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

So, those are our top three. Retail is 10%. Office you mentioned that Geoff, office is 5%. So, that gives you a little bit more flavor in terms of our revenue. Now that doesn’t all add up to 100, there’s other asset classes we got add. We’ve got energy, hospitality, but I referenced the big ones.

Ken DeGiorgio: The thing I would add too, Geoff in terms of sort of the outlook going forward on asset classes, I think probably the more attractive ones are going to be the ones where we’ve already seen the most price discovery like suburban office, and multifamily and energy is also probably going to be a big asset class for us. And then thinking back on multifamily and when I say, suburban office, it’s going to be anything that’s going to be outside of the big CBD areas. You’re just not going to — the central, business districts are under strain right now, for obvious reasons.

Geoffrey Dunn: Great. So as you look out to 2024, your commentary is cautious in your press release. What is your number one concern? Is it commercial? Is it direct resi? What one is more uncertain at this point in your mind?

Ken DeGiorgio: Well, I mean I’m uncertain and concerned about all of them, except refi, I know that’s not going to get better. So I think there’s concern in all of them. I think if you have forced me to way the two, I’m probably a little more optimistic about Commercial, just because I feel like we’re making our way through this price discovery. And I think, we anticipate to see transaction levels tick up a little bit in commercial next year albeit, keep in mind at lower prices. So we’ll see more orders, but they’ll be at lower prices given this price discovery. But we’re cautious about all of it into 2024. Now we may get some relief if interest rates go down, when I last checked the forward curve which was yesterday, I don’t know where it is today where they had three rate decreases next year beginning in the middle of next year. Now the forward curve is historically inaccurate. But if that comes to fruition, that will help but that’s middle to end of next year.

Geoffrey Dunn: All right. Okay. Thank you.

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

Mark Hughes : Yeah. Thank you. I’m not sure if this may be too granular, but I’m curious whether you saw any impact in the purchase market through these weeks of October, with the interest rate fluctuations.

Ken DeGiorgio: No we haven’t seen it, Mark. And it’s been a little surprising, because when you look at the — when you look at our purchase orders they’ve been following the typical long-term seasonality pattern all year long. So we’re — our purchase orders on the residential side, I mean they’re at low levels now, but they haven’t gotten any worse. They’re getting worse now just because of seasonality. But when you look at the normal seasonality curve for the last 9.5 months, it’s been right on the normal curve and that’s surprising especially, recently given the fact that mortgage rates have climbed particularly in the last 90 days here we’re tackling 8%. So — but to answer your question, no, we haven’t seen any falloff in purchase orders because of the recent climate rates.

Mark Hughes : And then in the warranty business, I think I’ve heard you say that direct-to-consumer has been a good channel with real estate being weak. How — is that holding up? Are you seeing success there?