First American Financial Corporation Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Commercial Surge and AI Rollouts Point to Margin Upside

Conference Operator: Welcome to the First American Financial Corporation’s fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A copy of today’s press release is available on First American’s website at www.firstam.com/investor. Please note that the call is being recorded and will be available for replay from the company’s investor website and for a short time by dialing 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415 and enter the conference ID 13758180.

I will now turn the call over to Craig Barberio, Vice President, Investor Relations, to make an introductory statement.

Craig Barberio, Vice President, Investor Relations, First American Financial Corporation: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to First American’s earnings conference call for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Joining us today on the call will be our Chief Executive Officer, Mark Seaton, and Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Some of the statements made today may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate strictly to historical or current fact. These forward-looking statements are given as of the date they are made, and the company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made. Risks and uncertainties exist that may cause the results to differ materially from those set forth in these forward-looking statements.

For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to yesterday’s earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. Our presentation today contains certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide additional insight into the operational efficiency and performance of the company relative to earlier periods and relative to the company’s competitors. For more details on these non-GAAP financial measures, including presentation with and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financials, please refer to yesterday’s earnings release, which is available on our website at www.firstam.com. Excuse me. I will now turn the call over to Mark Seaton.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thank you, Craig. The fourth quarter was a strong one for First American. We generated adjusted EPS of $1.99, a 47% improvement from the prior year. In the fourth quarter, we experienced trends similar to those we saw throughout 2025. A strong commercial market contrasted with a sluggish residential market. On the commercial side, revenue grew 35% as we saw improvement in 9 of the 11 asset classes we track. Several positive dynamics are driving this growth. We achieved price stability in 2025, which provides a solid foundation for future transaction activity. We’ve seen a persistent increase in sales volumes, rising commercial lending, and higher levels of refinance activity. Historically, refinance activity accounted for about 30% of our commercial premiums. In 2025, that figure increased to roughly 40%.

Some lenders are choosing to write shorter maturities, which naturally leads to more refinance activity. Our commercial revenue growth was driven by both higher average revenue per order and transaction volumes. Commercial ARPO increased by 22%, while closed orders increased by 10%. On the residential side, conditions remain challenging. Existing home sales are running approximately 4 million units, well below the 5.5 million units we consider to be a normalized level, as the rate lock-in effect discouraged homeowners from selling and therefore also not buying, and affordability remained constrained. One benefit of operating in a trough market is that it creates an opportunity to implement meaningful change. In December, we reached an important milestone with the launch of Endpoint in 1 office, and we closed the industry’s first AI-powered escrow.

As of last week, we have opened 153 orders and closed 47 on the Endpoint platform. While the volumes are immaterial today, the learnings are highly consequential. Endpoint improves every day, and we plan to roll it out nationally over the next 2 years. We believe the capabilities we’re building over time will be a durable competitive advantage. On the refinance side, revenue grew 47%. While refinance volumes remain at relatively low levels, the recent drop in mortgage rates has given us some optimism. Continuing on the technology theme, in the fourth quarter, we launched our enhanced AI-powered, excuse me, Sequoia title production engine for refinance transactions. Sequoia AI is now live in Phoenix, Arizona, and 3 markets in Southern California. In these markets, we’ve achieved 40% automation rates of the search and examination functions for the products that are supported.

By Q2, we expect to roll out Sequoia AI purchase capabilities in these markets, with plans to expand Sequoia across California and Florida by year-end, followed by a broader national rollout in 2027. As with Endpoint, we are learning and improving every day. Over time, we expect geographic expansion, higher capture rates, and improved operating leverage as market conditions improve while reducing risk, cost, and cycle time. I also want to highlight another strategic initiative we’re excited about, the Owners Portal. In the 25 states where we have direct operations, customers who close with First American receive free property title monitoring and fraud alert service, providing an important layer of protection for homeowners amid rising real estate fraud risk. Today, we have approximately 53,000 users on the platform, which has grown 580% just over last quarter.

