Stewart Information Services - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 delivered solid year-over-year growth: total revenues $665.9M (+14%), GAAP EPS $0.80 (+150%), and adjusted EPS $1.12 (+87%); adjusted pretax margin improved to 7.1% from 5.0% YoY.
• Title segment strength was notable: operating revenues +12% YoY, adjusted pretax income +61% YoY, and domestic commercial revenues +50% with average fee per file +33% to $19,600; residential average fee fell 8% to $2,900 on mix.
• Real Estate Solutions revenue rose 42% YoY, but margins compressed on vendor price hikes and start-up costs; management expects low-teens cash margin with 2025 improvement as repricing flows through.
• Street consensus from S&P Global was unavailable due to API limits, so we cannot assess beats/misses; dividend held at $0.50 for Q4 2024, a modest support for total return.
• Near-term stock catalysts: stronger commercial momentum (energy/data centers, multifamily) and clarity on Real Estate Solutions margin normalization; management guides to choppy H1'25 and improving H2'25, with long-term target of low double-digit pretax margins in a normalized $5M purchase market.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • “I am very pleased with the earnings and revenue growth we saw in the fourth quarter” — CEO; adjusted EPS up to $1.12 and adjusted pretax margin to 7.1%.
  • Domestic commercial title momentum: revenues +50% YoY; average fee per file $19,600 (+33%); closed orders improved 15% on commercial/refi strength.
  • Title loss ratio improved to 3.7% in Q4 (vs. 4.1% prior year), with favorable claim experience offsetting higher revenue; employee cost ratio improved to 30.7%.

• What Went Wrong

  • Real Estate Solutions pretax margin fell to 1.1% GAAP (7.4% adjusted) on vendor price increases ahead of customer repricing and start-up costs for new clients.
  • Other operating expense ratio rose to 24.5% (from 22.5% YoY), reflecting higher third-party service costs in Real Estate Solutions and commercial search fees.
  • Residential average fee per file declined 8% to $2,900 (mix shift away from purchase), pressuring direct-title economics.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, and thank you for joining the Stewart Information Services Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 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 the conference over to Kat Bass, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kat Bass (Director of Investor Relations)

Thank you for joining us today for Stewart's Fourth Quarter 2024 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 some of 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 Stewart's Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Yesterday, we released the financial results for the quarter, which David will review with you shortly. I'd like to address three topics in my remarks today. First, I will share my reflections on the progress we made on our journey in 2024. Second, I will share our view on the continued challenges in housing market, and finally, I'll offer some commentary on our strategic direction by business. Before jumping into these discussions, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all of those who have been affected by the wildfires across California. Our thoughts are with the many communities impacted by the devastation these fires have caused.

While we are fortunate to say that we did not have offices or employees impacted, we have and will continue to find ways to support these communities in their efforts to rebuild. While I am very pleased with the earnings and revenue growth we saw in the fourth quarter, I'd like to take a few minutes and reflect on the progress we made in 2024 to further fortify the company and to build resilience in our position. In 2024, we grew revenues by 10% and adjusted net earnings by 42% while confronting a multiple-decade low housing market. These annual results show we are making real progress on our growth plans and have created leverage in the system that we can capitalize on when the market returns to normal levels. In 2024, we took a significant step forward to fortify our position as a destination for top talent.

This dedication is why U.S. News & World Report recognizes us as one of the best companies to work for in 2024 and 2025. We welcome countless new families to the company through hiring of best-in-class talent across the organization. We have a really strong set of leaders at the helm, some more of which have assumed positions this year, which is a direct result of our thoughtful succession planning. Our leadership team, in my view, is now one of the best in the industry and is in a strong position to take the company forward. I am excited about having the opportunity to work with this team over the next few years to take the company to the next level.

Moving forward, some of the highlights of our businesses: our Commercial Services team stood up dedicated hospitality and affordable housing teams, rebranded our energy team to Energy and Infrastructure to more accurately reflect the extensive offerings we now provide to our clients in energy, renewable, infrastructure projects, including data centers. All of this structure was put in place while growing domestic commercial revenues by 38% for the year. Our Real Estate Solutions team also saw excellent growth in 2024, up 36% on revenue from the prior year, thanks to continually innovating and improving our clients' offerings. We have made significant progress in our expansion of this business line since the beginning of our journey in late 2019. We are proud of the growth we have made in that business. In Q4, we more than doubled the revenue we made in the entire year of 2019 in this segment.

