 7% in challenged housing markets. We believe we can build on our strong position in these markets and continue to grow profitable share. On the topic of inorganic growth initiatives, in 2026, we have seen a meaningful pickup in attractive opportunities in our acquisition pipeline. In late 2025, we conducted a capital raise to put ourselves in a position in 2026 to strengthen our competitive position and increase our earnings power. The vast majority of that capital has yet to be deployed. However, we are currently working on transactions that we anticipate will close in the next 60-120 days and will be funded by the proceeds from our excess capital.

Our significant growth in real estate solutions and commercial activity throughout the business lines has resulted in an increase in our operating expense ratios. The real estate solutions, our other operating expenses are the largest expense category and are higher percent of our mix due to the mix of outside services, cost of data, and our appraisal and property preservation contract workforce. Similarly, the commercial transactions often come with higher operating expenses given the cost of data and search fees. Throughout our journey, we have prioritized thoughtful investment in ourselves and our talent to position Stewart well for the marketplace. We have some of the best leaders and employees in the industry, and we continue to add to our roster with a relentless focus on adding personnel that will help us grow the company for the future. We believe strongly in these investments.

These investments are necessary to propel the company to the next phase and are continuing to see real momentum for ourselves in the marketplace. We have increased our staffing in all our segments in line with our organic growth initiatives and have grown our headcount via acquisition, which has resulted in an increase of our employee costs of about 17% year to date. Even with this increased investment, year to date, we have grown revenues by 26% and adjusted pre-tax income by 45%. We continue to anticipate earnings growth in excess of revenue growth for the full year, but could see the ratio of revenue to earnings come in in the second half without the benefit of improved market conditions, given our increased investment in the title segment.

We continue to prioritize shaping the company for 12% adjusted margins when we get back to a 5 million unit existing homes market and are focused on improving margins as we grow in a challenged market. Thank you for all your time, attention, and interest in Stewart. As an enterprise, we are dedicated to being the premier title service company. We are focused on strengthening the company for lasting success through targeted multipronged growth plans by business to further fortify our position. To our customers and agent partners, thank you for your trust and dedication to Stewart. We are committed to serving you with excellence. To our Stewart team, thank you for your dedication and focus on growing this company together. We’ve made great progress, and I look forward to seeing what we can do together.

David, I will now turn it over to you to provide an update on our results.

David Hisey, Chief Financial Officer, Stewart Information Services: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Fred. Thank you to our employees and customers for their continued support and partnership as we navigate a residential real estate market that remains challenging. Yesterday, Stewart reported solid second quarter results with both revenue and profitability growth. Second quarter total revenues increased to $177 million or 25%, while net income improved $5 million or 17%. Diluted EPS was $1.21 compared to $1.13. On an adjusted basis, net income was $43 million or diluted earnings per share of $1.39, compared to $38 million and $1.34. Appendix A of our press release shows adjustments to our consolidated and segment results, primarily related to net realized and unrealized gains, acquired intangible amortization, and acquisition integration expenses. In our title segment, operating revenues increased $91 million or 15%, driven by strong performance from our agency and domestic commercial business.

Title operating expenses increased 17%, primarily due to expenses related to revenue growth and higher employee costs, as Fred noted, resulting from our continued investment in talent. As a result, title pre-tax income was comparable to last year. On our direct title business, direct title revenues increased $15 million or 5%, primarily driven by higher commercial and refinancing transactions, while purchase orders were comparable to last year. Domestic commercial revenues grew $15 million or 20%, driven by higher transaction volume across energy and other asset classes with continued data center benefit. Our average domestic commercial fee per file was comparable to last year at $16,900. Average domestic residential fee per file increased 10% to $3,200, primarily due to a higher weighting of purchase transactions. Total international revenues increased 5%, primarily driven by higher transaction volumes.

