Stewart Information Services - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• STC delivered solid Q3 2025 results: total revenues up 19% year over year to $796.9M, adjusted to $791.3M; GAAP diluted EPS $1.55 and adjusted EPS $1.64.
• Title segment led performance (operating revenues +19% YoY to $659.9M; adjusted pretax margin 9.0%), driven by agency (+28% gross) and continued commercial strength (domestic +17% YoY).
• Employee cost ratio improved to 27.2% of revenues (vs. 29.8% LY) and title loss ratio fell to 3.0% (vs. 3.8% LY), supporting margin expansion (adjusted pretax margin 8.1% vs. 7.1% LY).
• Results beat S&P Global consensus: revenue $796.9M vs. $608.2M*, adjusted EPS $1.64 vs. $1.38* (both based on a single estimate), positioning FY models for upward revisions (see Estimates Context).
• Catalysts: sustained commercial pipeline breadth, agency share gains in target states (FL/TX/NY), RES margins normalizing to low-teens, and a dividend increase to $2.10 annualized beginning with the Sept. 2025 payment.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Commercial momentum across asset classes (energy, data centers, hospitality, self-storage); domestic commercial revenues +17% YoY; “pipeline is good” into Q4.
• Agency growth and share gains: gross agency revenues +28% YoY; management cited ~16.5% growth in targeted states and ~40% commercial growth in the agency channel.
• Cost and risk metrics improved: employee cost ratio down to 27.2% (from 29.8% LY) and title loss ratio at 3.0% (from 3.8% LY), aiding margin expansion.

Selected quotes:

• “I am proud of our third quarter results as they demonstrate our momentum… deliver solid third quarter results, even as the broad housing environment remains subdued” — CEO Fred Eppinger.
• “Adjusted pre-tax margin improved to 9% compared to 7.7% last year” — CFO David Hisey on the title segment.
• “We grew domestic commercial revenues by 17% in the quarter… we have grown domestic commercial revenues by 33% [YTD]” — CEO Fred Eppinger.

What Went Wrong

• RES margins still below prior-year levels: adjusted RES pretax margin 11.3% vs. 13.4% LY; management attributes early-year margin pressure to higher third-party data costs, now recaptured in contracts.
• Investment income variability: CFO noted sensitivity to rate cuts (escrow balances in short-term instruments), expecting interest income to be “more consistent… slightly down” depending on balances and cuts.
• Title adjusted pretax margin improved YoY but remains cyclical; direct operations still exposed to subdued housing activity despite sequential gains.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, and thank you for joining the Stewart Information Services Third Quarter 2025 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note today's call is being recorded. Lastly, should you require operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Kat Bass, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Kat Bass (Director of Investor Relations)

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for Stewart's Third Quarter 2025 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 some 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 (CEO)

Thank you for joining us today for the Third Quarter earnings conference call. Yesterday, we released the financial results for the quarter, which David will review with you shortly. I'd like to start today's call with a discussion of our perspective on current housing market conditions, followed by a review of our third quarter results and strategic progress by business. I am proud of our third quarter results. Our 19% revenue growth and 40% earnings growth reflect the efforts we have made to continue to grow the company, even while facing prolonged headwinds from the historically low housing market we continue to be in. There continues to be both a blend of positive and negative economic headlines related to housing. In the third quarter, we experienced some great relief exiting September with mortgage rates around 6.35%.

While there is some softening of rates in the third quarter, we did not see rates quite as low as the quick dip we experienced in September of last year, where rates hovered momentarily right around 6% and caused a flurry in purchase and refinance activity to close out 2024. I am more confident in the market's ability to improve over the next 12 months this year than I was last year at this time. The housing market continues to become a bit friendlier for buyers as inventory has been growing. Builders continue to offer incentives, and an increasing portion of homes are being sold below list price, indicating a cooling of house price appreciation. We have also seen price improvement in more of the MFAs.

That said, home prices still remain a hardship for many buyers as the median sales price of existing homes sold is still increasing year over year, though at a lesser rate than we've experienced for most of 2024. So far this year, existing home sales are hovering right around 4 million annual units, as many buyers continue to sit on the sidelines, awaiting less volatility in the macro market conditions and in anticipation of future rate cuts into the next year. September existing home sales data will be published later this morning. However, we expect around a 1%-2% increase in existing home sales relative to the Third Quarter of 2024 this quarter.