At our bank, First American Trust, we recently launched our 1031 exchange product. Historically, we’ve managed savings and checking deposits at First American Trust. Now, we are also supporting 1031 exchange deposits. We ended the year with $94 million in 1031 deposits and have quickly grown to over $300 million today. We expect to be closer to $1 billion by year-end. The growth in deposits will help offset the impact to investment income related to lower short-term interest rates. Looking ahead to 2026, we expect growth across each of our major revenue drivers: commercial, purchase, and refinance. On the commercial side, we expect a record revenue year, exceeding our prior peak in 2022. While uncertainty remains, our pipeline is strong. On the purchase side, we are less optimistic than some industry forecasts are calling for 7%-8% growth.

But we do expect improvement in 2026 as the rate lock-in effect, discouraging homeowners from selling and buying, fades, and slow house price appreciation allows affordability to modestly improve in many markets. Open purchase orders were down 7% in the fourth quarter, implying continued weakness in purchase revenue in the first quarter. January open orders were essentially flat, with growth expected to emerge later in the year. Refinance activity is harder to predict, but refinance open orders were up 72% in January, a good sign for a seasonally weak first quarter. In closing, we remain focused on being the best title and escrow company in the industry. Based on the most recent ALTA data, we’ve gained 90 basis points of organic market share over the last 12 months, with additional initiatives underway to expand that further.

We are reimagining our core title and escrow business by building modern AI-powered products that improve the experience for our customers, amplify the work of our employees, and ultimately create long-term value for our shareholders. Our adjacent businesses also enhance our competitive advantage and contribute to our earnings growth. Our data assets become more valuable over time, and in 2025, we delivered record earnings at our bank, in Home Warranty, at ServiceMac, and at First Funding. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Matt for a more detailed review of our financial results.

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thank you, Mark. This quarter, we generated GAAP earnings of $2.05 per diluted share. Our adjusted earnings, which exclude the impact of net investment gains and purchase-related intangible amortization, were $1.99 per diluted share. Both our GAAP and adjusted earnings include one-time benefits of $28 million or $0.20 per diluted share. The one-time benefits are comprised of a $13 million or $0.09 per diluted share reserve release in Canada, recorded in the title segment, and a $15 million or $0.11 per diluted share insurance recovery recorded in the corporate segment. Adjusted revenue in our title segment was $1.9 billion, up 14% compared with the same quarter of 2024. Looking at the components of title revenue, commercial revenue was $339 million, a 35% increase over last year.

Our closed orders increased 10% from the prior year, and our average revenue per order was up 22%, setting a record at $18,600 per closing. Purchase revenue was down 4% during the quarter, driven by a 7% decline in closed orders, partially offset by a 4% improvement in the average revenue per order, reflecting the ongoing softness in the residential market. Refinance revenue was up 47% compared with last year, driven by a 44% increase in closed orders and a 2% increase in the average revenue per order. Refinance accounted for just 7% of our direct revenue this quarter and highlights how challenged this market continues to be compared to historic levels. In the agency business, revenue was $790 million, up 13% from last year.

Given the reporting lag in agent revenues of approximately one quarter, these results primarily reflect remittances related to third quarter economic activity. Information and other revenues were $274 million during the quarter, up 15% compared with last year. The increase was driven by refinance activity in the company’s Canadian operations, revenue growth in at ServiceMac, the company’s subservicing business, and higher demand for non-insured information products and services. Investment income was $157 million in the fourth quarter, up 1% compared with the same quarter last year, despite the Fed cutting rates five times since the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2024.

The impact of declining interest rates was offset by higher average balances, driven by commercial activity and by our bank subsidiary shifting its asset mix to fixed income securities, which are less sensitive to changes in short-term interest rates. Net investment gains were $28 million in the current quarter, compared with net investment losses of $62 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The net investment gains in the current quarter were primarily due to recognized gains in the venture portfolio, while net investment losses last year were primarily due to asset impairments. Personnel costs were $581 million in the fourth quarter, up 11% compared with the same quarter of 2024. The increase was mainly due to incentive compensation expense as a result of improved financial performance.