On our agency operations, gross agency revenues increased 25% to $377 million from $301 million last year, driven by improved residential and commercial activity across our key agency states. After agent retention, net agency revenues increased $13 million or 26% compared to last year. On title losses, the title loss ratio improved to 3.2% in the second quarter compared to 3.6%, primarily due to continued overall favorable claims experience. We expect our title losses for the year to average from the mid 3%-4% range. On our real estate solutions segment, total revenues increased 75% to $85 million, primarily driven by our recently acquired Mortgage Contracting Services business and growth in our credit information and valuation services business. Real Estate Solutions adjusted pre-tax income more than doubled to $27 million from $12 million, while adjusted pre-tax margin improved to 14% from 11%.

On our consolidated expenses, our employee cost ratio improved to 27% compared to 30%, primarily due to revenue growth. Our other operating expense ratio increased to 27% from 25%, primarily due to higher costs associated with increased revenues in the real estate solutions segment. Due to our real estate solutions segment growth, we expect our other operating expense ratio to be in the 27%-28% range going forward. Our financial position remains strong and well-positioned to support our customers, employees, and the real estate market. Total cash and investments were approximately $400 million in excess of statutory premium reserve requirements. Total Stewart stockholders’ equity at June 30 was approximately $1.66 billion, representing a book value of approximately $55 per share. Net cash provided by operations increased to $60 million from $53 million, primarily driven by higher net income. Thank you to our customers and employees for their continued support.

We remain confident in our ability to serve the real estate markets. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. If you’d like to ask a question, press star one on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. We’ll take our first question from Bose George with KBW. Your line is open.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Morning.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Actually, first, just on expenses. You guys noted a few factors that drove the expenses higher. Just stepping back and looking at it more broadly, can you just talk about the annualized margin outlook, especially if you remain in this hire for longer, with mortgage rates at 6.5%?

Thanks, Mo. I look at the whole year, right? I’ve told you I’ve given some guidance on the whole year, how to think about the changes. If we stay flat, which I think we will, I don’t think we’ll see any growth in the res market for the rest of the year. I believe that we’ll grow revenue probably 20% and earnings 30%. That’s kind of the range, I think. There’ll be some comparisons in the back half of the year because we had such extraordinary growth in commercial that’ll tighten some things, I think. The improvement in margin I see is about a half a point for the company year-over-year. Might be four tenths, might be six tenths. Again, it has something to do with the comparisons because we had such outsized growth in commercial last year, particularly the fourth quarter.

It’s that kind of improvement. I’m right on track. It’s right where I wanted us to be. We outperformed a little bit in the first half of the year, which was great, and we’ve reinvested a bunch of that because I want to sustain it. There are a lot of things to think about. Our commercial business at the end of 2003 was $208 million. Our last four quarters is $450 million.

We’ve doubled that business. It’s important for us. That’s a people-driven business, and we really need to make sure we’re covering sectors and geographies. The other thing you’re seeing is a really significant step up in our agency business. We’ve had some nice movement, and we’ve seen a couple of markets that there’s disruption, so we’ve gone for it. We’re trying to make an investment in customer-facing to really kind of shift shares, and you can imagine where they are. We’re the best markets. I still think with all that, as I look at our momentum and even with the earn in, I think we’ll pick up another half a point. We’re right on. I think title will be tighter. I think it’ll be kind of the same as last year. This overall company will be about a half a point.

It could be better than that, depending on how quickly we ramp up some of these opportunities. By the way, those numbers do not include what I expect in the next 60 to 90 days. We have a number of these acquisitions we’re going through due diligence that we’ve talked about. Obviously that would be additive likely to the equation. I think we’re right on track to what we thought.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great. Thanks. That’s helpful. Actually, just on the acquisitions, when we think about the scale, is it similar to MCS? Is it a lot of small ones? If you give some color there, that would be great.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah, sure. When I’ve talked about it, the categories we have talked about, there’s a little bit of consolidation I’d like to continue to focus on in some of the res services because it’s very good incremental margin improvement for us to do that. We did Demand, which was in that category, and there’s likely to be another one over the next 12 months. Not necessarily in appraisal, but in the res services. There are also, on the agency side, as I said, a lot more activity. I would see couple three in that category. And they could be a combination of res or commercial, depending on the transaction. They’re in those categories that we’ve talked about. None of them are huge, so none of them are in the MCS size kind of category.