Looking ahead, we believe the housing market will continue to gradually improve over the coming year, and 2026 will be the beginning of a transition back towards a more normal existing home sales environment, which we characterize as 5 million existing homes sold. From a commercial market perspective, we have benefited from and capitalized on the recovery seen in the commercial real estate markets across various asset classes. We expect this recovery to continue into 2026 and beyond. Given these market headwinds and volatility, we are proud of the results that we have delivered in the third quarter, as they reflect our momentum. In the third quarter, as I said, we grew total revenues by 19% and adjusted earnings when compared to the same period last year. Our direct operations unit grew 8% in the third quarter relative to the same period last year.

We see this as solid progress, given that this business unit most immediately feels the effects of the challenging residential housing market. Our direct operations leadership remains focused on the charge and growth share in target MFAs and micro markets, both organically and inorganically. They are also focused on picking up share in small commercial transactions that run through this business unit, and we are seeing real progress on that initiative with commercial growing 18% in direct this quarter. We continue to expect a significant portion of our future growth in this business to come from targeted acquisitions, and we maintain a warm pipeline of targets that will develop as the market signals a return to more normal market levels. Our national commercial services business delivered another solid quarter of growth.

The success of this group is largely due to our increased penetration in the number of geographic markets and asset classes. We have brought on best-in-class talent and will continue to invest in talent in this space to grow our share. Thoughtful investment in our talent will allow us to expand our network and deepen our capabilities in more geographies and asset classes in order to leverage the distinctive underwriting capability we currently have. We grew domestic commercial revenues by 17% in the quarter, and through the Third Quarter, we have grown domestic commercial revenues by 33%. I'm proud of our performance here, as it really represents the momentum we have built for ourselves on the commercial front. The energy asset class continues to be a point of strength. Data centers, hospitality, and self-storage were also areas of growth for us in the quarter.

We are focused on growing all asset classes and target geographies to expand our overall footprint. Our agency services business had another strong quarter, with revenues up 28% year over year in the third quarter. This amount of growth is exciting for us when considering the overall housing market is near flat for the year. We are on a mission to grow this business through share gains in attractive states, onboarding new agents, and wall of share expansion with existing agents. While we see growth across all states, there are 15 states that we are targeting for share shift and growth. We are seeing sustained growth year-to-date in agency in several of our target states, most notably Florida, Texas, and New York.

Our commercial initiatives with agents have also been a big part of our success, and we continue to build out momentum that we have made in recent years to our target agents to differentiate our services and better our offerings for agent partners. Our real estate solutions business delivered another strong quarter of results as well, generating revenue of 21% higher than the third quarter of 2024. The increase was led by our credit information business. Our margins again improved sequentially and are now in the low teens range, which we would consider our normal range. We are focused on growing this business line by gaining share with top lenders and cross-selling our products as we leverage our approved portfolio of services. We expect continued progress in this business line as the market improves.

Moving to our international operations, we are focused here on broadening our geographic presence within Canada and increasing our commercial penetration. In the third quarter of 2025, we grew revenue by 21% versus 2024 due to non-commercial growth of 12% and outside of commercial growth due to a handful of larger transactions. We believe we can build on our strong position in these markets and continue to grow share. Overall, we remain dedicated to strengthening our company through thoughtful geographic, customer, and channel expansion in each business to set the company up for continued long-term success. I am pleased to share that in September, we announced an increase in our annual dividend from $2 per share to $2.10 per share. This is the fifth year in a row we have increased our dividend to shareholders.

We continue to invest in ourselves and our shareholders as we pursue smart growth for each of our business lines. Thank you to our customers and agent partners for your continued trust. We are committed to doing our best to serve you with excellence. I'd like to close by saying thank you to our employees for their dedication, loyalty, and drive. It has been a privilege this year to visit so many of our offices and see and experience the energy that you've all shared with me. It is contagious. We have never had better talent as we do today. I'm so proud of how far we have come on our journey to become a destination for industry-leading talent. Earlier this year, we were recognized as a top workplace by USA Today. In the third quarter, we were named to Forbes' list of America's Best Employers for Company Culture.

We also ranked in the Business Services category by Forbes as the best employer for women in 2025. I want to thank you all for what you're doing to build upon the company's legacy and set up the company for enduring success. David, I will now turn it over to you to provide the update on our results.

David Hisey (CFO)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Fred. I would also like to thank our employees and customers for their continued support as we navigate the residential real estate market, which remains around 15-year lows. Yesterday, Stewart reported strong third quarter results with growth in both revenue and profitability. Third quarter net income was $44 million or $1.55 per diluted share based on revenues of $797 million. Appendix A of our press release shows adjustments primarily related to net realized and unrealized gains and acquired intangible amortization that we use to measure operating performance. On an adjusted basis, Third Quarter net income improved 41% to $47 million or $1.64 per diluted share compared to $33 million or $1.17 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2023. In the title segment, operating revenues grew $107 million or 19%, driven by our improved direct and agency title operations.