Other operating expenses were $282 million in the quarter, up 7% compared with last year, primarily attributable to higher production expense driven by higher volumes and increased software expense.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: ... These higher costs were partly offset by the previously mentioned $13 million reserve release in Canada. Our success ratio for the quarter was 47%. The provision for policy losses and other claims was $44 million in the fourth quarter, or 3.0% of title premiums and escrow fees, unchanged from the prior year. The fourth quarter rate reflects an ultimate loss rate of 3.75% for the current policy year, and a net decrease of $11 million in the loss reserve estimate for prior policy years. Pre-tax margin in the title segment was 14.9% or 14.0% on an adjusted basis. Turning to 2026, in January, closed orders per day were down 7% for purchase, up 13% for commercial, and up 48% for refinance.

Open orders per day were essentially flat for purchase and commercial, and up 72% for refinance. Moving to the home warranty segment, total revenue was $110 million this quarter, up 7% compared with last year. The loss ratio was 40%, down from 44% in the fourth quarter of 2024. The improvement in the loss ratio was mainly due to fewer claims, partly offset by higher claim severity. Pre-tax margin in the home warranty segment was 21.1% or 21.0% on an adjusted basis.

The effective tax rate in the quarter of 25.7% was higher than the company’s normalized tax rate of 24%, primarily attributable to higher income from the company’s non-insurance businesses, which are taxed at a higher rate relative to its insurance businesses, which pay state premium tax in lieu of income tax. Our debt-to-capital ratio was 30.7%. Excluding secured financings payable, our debt-to-capital ratio was 21.9%. Now, I would like to turn the call back over to the operator to take your questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Bose George with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Hey, guys. Good morning. I just wanted to go back to your, Mark, the comment just about commercial, you know, hitting a record year in 2026. Can you help us think about the potential improvement over 2025? I mean, if you look at the 2022 number, you’ve already, I guess, just about 4% away from that in, you know, in 2025. Your year-over-year growth is 35% the year in 2025. So yeah, just based on your pipeline, you know, where do you think it’s trending now versus over 2025?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: It’s... You know, thanks for the question, Bose. It’s hard to say. One thing I’d say about commercial is, you know, it’s always something we have a hard time forecasting. But I’ll tell you, I mean, we’re very optimistic about what 2026 is shaping out. I talked about some of the trends we’re seeing in my prepared remarks, but there’s just a lot of momentum in commercial. It’s broad-based strength. We get a lot of refinance transactions. There’s a lot of big energy deals we’re doing. And, you know, and I would just say the team is probably as more confident as I’ve ever seen in terms of how the year is gonna shape out. Now, is that 5%? Is it 10%? Is it higher than that?

We just don’t know. We, we don’t know, but I think we have a lot of conviction that it’s gonna be... You know, I would say, you know, you know, definitely growth over 2025 and an all-time record relative to 2022. But we’re just gonna have to see how it plays out. But I’ll tell you, the first, you know, 6 weeks of the year are looking really, really good for commercial, and we’ll just see if it’s sustained. So I don’t have a number to give out, though.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Oh, okay. That’s helpful. Thanks. And then, actually, in terms of the contribution from data centers to commercial premiums, is there, you know, a way to kind of quantify, you know, what that is?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Yeah. There’s been a lot of growth in data centers, as I’m sure you can imagine, and we’re involved in all or many of those just because, you know, if customers need to underwrite big transactions, I mean, there’s not... You know, they got to go to us or Fidelity, really. And so we’re really involved in all these data center transactions. Last year, it was roughly 10% of our premiums. And so we’ve seen a big growth in it, and again, we’ve got a big pipeline heading into this year. So I would say data centers is kind of this new asset class that we’ve just started to track because it’s really emerged, but it’s a lot more broad-based than just data centers, though. I mean, and when you look at...

Again, I talked about earlier, I mean, 9 of the 11 asset classes were up last quarter, and data centers is one of them, but it’s really broad-based after that. But really, right now, it’s about 10% of our premiums.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great.

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Bose, this is Matt. Just to-

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Matt.