We’re at the point now where this is about MSA, by local market, trying to change the economics. We’re in kind of the business by business, whether it’s our data business, our appraisal business, or our property res, to really just build scale in some of those areas. They’re all active. As I said, I would guess that we’ll be able to deploy the full amount of what we raised plus some by the end of the year, is what I would say.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great. Actually, just a quick one on commercial. Was there any slippage of large deals? I mean, your fee profile was flat year-over-year, but obviously down in these amounts just over the last couple of quarters.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Are you just going to need the big deals?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah, it was very bumpy. We had some comparison. We had a couple really big ones last year. The mix of us and where we are, when I look at the data center mix or I look at the energy mix, it’s similar, right? We’ve had a couple, same in the fourth quarter of last year. We had just a tremendous big one in New Mexico. There’s going to be a little bit bumpy. I don’t see any momentum shift. The pipeline’s good. What I would tell you, though, the comparisons are tough. We grew 30% for six months. We grew 46 or 47% last year at the same time period. We’re building on big numbers. If you recall, we grew a lot faster than the rest of the industry early. The comparison, last year was a big year.

As I said, frankly, it started at the end of 2023. We’ve been cranking. I’m very, very comfortable with the 30 sitting on top of the 47. I would also say that’s a place I’ve said time and time again, we’re under-clubbed in geographies. We’re under-clubbed in sectors. We got to keep hiring talent in commercial if we want to keep closing the gap. I haven’t done, obviously, the numbers this quarter, but we’ve gone from about 9 to we were about 13.5%, 14% share. That’s a pretty big jump. I’d like to believe if we keep our focus and keep investing that business over the next couple of years, we could get it to 20. Now, again, it’s bumpy. Our competitors are going to have great quarters, too, and they’re very, very good competitors.

I look at that business as really about coverage and resource and our team. The other thing I don’t want to do is I don’t want to take on so much so fast that we can’t digest it. It’s kind of balancing that. I think our team has done an excellent job doing that, and I continue to see a good, strong pipeline and potential.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great. Thanks for the color.

Conference Call Operator: We’ll move next to Oscar Nieves with Stephens Inc. Your line is open.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Hey, Oscar.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Hey, Fred. Hey, good morning. My first one is on the title segment.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Sure.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: When we look at the revenue trends in title, agency continues to outgrow direct.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yes.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Is that still consistent with the sharing story in your target MSAs, or are you starting to see competitive or mixed pressure show up in the amounts retained by agents? Because if we look at the average of this quarter, it came in at a little bit higher than the prior quarters.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yes

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: a little bit higher than the prior quarters. So just-

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah

wanted to see-

Yeah. It’s a good observation. The way I’m thinking about it, in our direct operations, we’ve now been, what, four years in a flat market on res, which is a vast majority of what’s in our direct operation. We’re trying to expand what I call main street commercial. They’ve done a pretty good job. They’ve grown at 15%, but I would argue our direct operations is probably under-penetrated in commercial still. If you look at, I think we grew three and a half, something like that, in res. We’re holding our own, and our growth in direct has mostly been on the commercial side. That gets us to that seven. We’ve done a pretty good job, but we haven’t share shifted as much on the res side on direct ops. Now, two things are changing.