Across the organization, we have dedicated some of our energy to improving the company's infrastructure, including technology upgrades both internally and to our customers. We have made great headway in building our operational leverage through global centralization centers and have strong leverage in the system to capitalize on when the market returns. In the third quarter of 2024, we announced our fourth annual cash dividend increase to $2 per share to reiterate our strength and commitment to shareholders. Finally, I'd be remiss if I did not mention that in 2024, we donated over $1,000,000 million to the Stewart Title Foundation to 100 scholarship recipients and over 900 organizations serving the communities we live and work in. Since its inception in 2021, we have given $2.9 million to our foundation, to the communities we live and work in.

I'm so proud of all the progress we have made on our journey and the real effort we have made in progressing the goals of the company in 2024. Turning to the fourth quarter results, I want to note that I'm very pleased with the results for the quarter given market conditions. From a macro perspective, the fourth quarter was the first year-over-year improvement we have seen in existing home sales that was preceded by 37 months of negative year-over-year trends. We also now know that even with more positive print in Q4, the year 2024 existing home sales were down relative to 2023, making the last two years the lowest housing markets we've experienced in several decades. Even with the positive Q4, the housing market still needs significant improvement in order to get back to the historically normal 5 million housing existing homes sold annually.

While we are pleased to see the movement in existing home sales, we believe this uptick to be a point-in-time trend given the brief rate drop in September. The latest pending home sales data also substantiates this outlook as it is down year-over-year and less than expectations. However, the uptick in existing home sales in the fourth quarter shows us that demand is very strong even in light of smaller than normal inventories, significant home price appreciation, and higher mortgage rates. Over the last year, we have gradually shifted our expectations for the return-to-normal given the prolonged market conditions. In 2025, we expect the housing market to remain very choppy given the prolonged expectations around rates.

We currently expect the first quarter to be very, first half of the year to be very challenging, and a transition to more normal existing home sales will start at the beginning of the second half of the year. There are a number of factors we cite here, such as steadily increasing inventory and the effects that could have on tempered or steady price appreciation, the continued pressure cooker on demand, and the moving past election uncertainty. That said, the continuation of elevated mortgage rates will likely keep demand at bay for the first few months. In commercial, we see the market growth we saw in the last half of this year to probably continue, but while we'll have growth, it will remain much lower than we saw in 2021 and 2022.

Turning to each business, our Direct Operations segment has most immediately felt the impact of stifled residential housing market. We have remained diligent in managing our Direct Operations segment to protect our core of the market and our margin. We have been focused on expansion efforts and targeted MSAs through both organic and inorganic means and keep a pulse on all the markets we are in, as well as those we are not, to ensure we are operating to our fullest potential across the country. Choppy market conditions have slowed acquisition-related activity recently. However, we remain very positive about the future outlook for opportunities and maintain a warm acquisition pipeline in preparation for an improved market. We've also pursued small commercial penetration in our Direct Operations and have seen 15% growth in that segment in direct offices in 2024.

Our top priority in this business is to grow our share in attractive markets both organically and through acquisitions in target markets to structurally improve margins and enhance the resilience of our earnings. Our Commercial Services business has been a strong performer in the last several quarters as we feel the positive effects of our efforts to grow our share in critical geographies of industry sectors. We have made a lot of investments in talent across our commercial operations so that we have the right people in place to maximize our growth potential. Our fourth quarter results reflect that progress we have made to bring in top talent, serve our customers well, and pick up our fair share of the market. We expect our commercial transaction momentum to continue but manage ourselves with the near-term commercial headwinds in mind as we try to stay ahead.

Our Agency team remains focused on driving share gains in attractive Agency markets by adding new agent partners as well as growing our share with existing agents. We are focused on improving our position in 15 target states and have seen solid progress in the majority of these states. Our improved technology integration, support services, and enhanced abilities around servicing commercial agents allow us to stand out with our agents. We continue to innovate for our agent customers every day and are proud of our recent launch of Connect Close, which is a title production system built specifically to cater to our attorney agents. This is a solution technology tool focused on improving agents' both efficiency and economics. We will continue to build on all of the momentum we have made in recent years for our agents in order to differentiate our services and better our offerings for agent partners.