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Sorry, Bose. Just to clarify, it’s 10% of our commercial premiums.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Yeah. Oh, okay, perfect. So okay, great. Thanks.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Bose.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Terry Ma with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Terry Ma, Analyst, Barclays: Hey. Thank you. Good morning. Maybe just to touch on Sequoia and then Endpoint. Appreciate the co-underwrite and expansion timeline. And any way to think about kind of the impact to the margin, just, from the, the drag that you guys had previously kind of talked about subsiding over the next two years? Like, how should we kind of think about that?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: You know, the drag on the margin is gonna, it’s gonna gradually, you know, alleviate itself, and we’re already kind of starting to see it as we invest more in our modern platforms, which, you know, Endpoint, Sequoia, like you point out, and we just invest less in the legacy platforms, and we’re gonna start to see that play out. You know, you can see we had a really strong success ratio this quarter, and at least, you know, some of that is because we’re reducing our investment in these legacy platforms. And so, you know, the margin drag will just dissipate over time, and I just say we’re really excited about both platforms. And you know, we reached a big milestone with Endpoint this quarter. It’s live now.

It’s really hard to get that first order onto the system, but it’s working now. It’s in one market. We learn every day, and we’ve got you know, significant plans for Endpoint. Ultimately, you know, what we’re trying to do is we’re really trying to improve the experience for employees. We’re trying to reduce a lot of the tasks that you just have to have to close a transaction. And I think the work-life balance of our team will be better. I think they’ll be able to close more transactions, and they’ll be paid more. And I think it’s gonna be a better experience for our customers, that we’re gonna have modern technology that we can update very, very frequently, and it’s just gonna be it’s gonna be a system that the industry hasn’t seen before.

I think it’ll be a real competitive advantage for us for a long time. Same thing for Sequoia on the title side, too. I mean, Sequoia, we really marched with Sequoia to try to do instant title for purchase transactions, and we think that we’re gonna achieve that vision next month of having instant title for purchase transactions. It’s just gonna get better and better over time. When we roll something out, it’s not gonna be a ten out of ten day one, but over time, we just continue to get better and better. I think over the next two years, we’re gonna show some real progress.

We’ve talked about the success ratio of 60% being like a, you know, a target for us, but I think we can beat that, you know, over the next couple of years with these new tools we’re rolling out.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Got it. That’s helpful. And then, maybe just following up on commercial, you guys mentioned kind of broad-based trends, but also kind of called out larger kind of deals, on the energy side, and obviously, data center is big. Like, as I look at ARPU, like, at $18.6 this past quarter, and, you know, we roll forward to 2026, do you think more of the revenue growth comes from kind of order count increase, or is it kind of more ARPU? Like, any color on that?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Yeah, I think it’ll be a mix. I think as a general statement, I would say when you’re looking at 2026, we’re expecting, you know, the mix to be higher transaction growth as opposed to ARPU growth. So we’ll see, you know, we’ll see if that plays out. But I think that, you know, when we look at the growth in commercial, more of a higher percentage will come from more orders as opposed to ARPU.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Got it. Thank you.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Yeah, thank you. Good morning, good afternoon. The 90 basis points, you talked about the organic market share. Is that a mix issue, geography issue? What would you say is driving that?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: There’s two big drivers to that, and they’re both, you know, roughly equally weighted. One is we’re gaining market share in our agency division, and the second is we’re gaining market share in commercial. And so those are the two things I’d point to, to say that, you know, that’s where the market share is coming from. And so we’re really proud of that.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Yeah. And then, your refi ARPU is up a little. It had been down pretty meaningfully the last few quarters, and I guess you’ve probably lapped some of that downdraft. Do you think that stays in positive territory? Any visibility there?

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Hey, Mark, this is Matt. So, yeah, ARPO for refi was up a little bit this quarter, year-over-year. I’ll point you to in Q4, we revised some of our refi order counts, and which also impacted historic ARPO. So if you look at the revised numbers, you’ll see that the trend’s very similar.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Okay. All right, very good. In the purchase, purchase ARPO has been up, you know, 3%-3.5% the last couple of quarters. You talked about the maybe pressure on housing prices, benefiting affordability that could impact volume. Do you think that ARPO maybe comes under a little pressure through the year?

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Yeah. So, in our, the way we’re thinking about 2026, we do think ARPU is gonna moderate. We still think it’ll still be positive in 2026, but it’ll be less than what we saw in 2025. The growth, sorry.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Mark.