We’re getting good commercial traction, the thing I mentioned in my call, we’re starting to see disruption. We’re starting to hire and take teams organically, we spent about a couple million dollars this quarter at that, I can see the shift. The other thing that’s happening in direct is the inorganic opportunities that I keep talking about by MSA are emerging. We just announced one, a great brand in Texas on Fort Worth

Fort Worth side of Dallas, where we were weak. I’m really excited about this great brand, great company. It’s not huge, those kind of opportunities are starting, as I said, in our pipeline, we have another three or four of those. We’ll start seeing kind of that MSA-grade growth shift a little bit with res. I don’t see the market helping us because I was hoping this year that I’d see six, eight, nine, kind of a little bit of res growth, which would really shift for us. That’s also our big margin lever because we have excess capacity in our direct operations. To your point, compared to agency, the team has done an amazing job. In a 1% or 2% or 3% growth res, we grew 30%.

What we’re seeing is shifting share at a lot of significant agents in some really attractive markets. Do I think that’s going to come down a little bit? Sure. I think that business will probably grow in the teens. The other thing they’ve done a really good job is on the commercial side in agency. We are shifting share nicely on the agency side. I don’t see the dynamic within the agents changing anything. I just think we’re kind of shifting our share. I would tell you that, again, the inorganic activity, there’s a lot more discussions right now. Even though the market’s flat, I think it’s because commercial is a little better, people’s outlook is a little bit better, they’ve made a little bit more money, we can come to an agreement on a price that’s fair for both.

That is actually starting. It’s a great observation because for me, the direct operation swings. If commercial is outsized, it changes the dynamics. If we can get a little bit more res growth in direct, it would change the dynamics. Those are the things that are moving it around. I’m really pleased with the progress everywhere. I think that direct is emerging because we’re seeing this activity, that team’s done an amazingly good job on expense management, data management, we’ve been able to hold or increase our margins over the last three years because of the good hard work they’ve done, even though there’s been no growth. I think we’re pretty good in both segments. That’s super helpful. I want to double-click on a couple of the things that you just mentioned.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Sure.

One is on commercial activity, which obviously has remained very strong, and one of your peers that reported yesterday mentioned on their press release that they are on track for a record year in commercial.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Sure.

On that, can you give us your outlook for commercial revenue for the rest of the year and into 2027?

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Yeah.

Also if you can share how the underlying drivers, what are you seeing right now in terms of fee per file versus order counts?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah. They’re solid. Again, my whole thing is just the comparisons for me because we had a bunch of quarters, as you know, in the last two years, we grew 50%, 47%, 50%. That’s a hard comparison, but we had a nice pipeline. We grew 30% the first six months this year. I believe we continue to grow. I’m a little bit suspicious about the fourth quarter because we had such a big year in the fourth quarter last year.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Right.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: To your point, we’ve had two record years in a row. With this last four quarters, we doubled the business. We see the same thing. The market is attractive. We hit our stride, and our skillset got better at the right time. We’re fortunate. They call us lucky. We’ve been seeing this for the last couple of years. We don’t see, again, it’s bumpy for us because we’re smaller. If you have one of these mega deals like we had in New Mexico, we had another one in Louisiana, I think it affects us a little bit. I like the breadth of our pipeline. I like what’s happening. I would say what we did in the Could I see the % growth be a little less because of the comparisons? Yeah, it’s not because the market’s not good.

It’s not because of the pipeline. You can see our order count and our numbers. Now the one unknown always with commercial, you just have to keep in mind is, if there’s a disruption in the marketplace and the financing costs change, sometimes they’ll kick it to the next quarter or they’ll accelerate it or something. These tend to be longer deals. They tend to be a little bit fickle about timing and closing. I’d be surprised if this year’s not the best year we’ve ever had after last year being the best year we’ve ever had. We just got to keep after it. I do think the little bit of difference with us and some of the big competitors are very big.

For me, I’m building capacity as fast as I can build capacity, so there’s a little bit of a gate for us because I don’t want to be stupid. I want to do it well. I want us to be considered excellent. There is this staffing that we got to continue to do, because we’re a lot bigger than we were. I feel really good about the market. There’s nothing about the market that I’m worried about. The early estimates in the market were about a 12% growth in commercial that you see these forecasts. Obviously, the first half is much bigger than that, I don’t see anything changing the trends.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Right.

