First American Financial Corporation (NYSE:FAF) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ken DeGiorgio: Thanks for the question. I’ll start Bose obviously as we talked about earlier we’ve accelerated the pace of buybacks. We’ve already in October bought back shares at the same pace we did in the entire third quarter. And right now I think our stock is attractive. We’ve accelerated repurchases and we think it’s very attractive. But obviously we way repurchases against other uses of capital such as reinvesting in the business and M&A. But we’re obviously committed to return capital to our shareholders and we think buybacks right now are a pretty attractive alternative.

Mark Seaton: And Bose, I’ll just comment on the debt leverage part of that question. So our debt to cap we look at it excluding secured financings payable, because there’s sort of gross up there. And if you do that it’s 23.5% this quarter, we’ve talked about like 18% to 20% being our long-term target. But we’re very comfortable, especially here at the trough of the market being higher than our target. So 23.5% is a very comfortable place to be. I think particularly since when you look at the balance sheet we’ve got $1 billion of AOCI and we feel really great about the credit there. So we think that’s temporary, and now I’ll just kind of help our debt to cap as we go along. So we’re in a very comfortable place in terms of our debt right now.

Bose George: Okay. Great. Thanks. Just one more. In terms of investment income if the investment income is coming from deposits at your bank versus escrow that you send to third parties does it make a difference on the return or you kind of agnostic in terms of that? Or could you sort of increase one or the other if the returns are better?

Mark Seaton: There is a difference. I mean, typically, when we give our deposits to third-party banks the general rule of thumb is that we’ll typically earn Fed funds. When we invested at the bank our cash that’s at the bank will earn Fed funds. And then the rest of it most of the escrow deposits we push to the bank we buy mortgage-backed securities. And so we’re really getting kind of a mortgage-backed security rate as opposed to Fed funds. And sometimes that could be higher and sometimes that could be lower. And Fed funds right now is lower just because of the fact that rates have risen.

Bose George: Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks a lot.

Mark Seaton: Thanks, Bose.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Geoffrey Dunn with Dowling & Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Geoffrey Dunn: Thanks. Good morning.

Mark Seaton: Good morning, Geoff.

Geoffrey Dunn: I’m hoping you could talk a bit about commercial market. In particular where are the large deals down the most? I’m assuming, it’s office but I’m interested in a little more color. And more importantly where are the areas that you’re seeing opportunity versus drag outside the office market?

Mark Seaton: Well, a couple of things, I’d say. First of all, when you just look at the large deals we had four what we call mega deals with premium over $1 million this quarter. And a year ago it was seven. We’re not seeing the same level of large deals. The large deals that we are seeing are really half of them are multifamily. We had another one that was just a development site. But generally speaking, I would say the large deals are — we’re just — at least just not there this quarter. In terms of our top asset classes like where we see in business multifamily is 22% of our commercial revenue. So we’re seeing a lot of activity there. Industrial has always been strong even through the pandemic. It’s 17% of our revenue. And then development sites which is for these greenfield sites at 16%.