Conference Operator: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Oscar Neaves with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Hey, good morning. I have a question on the title segment, adjusted pretax margin. This quarter, it reached the highest level since, I think, 2Q 2022. Can you break down the primary drivers of that expansion, whether that was volume mix, pricing, expense control, or, or other?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Oscar. There’s a few drivers. I mean, one of the things is we absolutely have commercial tailwinds at our backs, right? And so, the margin’s higher than it’s been because, you know, we’re getting some revenue tailwinds, and we’re managing our expenses well. And also, the fact that the commercial market is doing very, very well right now, and commercial just has a higher margin relative to some other lines of business, so there’s a little bit of a mix issue there, too. And so there’s a lot of factors, but I think that’s the key driver.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: That’s helpful. And as a follow-up to that, you’ve talked about Sequoia and Endpoint already, but since you’ve referenced in the past 100 basis point drag from redundant technology costs from those initiatives... Has that headwind now largely rolled off, or is that some of that still embedded in the margin profile? When looking, just, the reason I’m asking this, we’re looking at 14+ margins. So I wonder if, you know, there is still some upside from those investments rolling off.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: I think there’s significant upside with those investments, for a couple reasons. Number one is, you know, we’ve achieved big milestones with both Endpoint and Sequoia in the sense that they’re both live in markets working. But they’re really beta versions, I’ll call it. They don’t have many orders running through them now, and we’re testing it, we’re learning, we’re improving every day. But we’re still running our business on other platforms, right? And so you’ve got two benefits that are going to be realized over the next, you know, couple years. One is the fact that once we transition all of our, you know, work to the new platforms, we can decommission the old technology, and there’ll be a benefit to that.

That is already starting because we’re not investing as much in the old technology, but there’ll be more benefit over time. The second thing is, once we do get national scale on those two platforms, we do think that we’ll have productivity improvements, and that definitely hasn’t shown up in the numbers yet. So I think over time, it’s not going to just happen in one quarter all of a sudden, but we’ll have incremental gains over time as we roll these platforms out nationally. And again, once we roll it out nationally, then they’ll just continue to improve from then, too. So we feel like this is going to be a long-term benefit for margin improvement.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Great. And if I can ask just one last one on capital allocation. What are the priorities heading into 2026 across dividends, buybacks, tech investments, and potentially M&A?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: It’s something we think a lot about. So really, our first priority is, we want to make sure that we’re investing in our core business, and we want to make sure that we have, you know, and we equip our employees, our team members with the best tools, the best products in the industry. And so that’s the first priority, building our technology, building out our databases, investing in the future. That’s our priority number one. But I’ll say, we’re we don’t need to kind of ramp that up. Everything we’re building is sort of already in our run rate. And if you look at our capital expenditures the last three years, you know, they’ve been falling every single year.

So when you look at our CapEx this year, in 2025, they were $188 million. Last year was, in 2024, was $218 million, the year before that was $263 million. So we’ve been lowering our CapEx every year, despite the fact that our operating cash flow has been increasing every single year. And so I would say the first priority is investing in our core business, but we’re already... We don’t need to ramp it up. We’re already doing as much as we need to do, we feel like, to be competitive. The second priority is acquisitions, and the acquisition pipeline, at least the last couple of years, has been pretty dry. I think we did $2.5 million of M&A in 2025.

So we talked about gaining 90 basis points of market share. Well, we did that with only, you know, investing $2.5 million in M&A. So it’s something that is, you know, it’s... We look at buying title companies, and we look at buying businesses that are outside of title, but adjacent to our core title business. I would say that’s the second priority. We don’t have anything that’s material in the pipeline. You know, things can always change, but that’s the second priority. The third priority is returning capital back to the shareholders. At the end of the day, we’re trying to generate good returns to our shareholders organically or through M&A. If we can’t do that, we’ll give it back to the shareholders. We do that through dividends or buybacks.

So, you know, in 2025, our payout ratio, our dividend payout ratio was 36%. So that’s a priority for us. We’ve typically raised it like a penny the last couple of years just because we’ve been in a trough market, but our target is 40%, and so we’re running a little bit below that, but dividend’s a priority. Then with buybacks, we’ve talked a lot about this over the last several quarters and really several years, but we’re opportunistic with buybacks. When you look at 2025, you know, we bought back, you know, the equivalent of, like, 20% of our net income went to buybacks.