As a result, title pre-tax income increased $17 million or 38% after adjustments for net realized and unrealized gains and losses on purchase intangible amortization. Adjusted title pre-tax income was $61 million, which was $17 million or 40% higher than the prior year quarter. Adjusted pre-tax margin improved to 9% compared to 7.7% last year. On our direct title business, total third quarter open and closed orders related to commercial and residential transactions improved. Domestic commercial revenues improved $12 million or 17% across various asset classes, including data centers. Domestic commercial average fee per file was $17,700, which was similar to last year. Domestic residential average fee per file increased 6% to $3,200 compared to $3,000 last year as a result of higher purchase orders. Total international revenues increased $9 million due to increased volumes and large commercial deals.

On agency operations, delivered strong performance with gross revenues of $360 million increasing 28%, primarily driven by improved volumes in key states, as Fred noted, and commercial. Similarly, net agency revenues increased $12 million or 25% compared to the prior year quarter. On title losses, total title loss expense decreased slightly due to our continued overall favorable claims experience. The title loss ratio for the third quarter was 3% compared to 3.8% last year. We expect our title losses to average 3.5%-4% over the coming period. On the real estate solutions segment, total revenues improved $20 million or 21%, primarily driven by our credit information and valuation services operations. The segment's adjusted pre-tax income was slightly higher than the prior year quarter. We continue to manage the higher credit information costs and are expanding and strengthening customer relationships.

Adjusted pre-tax margin for the third quarter was 11.3%, which is better than the prior three sequential quarters. We expect our margins to be in the low teens as these relationships mature. On our consolidated operating expenses, our employee cost ratio improved to 27% compared to 30% last year, primarily due to higher revenues, while our other operating expense ratio was comparable to last year. Our financial position remains solid to support our customers, employees, and the real estate market. Our total in cash and investments were approximately $390 million in excess of our statutory premium reserve requirements. We recently renewed and upsized by $100 million to $300 million our line of credit facility, which is fully available. Total Stewart stockholders' equity at September 30, 2025, was approximately $1.5 billion with a book value of $52.58 per share.

Net cash provided by operations improved by $17 million or 22% compared to last year. Again, thank you to our customers and employees, and we remain confident in our service of the real estate markets. I'll now turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow questions to queue. Thank you. Our first question will come from Bose George with KBW. Your line is open.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Hey, George.

Morning.

Bose George (Managing Director)

Morning.

I actually first wanted to ask about this strength in agent premiums. Can you, you know, it looks like you're continuing to grow there. Are you taking share? If so, is that like coming from the larger players or just, you know, call around what's going on there?

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Sure. Great. There are really two components of it. On the red side, what we're seeing, particularly within the 15 states we're focused on, is pretty good share shift. I think this quarter we saw about a 16.5% growth, primarily in those targeted states. It's going to be pretty interesting. It's both with new agents, but it's also deepening penetration with existing. Part of it is because we now can service in all the states, and there are a bunch of things about our technology that's a little bit better than it had been historically. The second thing is this quarter we had really good traction on commercial, probably grew commercial 40% in the agency channel. Historically, we were very good in, say, the New York area for commercial agents. Outside of New York, we weren't as good. Our service wasn't as good or capable.

Now it's been a big push for us over the last couple of years, and it's really taken off. I feel like both the commercial strength, and that would be with a lot of the bigger agents that have more commercial, although we're doing commercial with smaller agents too. Those two pieces, the geography piece and the focus on commercial-oriented agents and providing better service outside of New York, are really the two things. I like the traction on both right now. It's good.

Bose George (Managing Director)

Okay. Great. Thanks. Just sticking to the commercial, can you talk about the pipeline into year-end? How's that looking? How much is Office starting to contribute as well?

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Yeah. I feel good about it. You see it, our order stuff, I feel good about the commercial. The pipe is good. We've had a heck of a year. I think we're up, whatever it is, 35%. For larger accounts, we're probably up 39%, the larger centralized commercial. The growth has been pretty broad by class. Office has not been one that's had significant growth for us. I don't see that necessarily changing. It's interesting, most every other class is pretty good. I feel good about the breadth of it. I mentioned earlier, energy as a percentage has gone down, which is good. Probably five, six quarters ago, I mentioned how energy was a growing portion, and it's now evened out as we've grown in other categories. I feel pretty good about the back half. The comparisons for us, I would have to sit down and think about the comparisons.

We started taking off about five quarters ago, and the fourth quarter of last year was very strong for us. We'll see how that plays out. If you look at, as I said, our orders and what's in the pipe, I feel very good about the fourth quarter.