I think they’re all kind of similar. We’ll see. It’s nothing to report to say I’m worried about it.

Yeah.

Oscar, that $17,000 fee per file is probably more indicative. As Fred said, we had some really big deals in prior, but the $17 is probably more indicative.

Right. Yeah. All right. That was going to be my next one, because, yeah, there was a significant step-down versus the prior two quarters. I do have one last one is, you recently announced the Rattikin acquisition.

Yeah.

Just wondered if you could share some details on the size of the deal.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Like Rattikin as a new.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: It’s a small one. It’s what I call a micro deal a little bit because it’s basically a small deal. It’s not a big deal. The reason we announced it nationally, is because their brand is amazing, and it’s one of the oldest and best-known agents in Texas. It has an amazing commercial position. We felt it was important to recognize the family and make the announcement nationally. It is what I would call a small one. Again, it fills in Dallas is the way for us to think about that. The ones we’re doing following are bigger, a little bit bigger. A little bit different nature. I’m really pleased with it because we have a really good position in Dallas, but it’s been a hole. This is about as great as it can be.

It’s filling out that city for us.

David Hisey, Chief Financial Officer, Stewart Information Services: Oscar, if you just think about the industry data, most agents are under $10 million in revenue. When you have a single market agent, that’s probably the area that they’re in.

Oscar Nieves, Analyst, Stephens Inc.: Okay. Yeah, that’s super helpful. I’ll go back in the queue because I have an infinite list of questions, but I’m going to give other people a chance to speak too.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah. Thank you, Oscar.

Conference Call Operator: As a reminder, for your questions, that is star one. We’ll pause for a moment to allow further questions to queue. One moment while we queue. We’ll take a question from Michael Rindos with StoneX. Your line is open.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Hey, Michael.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Hey, good morning, everybody.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Good morning.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Hey, just drilling further into the commercial. Can you talk about.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Sure

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: your win rate and the direction of win rate over the past couple of quarters? How competitive is the market on pricing? Which direction is that going?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah. Again, typically, you have a lead player in those deals, you achieve those. There’s not really a competitive on a particular deal. They typically get referred and as you get better at certain categories, you tend to lead more. What ends up happening in some of the big deals is you share the deals, given the scale and the size and the need for the surplus. As far as the price sensitivity, there really isn’t a lot of price sensitivity. There is some segments of the market where there’d be joint venture businesses between the generators of the business and the underwriters. There’s some kind of sharing, if you will, of those deals that occur in pockets in different cities. Could we say in a New York City or is one place you might have that. We don’t see that business being overly competitive.

It has a lot to do with kind of your skill set, particularly on some of the rural land stuff. We tend to be very good in places like energy because it’s a lot of rural stuff, and it’s in New Mexico or Indian reservations, whatever. They tend to skew towards the people with skill. I think, and again, for all of us, I would guess, I don’t know, but it’s a higher margin business for everybody. For us, it used to be sub-scale, so it wasn’t, but we’re now in the same category with all the others. The other thing that comes with commercial is float, right? You have the escrow and the float and the investment income as well. Again, that tends to be a little bit on the higher margin business. It tends to be a very stable market.

I would tell you right now, the issue is we’re skewing to larger accounts just because of the nature of what’s happening with data centers, energy development, et cetera. In those, you’re seeing more shared accounts, right? They’re just big, so you have to have more shared. There’s a lead and then there’s following, we’re doing a lot more leading than we’ve had historically because we’re bigger. There’s a lot more shared transactions just because of the nature of the business and the size of the business. Again, I like the business. It’s very attractive and, again, I feel like for us, it’s really important to be a bigger presence in commercial, and I mean in all our sectors. More in our direct operations. I want more Main Street commercial, I want more international commercial, I want more agency commercial.