When you look at the 20% for buybacks and 36% for dividends, we returned 56% of our net income to shareholders last year. That’s something that we’re focused on doing. I’d say this, the last thing I’d say just on capital management is, we think that AI is going to have a big impact. It’s hard to see exactly what the impact is going to be, but our cash flow has been really improving, and we want to just, you know, build a little bit of dry powder. I’m not saying we need to do that to strengthen our balance sheet, because our balance sheet is already strong enough.

But there’s a lot of things moving around with AI, and everything we do, whether it’s the buyback or whether it’s M&A, we look through an AI lens now that we didn’t have before. And so, we’re also, you know, gonna just try to keep a little bit more dry powder here, just to pounce on opportunities that may arise in the future. But that’s kind of how we’re thinking about it heading into 2026.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Super helpful. Thank you.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Oscar.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Dunn with Dowling and Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Jeffrey Dunn, Analyst, Dowling and Partners: Thanks, Mark. Mark-

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Morning, Jeff.

Jeffrey Dunn, Analyst, Dowling and Partners: Is the size of some of the commercial deals tempering the appetite to upstream capital from the operating company? And how do you think about striking a balance between the necessary balance sheet strength and returning excess capital?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: The big deals that we’re doing, there’s no thought of, you know, making sure that we like, you know, for example, don’t pay dividends at a First American Title Insurance Company, that we need more capital in the underwriter to support these big deals. There’s no thought of that. We have adequate ratings. Underwriting these big deals is not going to prevent us from, you know, maximizing our dividends. So there’s no, there’s no thought about that. And I’ll just say, you know, we’ve got a very robust reinsurance program, and so we feel very comfortable with the risk that we’re running.

Jeffrey Dunn, Analyst, Dowling and Partners: Okay. And then as we think about potential margin improvement, as you know, the tech investment comes down and Sequoia and Endpoint run out, is it truly gradual or is it more of a cliff improvement given the rollout costs that you might incur?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: It’s going to be gradual. Remember, like, we have other, you know, as you know, Jeff, I mean, we’re really talking about, you know, our direct division. I think these will benefit our agency division, particularly Sequoia, some other ones. It’s not every single piece of the company that Endpoint and Sequoia is going to benefit, but it’s going to be gradual. We’re already starting to see it. You know, I’ve talked about this where, you know, we’re not investing as much in our, you know, legacy platforms. Otherwise, you know, if we didn’t have Endpoint and Sequoia, we’d have to do that. So eventually, we’ll decommission legacy platforms. Eventually, our productivity will continue to improve, and it really will be, you know, gradual, you know, every single quarter for a while.

It will not be a cliff benefit. But the important thing to note is... I’ll just say, like, we just continue to hit our milestones and, you know, we laid out a plan a year ago for our new AI-powered version, and I’m just really pleased with how we’re really sticking to that plan. We talked about a national rollout by the end of 2027, and we’re still on track for that. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead, Jeff.

Jeffrey Dunn, Analyst, Dowling and Partners: Last question, just on the loss provision. Expectation for it to remain steady at 375?

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Hey, Jeff, this is Matt. So, you know, it’s too early to say ’cause it’s obviously based on the way claims come in, and we reevaluate it every quarter. But you know, as you know, for the policy rate for this year, for this year was 3.75. We had 75 basis points of reserve release for prior periods, which put the calendar rate at 3.0, and that’s consistent with the prior year. I would say that, as you know, you know, the normalized loss rate is closer to 4%-5%. So I do think it’s likely that sometime here in the... let’s call in the future, we’ll stop releasing prior year or slow down the release of prior year.

But, you know, a 3.75 policy or loss rate feels kind of right and near kind of the normalized rates, and we’re not seeing any claims pressures or any adverse claims activity that makes me think we’ll see significant changes here soon.

Jeffrey Dunn, Analyst, Dowling and Partners: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Jeff.