Bose George (Managing Director)

Okay. Great. That's helpful. Thanks. Just one more quick one. The investment income line was a little bit lower than last quarter. Yeah, anything to call out there? I assume the rate cut was late in the quarter.

David Hisey (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Bose. It's David. Nothing significant. I mean, we will have some variability with short-term rate cuts because that's where all the escrows and everything were invested. I think you may be seeing a little bit of that, but we haven't seen a whole lot of impact so far. So far, the balances have been able to offset the rate cuts, but we'll just have to monitor that going forward.

Bose George (Managing Director)

Yeah, okay. Great, thanks.

David Hisey (CFO)

Thanks, Bose.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question will come from Geoffrey Dunn with Dowling & Partners. Your line is open.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Hey, Jeff.

David Hisey (CFO)

Morning.

Geoffrey Dunn (Equity Analyst and Partner)

Hey, good morning. I wanted to follow up on the expectation for a low teens margin in RES, once relationships mature. Is there a critical revenue level that goes with that expectation?

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

I mean, again, in the real estate solutions, I think that low teen, and again, what I said for the last couple of calls is we had that hiccup in the beginning of the year because of the rate increase, the large rate increases that came kind of late from the data players, and we were kind of migrating those rate increases into our contracts as well as we changed the way we did some of the pricing to a more value-added approach with them. We had to catch up a little bit.

What I've said is once that kind of works its way into the system, we'll go back to what we've been doing the last couple of years, which is that low teens margin. Where it gets a lot better, I think that's kind of the normal rate. Where it gets a lot better is when the market comes back, right? Because a lot of our services businesses are tied to volume, and there's leverage from the normal, more of a normal flow of business. I think in a $5 million purchase market kind of experience, that'll get into mid-teens. We'll get into the 14, 15 instead of a 12s area. It is kind of a direct line of improvement from here to there, above the 12 is what I would say. Because again, it's like a lot of the businesses, right?

It's got a fixed variable portion, and the growth helps a lot with the margins in those businesses.

David Hisey (CFO)

Geoff, the other thing is that, you know, if you just look at the sequential, we sort of bottomed at like seven something in the fourth quarter of last year, and then we've been slowly getting back up to the low teens. That's what we're talking about, right? It's having worked through all that and now being at the level that we would expect.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

It was really about the data contracts. It wasn't really the volume or anything. It was really just a one-time event, which we will, as I said, we were going to recapture. We just had to get it built into our contracts.

Geoffrey Dunn (Equity Analyst and Partner)

Okay. Just following up on the NII question, can you remind us how you think about the sensitivity to that NII line, the two Fed rate cuts?

David Hisey (CFO)

Yeah, Geoff, we don't have the same that the Fed where they do the 25 basis point because our rates are negotiated. We've been able to, we haven't had a direct drop with our rates because we were never at like money market. Really going forward, it's going to be the offset of, do the rates get cut because rates are going down? How does that compare to balances, right? As volume comes back, balances grow. I think it's probably better to think about interest income being maybe more consistent over the next year, slightly down. It's really going to depend on those two dynamics. Once we see the effect of rate cuts for the rest of the year, we'll probably have a better perspective on that.

Geoffrey Dunn (Equity Analyst and Partner)

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Thanks, Geoff.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. It appears we have no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the conference back over to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks for joining today. I want to summarize where I think we are right now. I believe that while the market is kind of still bouncing on the bottom, we're more confident looking forward over the next 12 months that we're going to start to see improvement. I think we're at the beginning of the improvement. There's enough indications that that's true. The other thing I would say is, as a company, I feel very confident in our capabilities, and we're well poised to take advantage of that improvement. One of the things that I think is kind of showing up nicely for us is we talked about at the beginning of the year, if the market didn't grow, what did we expect?

We said, if the market doesn't grow, we believe we can generate about 10% revenue growth and about 20% earnings growth because of the improvements we've made in our operating model. I think what we've done year to date is we've grown roughly 17% and about 45% earnings growth. It shows that we have some momentum and being able to grow in this market, and we're operating in a way that we get leverage from the growth. I feel pretty good about that. As the market improves, I think we are positioned to continue on that. Will it be as good as it's been in the first quarter? I don't know, right? The last three quarters were very good. It might even out a little bit, but I can tell you that we continue to have momentum in our ability to grow share and our ability to improve earnings.

I feel like even though the market I feel is relatively difficult, I think we're well positioned. I appreciate people's interest and attention to the company. I thank our employees for their commitment to what we're doing because I know how hard it is. Thank you, everybody, for your time and attention.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's event. You may now disconnect.