Again, in that business, the three of us, the oligopoly is even tighter. Obviously, Old Republic’s got some of it too, because our skill sets are unique and our capital base is strong, that tends to be a business that the battle for share is going to be the three of us. We need to be more present across the spectrum.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Got you. Okay. How long does it take from an order open to an order close in commercial on average, and what’s the direction there, and what does that tell us, if anything?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Not much. It’s tough to call. I tell people, in commercial, you could have a two-year deal, right? Again, the complexity, the size, you don’t have a lot of 60-day deals, right? These deals are kind of going to be three quarters or so to a year. Again, we’ve had some of these complicated ones can take multiple quarters. As I said, the other thing about them is they’re very business-oriented. There’s a trigger when they’re doing the business case, if something happens with their carrying costs and stuff, they might kick it forward or they might kick it back. They might want to close the quarter with it. They tend to be a little fickle about exactly when they close.

This is why, by the way, our growth, we sometimes have excess expenses as we’re. A lot of the search fees and stuff like that, what happens is you do a lot of that work, and you don’t get compensated till those deals close. There can be a lag in those businesses of a lot of costs and expenses that you have, while you’re doing the work before they close. It’s just the nature of the business. Now, over time, that evens out, but for somebody like us, that’s been challenging because we’re growing like a. When you’re growing 40%, the revenue you’re chasing, all that work you’re doing for the revenue that hasn’t landed. We’ve had to manage ourselves properly to do that with staffing and stuff like that. Again, it could be all over.

That’s why I tell people, if you look at the ratios of open to closed, right? You look at refi, you can almost call it, right? 65, 75 days. Res will take about the same. Commercial, it’s all over, right? You can have a rush of orders and then closes get kicked back. That particularly was true for us early days with alternative energy, where it was with the signing of the bill that incented it. We had all these opens, and a lot of those deals took a very long time. The nature of what the project was changed over time. That’s why it’s not an easy, straightforward answer, but they tend to be longer. I would say the year is not a bad way to think about it, but they’re all over the map.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Thanks. It seems like in some states, the political environment is becoming more difficult around permitting for data centers. Can you comment a little bit about how that is affecting you currently, what the outlook might be for some of the markets where you are?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s something we all read all about, whether it’s Maine or other communities that said, "Not in my community." It may have some impact. It’s hard to know. We’re such above average right now that could we be more robust than we have? It’s hard to really say. My prediction is that if we need it, they’ll work it out, like cell towers, right? They’ll find places to locate them, and if we meet the demand, it’ll happen. Matter of fact, in my view, some of the readings about people going on-premise and having smaller data centers to kind of control security, et cetera, that trend could take off, and we could see a different profile of these data centers.

Again, it could, but because it’s so robust and it’s more than we’ve ever historically seen, and we don’t see stuff slowing down per se, it’s hard to say for me. Again, you know, I look at it and say if the demand’s there, they’re going to figure out how to address it. We’re just prepared to kind of respond to the opportunity. Again, I would say, as David said, the average size, I think there’s some chance that it reduces and you see less mega deals. The size gets a little bit more distributed, but I don’t know that for a fact. I just kind of read what you read, trying to understand all that. I feel good about where we are and the trends that we see.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Got you. For some of these inorganic transactions that you’re looking at over the next year, can you comment a little bit about how these deals are priced on either revenue or profits?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Sure. Typically, a title thing is somewhere between 4-6 EBITDA, right? If you have higher margin service businesses, that could get all the way to eight EBITDA. As we think about them, they’re all the IRRs for us, where we think about it 15%+. When we price these deals, we tend not to include the underwriting. What’s really advantageous to us buying agents is our competitors have much higher share in the agency channel. If they buy an agent, they’re buying their own underwriting back. We actually get that for free and shift share in a high margin part of the business. Again, the economics for us are relatively attractive for these kind of transactions. The other thing I said when we talked about raising the money in December, I just could see all the activity.