Our Real Estate Solutions business continues its growth story, as shown by fourth quarter results. Our margins in the fourth quarter were dampened a bit by some one-time impacts such as startup costs for new customers and some timing of data contracts. However, we expect to sustain or improve the low-teens margins we have seen in the last couple of years. This team is focused on gaining share with top lenders and cross-selling our products as we leverage our approved portfolio of services. Cross-selling in current market conditions poses some challenges. However, we continue to see gains from both existing clients and new client introductions. We expect continued momentum in this space as the market improves. Our international businesses. We remain focused on growing our Canadian business by improving our geographic reach as well as increasing our commercial presence, where we saw 17% growth this year.

Our significant growth in Real Estate Solutions and Commercial Services has resulted in an increase in our other operating expense ratios. In Real Estate Solutions, other operating expenses are higher percentage of mix due to the use of outside services and data, and in commercial, we encounter higher outside data and search fees to service our customers. We expect those two trends to continue and we will continue to grow those lines of business. Overall, we remain diligent in managing our operations to ensure we can achieve both near and long-term goals. We are dedicated to growing share in all of our businesses and we remain steadfast in our pursuits to position each business for growth.

We believe in our direction and maintain in our belief that we will achieve low double-digit pre-tax margins with the macro market returns to historically normal levels, which would characterize as a $5 million purchase market. I want to thank all of our customers for their continued trust and partnership. We are committed to doing the best and to serve with excellence. And finally, I want to thank our Stewart team for their loyalty and continued dedication to excellence. It has been an honor to lead the company over the last five years and I could not be prouder of the progress we have made on our journey. I look forward to seeing where we can grow together. David, I'll now turn it over to you and provide an update of the results.

David Hisey (CFO)

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Fred. I appreciate the excellent service of our employees and I'm grateful for the continued support of our customers. Let me also express my sympathies for those impacted by the California wildfires. As Fred noted, the market continues to be challenging with existing single-family home sales at multi-decade lows and mortgage rates in the 7% area. Yesterday, Stewart reported fourth quarter net income of $23 million or $0.80 per diluted share on total revenue of $666 million. The Appendix A of our press release presents adjustments primarily related to net realized and unrealized gains, acquisition intangible amortization, and other expenses that we use to measure operating performance. On an adjusted basis, fourth quarter net income was $32 million or $1.12 per diluted share compared to $17 million or $0.60 per diluted share in the fourth quarter 2023.

In the title segment, operating revenues increased $60 million or 12% from improved performance in our Commercial, Residential, and Agency title operations. Title segment pre-tax income increased $18 million or 65% primarily due to higher revenues. After adjustments for purchase amortization, severance, and office closure expenses, the segment's fourth quarter adjusted pre-tax income increased to $51 million versus $31 million last year, while adjusted pre-tax margin improved to approximately 9% compared to 6% last year. On our direct title business, total open orders increased slightly compared to the prior-year quarter, while closed orders improved 15%, primarily driven by higher domestic commercial and refinancing transactions.

Our domestic commercial operations generated another solid result, improving revenues by $28 million or 50%, primarily driven by higher transaction size and volume from broad asset classes led by the energy, multifamily, and office sectors. Domestic commercial average fee profile increased 33% to $19,600 compared to $14,800 in the prior-year quarter. Domestic residential average fee profile decreased 8% to $2,900 compared to $3,200 in the prior-year quarter due to lower purchase transaction mix.

With our Agency operations, fourth quarter gross and net Agency revenues both improved 6% or $17 million and $3 million, respectively, consistent with the direct title trend. On title losses, total title loss expense in the fourth quarter was comparable to the prior-year quarter as favorable claim experience offset higher title revenues. The fourth quarter title loss ratio improved to 3.7% compared to 4.1% last year. For the full year 2024, the title loss ratio was 3.9% compared to 4.1% last year. We expect title losses to be in the low 4% range for 2025.

Regarding the Real Estate Solutions segment, operating revenues improved by $26 million, driven by higher revenues in our credit-related data and valuation services businesses. However, pre-tax income declined as vendor price increases occurred prior to customer contract renewals and elevated employee costs as we continue to grow customer relationships. As Fred noted, we expect to be in the low-teens cash-margin area as these relationships mature. Excluding acquisition intangible amortization, adjusted pre-tax income was $6 million, 7.4% margin in the fourth quarter compared to $7 million or 12% margin last year. On consolidated operating expenses, our employee cost ratio improved to 31% compared to 32% last year, primarily due to higher revenues.