Conference Operator: Our next question is from Mark DeVries with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Mark DeVries, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Yeah, thanks. Got another question for you on the tech investments. You know, so far in the markets where you’ve started to roll out Sequoia and Endpoint, are the productivity benefits that you’re seeing kind of comparable to what you saw in the pilot stage? And then, also, Mark, are you able to go on the record as on the margin lifts you think we could get over the next couple of years as you fully roll these out?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Yeah. So Mark, I’d say, like, with Endpoint, let me just start there. It’s in the AI-powered versions in one office in Washington. And so, you know, again, when we roll it out, it’s just beta version. Things aren’t going to work perfectly. I’d say it’s probably better than our expectations, though, than what we thought when we rolled it out. And so I wouldn’t say it’s ready to be rolled out nationally right now. We still got a lot of work to do, but that’s what we’re doing right now. So really, the plan with Endpoint is, let’s just continue to work on the product. Let’s continue to make it better. The plan is, in the second quarter, we’re going to launch it to 15 escrow teams in the state of Washington.

And so before we do that, we got to make the product a little bit better, and we also just need to kind of, you know, fine-tune our change management. By the end of this year, we’ll have it in a few other states launched, and again, we want to have most of the company on it at the end of next year. And so I would just say the technology is, you know, I would say it’s a little bit better than what we thought it was going to be, but we still need, we still have work to do. And on the Sequoia side, I would say that when we’re getting 40% automation rates for refinance transactions for the products that we support in those four markets, we are seeing savings.

I mean, we’ve completely automated the search, we’ve completely automated the examination, and we’re still doing some QC, just because we’re, you know, we’re checking to make sure, you know, that the product is working. But we are, we are seeing, you know, benefits. But again, it’s very small numbers at this point, but, I would say with both Sequoia and Endpoint, both of those are sort of in line, maybe a little bit better than expectations. In terms of, like, guiding to, like, what does this mean? I know we’ve talked a lot about this with investors. Really, what we need is, we just need to show, you know, the benefit on more, on more of a scale. You know, we need to show it more of a scale, and we just haven’t had that yet.

But once we kind of roll these out to, I would say, you know, a statistically significant sample size, you know, we can share those numbers. But right now, in one office, in the case of Endpoint, in four markets, in the case of... It’s just too small to kind of share those right now.

Mark DeVries, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Okay, got it. And I think, Mark, earlier you alluded to, you know, having some of the investments roll off and some of the efficiency gains could keep the, the efficiency ratio at, yeah, at a pretty attractive level, I guess it was 47% this quarter. You said at least for the next couple of years, is there any reason to think it’s not just gonna be kind of structurally better than it has and, you know, and the 60% kind of target is out the window?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: I think that it can be better than 60%, as I mentioned. I mean, we, we haven’t really thought hard about, well, what’s the new, what’s the new guidance? But I do think that, you know, the 60% was in, I would say, like a very labor-intensive model, and now we’re, you know, transitioning parts of our business to... We’re always gonna be a people business, we’re always gonna be labor-intensive, but it’s, it’s gonna be more data-driven, and just, you’re just gonna have better operating levers in that model. So, you know, we, we just need to prove it out. We got to prove it out. And again, we’re, we’re, we’re hitting milestones, we’ve got products in the market. We got to prove it out over the next couple of years.

But I do think that, you know, based on what we believe and what we know, we can, we can, we can do better than that 60% for a period of time.

Mark DeVries, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Okay, great. And then just one last one. On the commercial volumes, I think you indicated that, that the refi activity has been kind of higher than normal recently. I think you alluded to lenders doing kind of shorter duration loans. Is, is that just a product of kind of where rates are, borrowers less excited about locking in at high rates? And if so, are we looking at, like, a multi-year tailwind here, on kind of the refi side?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: I believe so. I believe that that’s the case. I mean, typically, I have talked to, you know, in life insurance companies, lenders that, you know, typically went 5-7 years maturities, and they’ve moved to 2-3 years. And so when you think about that, there’s just a lot more frequency of refinance activity, and they’re putting 2-3-year loans on right now. And so it’s sort of the opposite of what’s happening on the residential side. And so I do think there’ll be a refi tailwind here on the commercial business for a few years. And, you know, as you know, for, for, on commercial business, we get, you know, our premiums are basically the same for purchase and a refinance, so that’s a big benefit to us.

