Fidelity National Financial, Inc. (NYSE:FNF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Nolan: Well, I think I’ll start with staff. I think, as I said earlier, it really will be order dependent. If orders continue to fall and we see pressure from rates, then we’ll have to do more work on the staffing side and look at our infrastructure more deeply. but you also do that with the caveat with an eye towards this could turnaround and you don’t want to hurt yourself in the mid-term by doing something in the short-term that’s just not helpful in the mid and long-term. And we’re still very bullish long-term. Even with the reductions we’ve done in the cost moves we’ve made, we’re continuing to recruit talented people into the industry, particularly revenue attached continue to make acquisitions, and we’re going to continue to do that in 2023. We’re not shying away from the market and again, are optimistic kind of the mid- and long-term prospects for the industry. And we’ll just have to see what the current environment does for us in the next few months.

Tony Park: And Andrew, this is Tony. Maybe I’ll just weigh in on the actual line items, just as a refresher. Probably one-third of our personnel costs are variable with revenue and with profits. And so some of that just falls off naturally with movements declines in revenue. And on the other operating side of things, that line item, probably about 40% of those costs are variable with volume. That would be things like premium taxes and the like. But we clearly have fixed costs in both. Mike’s referring to fixed costs when we’re talking about headcount reductions. And on the other operating side of things, it’s more like facilities are fairly fixed in the short run. Technology costs are fairly fixed in the short run, insurance, that sort of thing.

Andrew Kligerman: Very, very helpful. Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Campbell from Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

John Campbell: Hey, guys. Good morning.

Mike Nolan: Hey, John.

Tony Park: Hey, John.

John Campbell: Thanks for the January order count update. That was helpful. It sounds like the trends rebounded a little bit sequentially beyond what we’ve seen historically, I guess, on historical average. Where — from where we sit, it does look like February might reverse some of that momentum with the pickup in rates. I’m hoping you guys might be able to provide some color on that. And then if you’ve got it on hand, it’d be great to get the month-to-date February order count trends in resi and commercial?

Mike Nolan: Yes. So maybe to the first part, the 33% increase on purchase order sequentially might be a little better than historical but I don’t think it’s off that much. But I certainly was pleased to see it to have that kind of a rebound. We generally don’t give out personal month order counts, John. So we got kind of a partial month in February just because it could potentially mislead one way or the other if trends change as the month goes on. I think that particularly show up in commercial order count. So I would just say that as we’ve gone through the month, the trends haven’t caused any concerns. And — but when you look at mortgage rates, they’ve certainly moved up in the past three weeks. And so we still have to see how that may impact current trends for purchase and even commercial activity.

John Campbell: Okay. That’s helpful. And then Mike, just from your experience, how much of a lead time do you typically see between mortgage rate movements and then the virtual closings?