Our other operating expense ratio increased to 25% as our mix of Real Estate Solutions and Commercial revenue increased as those businesses have higher third-party costs. On other matters, our financial position continues to be solid to support our customers, employees, and the real estate market during this continually challenging environment. At year-end, our total cash and investments were approximately $380 million in excess of our statutory premium reserve requirements. In addition, we have a fully available $200 million line of credit facility.

Total Stewart stockholders' equity at December 31, 2024, was approximately $1.4 billion or a book value of approximately $51 per share. Our net cash from operations was $68 million, which was $29 million higher compared to the prior-year quarter as a result of improved net income. Again, thank you to all our customers and employees, and we remain confident in our service to the real estate markets. I'll now turn back to the operator for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, that is star and one to ask a question. And we'll pause for a moment to allow questions to queue. And we will take our first question from Bose George with KBW. Please go ahead.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Morning, Bose.

Bose George (Managing Director of Mortgage Finance)

Hey, everyone. Good morning, Fred, everyone. Good morning. So I want to start with commercial. And I just wanted to confirm, Fred, you said, I think, on commercial that you expect modest growth in 2025. And just trying to think about, is that against the full year 2024 or against the back half of 2025 where the commercial market looks like it's entered kind of a stronger phase of activity?

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of funny. The market is off really choppy right now. There's a lot of uncertainty, frankly, that entered in the last month or so. But our view is that it'll be single-digit, kind of to the low end of single-digit growth in commercial right now. That's what we think for the market I'm talking. But it's very uncertain. But we see, to your point, that the second half of the year was better than the first half of the year last year. And we see the continuation of those trends a little bit, although it's a little bit more uncertain right now. But we're positive. It'll be in a positive territory, we believe. And again, it's going to be very sector-oriented because I think there's going to be continued real robustness around data centers and things like that.

Bose George (Managing Director of Mortgage Finance)

Okay. And so for now, just to think about it as modest growth on a year-over-year basis, just given this uncertainty that's in the market.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

That's what I believe. And again, our pipeline's been fine. And as you know, those transactions take a lot longer. So we have more transparency in the shorter window because we have a lot of stuff in the pipeline. So we feel good about kind of what's transpired this year.

Bose George (Managing Director of Mortgage Finance)

Okay. Great. And then actually, in the real estate solution segment, I guess David noted the repricings that are likely to happen. In terms of the margins on that sort of normalizing, does that happen fairly soon in 2025, or is there a little bit of a transition?

David Hisey (CFO)

Yeah. Yeah. Great question. So there really is two pieces. And it was a little choppy this year because of such large growth. There's two pieces of that kind of bump in the night here in the fourth quarter. One is we have startup costs for these big transactions. We have a number of new clients coming on. And if the timing doesn't hit exactly right, you have all these expenses without any revenue. So that'll take care of itself very quickly in the quarter. The other is this pricing. So the end of the third quarter of this industry, you tend to have a lot of the input costs around data come in. So those increases from the credit bureaus and FICO and stuff, they were relatively material. And we've been working with our clients, right, to get those embedded into the contracts.

And so I feel very good. The team's done a really good job. Those pricing changes have been started, inputted this week, actually, to start building into those client relationships. So I think that's a relatively rapid improvement. And as I said, I think this year is going to be a little bit better. For the full year, my guess is that business, it will get about a point better. I think instead of 12%, it'll be 13% or something cash margin because it's settling. We're growing and it's settling.

And I should answer that question long-term too, Bose, because you've asked that before. In my view of the gap, when I get that 11.5% in the normal 5 million market, that market also, that business has a lot of cyclicality to it, right? So our appraisal business, our notarization business, and our data business is all very cyclical. We're at a 35-year low. So I fully expect that thing from a GAAP point-of-view to get from where it is now to a full 10% margin. And I think the cash margin in those businesses, when we get to a more known market, will be mid-teens, like we've talked about, mid-teens, maybe even a little higher than the teens cash.

So I feel good about where we are. I like the margins that we're generating, the cash margins. But I think as the market recovers, they have a shot. That business should get better. While I don't see that big improvement in the market occurring in the next six months, I think that we're going to start moving in that direction in the back half of the year.

Bose George (Managing Director of Mortgage Finance)

Okay. That's very helpful. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad now. And we will take our next question from John Campbell with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Good morning, John.