Mark DeVries, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Yeah. Got it. Thank you.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks, Mark.

Conference Operator: Our next question is a follow-up from Oscar Neaves with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Thanks for taking my questions. So Texas recently implemented a title insurance rate reduction. Can you quantify the expected revenue and margin impact for 2026 under your current volume and other operating assumptions?

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Yeah. Hey, Oscar, this is Matt. But, so if we assume similar volumes to 2025—like, if we just basically assume that the rate change went in at the beginning of 2025, it would lower the total revenue and net operating revenue in the title segment by about 50 basis points.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: Okay, that’s helpful. And as a follow-up to that, as we think about your Texas exposure, how much is residential versus commercial, and are there any offsets? Because obviously, you know, the rate reductions bring down your premiums, but they should also bring down how much you pay to your agents, right?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: In terms of the offsets, I wouldn’t count on too many offsets. I mean, the premium is where most of the economics are, as opposed to, like, the escrow fees or other fees. And so I wouldn’t assume that we’re gonna get anything materially on the offsets. We don’t have this broad-based plan to just raise rates on other products 6.2%. So I wouldn’t really assume anything on that. And I just say, you know, with Texas, some states we do better, some states we do worse. Texas, we’re underweight market share, particularly on the residential side, but we do very well in commercial.

So I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I would just say we do really well in commercial in Texas, and residential, it’s something that we’re really focused on, but, you know, we’re underweight market share on the residential side.

Oscar Neaves, Analyst, Stephens: That’s, that’s useful. Thank you so much.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Okay. Thanks a lot, Oscar.

Conference Operator: Our next question is also a follow-up from Mark Hughes with Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Thank you. I’m sorry if I missed this, but did you give guidance for investment income for Q1 or for the full year?

Matt Wajner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Hi, Mark. We did not give guidance, but, you know, where we sit today, the way we’re thinking about investment income for full year 2026, is that it’s gonna come in roughly flat with what we saw in 2025 for the title segment.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: I’ll just add to that, Mark. I mean, I think this is a big win for us because, you know, we talked about how every time the Fed lowers rates, I mean, we’re gonna lose investment income. And we’ve talked about that for a long time, and we really haven’t. And we haven’t because a couple of reasons: one is commercial balances have been higher; and second is we’ve gone longer in the banks portfolio, which kind of insulates us from that risk. And I think a third thing, which I talked about in my comments, is that now we’re capturing 1031 exchange deposits at the bank.

And so all those factors have. We’ve really been able to defend our investment income, and we think we can continue defend to the defended, you know, if, if the Fed lowers rates a couple of times this year. So I think that’s a big win relative to where we were a couple of years ago.

Mark Hughes, Analyst, Truist Securities: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Our next question is a follow-up from Bose George with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Hey, guys. Actually, a follow-up on the regulatory side. There’s obviously been a lot of noise about affordability from the White House and the FHFA. Have you heard anything specific from D.C. about potential changes to title insurance?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: You know, I haven’t heard anything directly or new about any changes to title insurance, no. I mean, we have talked about, you know, AOLs in the past. We’ve talked about the title waiver pilot with Fannie Mae. That is still continuing, and it’s gonna be up in May, and, but there’s nothing new. And we look at, you know, a couple of these bills are going through Congress. The House passed the Housing for 21st Century bill. The Senate’s passed the Road to Housing Act, and our industry trade association, the ALTA, both supports those bills. And so there is a lot of going on with housing stability, but to answer your question, there’s nothing new or noteworthy that we’re aware of around title insurance directly.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay, great. Thanks. And then actually, one more follow-up on the commercial. You noted the, I guess, the shorter expected duration because of these loan sizes, but I assume that doesn’t impact the premiums, so the premiums are similar, even if these are gonna roll off more quickly?

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: That’s right. Correct.

Bose George, Analyst, KBW: Okay. So, okay, great. Thanks.

Mark Seaton, Chief Executive Officer, First American Financial Corporation: Thanks a lot, Bose.

Conference Operator: There are no additional questions at this time, and that concludes this morning’s call. We’d like to remind listeners that today’s call will be available for replay on the company’s website, or by dialing 877-660-6853 or 201