The amount of activity is significant. There was a lot of people outside the industry in 2021 and 2022 that were either doing roll-ups in services or they thought they could do roll-ups of agencies, which is not a practical thing with no renewals. A lot of those people have all said, "I’m getting out." Right. You can see it. What’s happening now, my view is we started getting to conversations where pricing got realistic. It wasn’t the high prices that they may have paid. You can see all this activity right now. What we have to do is be very selective and very thoughtful. Again, we have opportunities to enhance our portfolio and improve our margins. We can see it now.

I will tell you that these are taking a little bit, 60 or so days longer to get to close than I thought. Could we have raised the money in March instead of December? Probably. I would’ve had the overhang, it’s all come through. We’re going to deploy the excess capital nicely, and I’m very comfortable with kind of what we did and what we’re doing now with it. I do think it’s not going to stop. By the way, I just think there’s going to be some really interesting properties likely to be on the market in the next 18 months. Again, you can see how people are thinking about it, and some of these are very attractive. We just got to be prepared to assess and understand whether that makes sense for us. There’s some really positive opportunity.

The other thing I would tell you is that we’re in a phase because of this rate long kind of down market. I do not see a lot of capital from outside of the industry coming in. This is one of those situations. If you’re in the business, it’s really good. The economics are great. If you’re not in the business, I’m not sure it’s that attractive. That’s why this is an interesting time in the industry, and we’ll see how these things play out. Everybody that put their toe in the water, I can’t see any of them putting more money in the water. I might be wrong. Maybe AI changes that in some areas, but I don’t see it. We should just be paying attention and thoughtful and try to take advantage of some of these.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: I understand that you’re not seeing any outside bidders. Are you seeing any competitive bidders from the other three large players in this group?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Typically, if you

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Is that picking up at all?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: The competitive nature of these transactions is very light. Let me just say that.

Michael Rindos, Analyst, StoneX: Got it. All right. Thank you.

Conference Call Operator: We’ll take a follow-up from Bose George with KBW. Your line is open.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Hey, guys. Yeah, just a quick follow-up.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Bose.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Fred, you’d mentioned the centralized title and some challenges there.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Can you just elaborate on that a little bit?

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Sure. We have a centralized unit where we have the place we have our centralized refi, which is a small business for us. We also have our specialty businesses. We have our reverse business in there, and we have our bulk business. Both of those, you know, Bose.

David Hisey, Chief Financial Officer, Stewart Information Services: Investor.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: Yeah, the investor business that we talked about, we bought that business. That bulk business is very bouncy. Last second quarter, if you just look at the orders, we closed a lot of orders in the second quarter. It’s the nature of that business where big deals, they’ll come. If you look at our open orders, you see that they’re way up for the next quarter. It’s kind of bumpy. It’s kind of the nature of that business. I think it’s important for us to build the skill of centralized transaction given potential technology affecting trends and having more centralized purchases. We built that, we built it around specialty businesses. It’s a good business, but it is bumpy, right?

We probably saw a 20% reduction kind of in that business, which had obviously some impact on earnings growth, too, in the $2 million-$3 million range. It’s the nature of that business, and I see it coming right. Again, you can see the orders come back.

David Hisey, Chief Financial Officer, Stewart Information Services: Bose, just remember in that investor business, that executive order limiting institutional buying, and then also that’s included in the Road to Housing Act. The market’s normalizing for all that.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great. Helpful. Thanks.

Conference Call Operator: I show no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Fred for any additional or closing remarks.

Fred Eppinger, Chief Executive Officer, Stewart Information Services: I want to thank everybody for their interest. As I said earlier, I’m just thrilled about our momentum as a company. I think we’re investing in the right places. I want to thank our folks for their effort because it’s been very busy. I’m very encouraged about our progress, and we will continue to be very thoughtful of making sure that we’re trying to increase our earnings more than our revenue, and we will continue to do that as we march forward. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Conference Call Operator: Thank you. This brings us to the end of today’s meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.