John Campbell (Managing Director of Real Estate Services)

Hey, guys. Good morning. Congrats on a great close of the year. Solid quarter. Okay. Let's stay on commercial here. I'm just looking at maybe some of your competition here. It looks like you're going to maybe outgrow both your scaled guys by about 3x on the year. So I know there's some nuances there. Fred, you've talked often about asset class exposure, kind of mixed shift. I want to get your best sense. I know this is probably tough to unpack, but your best sense for share gains versus maybe your unique exposure?

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

That's a great question, John, because as you know, I talked a little bit about energy. And while I don't know the books of everybody else, our energy book this year grew kind of its percentage hits, 35% or so of our book, a little bit higher, probably. That used to be about 18%, okay? And what's happened, obviously, is a surge of some of that in that category of some of the alternative energy, particularly solar, and frankly, some of the infrastructure stuff that we fit in that category for us. So I believe that part of our outsized growth is our mix. I don't know how much. I know our competitors do that stuff too. But I've said that because I think that's part of it. But I will tell you that when I look at the 10 next categories, our growth is 50%.

So we have invested a lot of people and sectors and segments to match up with our great underwriting capability. And as I've said, when the company had issues and was sold, our capital was about half as much as it is now. And we were for sale. So with the uncertainty, we didn't get our fair share of the market because of that. And now we're starting to get. So to your point, my view is we've gone somewhere between 9%-14% of the market or something. And it's been pretty material. And I think most of it is sustainable. But again, the reason I say that about the energy is that, to your point, if our mix in that category is bigger than others, we're probably getting the benefit of the growth of that, right?

So, say that could back down a little bit in a more normalized market. But there's no question when I look at every single category, we have grown much bigger than the market, much better than the market, which tells me that underlying, we're doing better. And again, we should, right? We have as much underwriting capacity as anybody, but we're so much. We started this journey at, as I said, 9% share, which was not. There should be a better spread of risk in the commercial space if we can invest properly and have the right capabilities matched up with the market. So I'm encouraged by what we've done. But again, I'm happy to say that some of it is the benefit of the mix that's occurred in the industry.

John Campbell (Managing Director of Real Estate Services)

Okay. That's very helpful. Appreciate that. And then, David, historically, I think maybe the last two or three years, you've kind of talked or expected low- to maybe mid-4% loss provision rate. Obviously, you've been pretty consistently below that. It sounds like now you just mentioned low 4%. So maybe tightening that range a bit. But maybe if you could talk to maybe your past expectations, what you built in that maybe didn't occur that maybe you expected or maybe it was overly conservative, just more commentary on that and kind of also what you're seeing on the backbook and loss trends.

David Hisey (CFO)

Yeah, John. I mean, I think it's just really a combination of the mix. And so we had had a little bit more elevated going back a few years because of some of the international exposure. I think that's moderated a little bit. And then the thing that you always have to be concerned about, and that's why we try to be a little more balanced in things, is that you can have what we call jumbo or large claims come in. And the timing of those is hard to predict. And so I'd say it's a combination of just overall favorable macros, and then some of the higher loss items haven't been hitting as much. And that's why you've seen the better performance recently. But those are always out there, right? So you have to be prepared for them.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Yeah. So I think our guidance is still going to be in that low 4%s, right? That's the average number.

John Campbell (Managing Director of Real Estate Services)

Okay. And then last one for me on the investment income, just any kind of sense for a broad range of expectations over the next quarter or two?

David Hisey (CFO)

Yeah. I think we've been in that 13 million range. We were a little bit better in Q4. We just had a little bit better volume on some of our escrows and things like that. I think we've been able to hold. Keep in mind, if you're looking at us versus First American, we're not hair-triggered to rates because we don't trade off the money market because we're not a bank. And so our rates are negotiated, assuming that the banks always give themselves a little cushion in that negotiation.

And so because of that, we don't necessarily go down as quickly as rates do. And so we've been able to basically hold. And so I think unless you were to have a really big extra drop in rates, and right now it's 1%-2%, maybe three for the year, sort of the range of betting, we should be able to hold pretty well at the levels we're at.

John Campbell (Managing Director of Real Estate Services)

Okay. Excellent. Thanks, guys.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. And it appears that there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the program back to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Fred Eppinger (CEO)

So I want to thank everybody for your interest in Stewart. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This does conclude today's presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.