Total international operating revenues were stable. Consistent with lower residential activity, our agency revenues in the first quarter decreased by $8 million or 3%, while the average agency remittance rate was slightly lower due to geographic mix. Total title loss expense in the quarter was comparable. As a percentage of title revenues, title loss expense was 4% for both the first quarters 2024 and 2023, and we expect title losses to average in the low to mid-4% range for full year 2024. Regarding the real estate solutions segment, pre-tax income improved $5 million compared to last year, primarily resulting from increased revenues from our credit-related data and valuation services businesses. Pre-tax margin was 8% compared to 2% last year.
Excluding acquisition intangible amortization, adjusted pre-tax margin was approximately 15% compared to 11.5% last year. On our consolidated operating expenses, our employee cost ratio was 32.3%, slightly better compared to 32.8% in the prior year quarter, primarily due to lower average employee counts. Other operating expenses as a percent of operating revenues were 25.6% in the first quarter 2024 compared to 23.2% in the prior year quarter, primarily driven by increased expenses related to higher revenues on our real estate solutions and commercial services operations. On other matters, despite the current challenging environment, our financial position continues to be solid for supporting our customers, employees in the real estate market.
Our total cash and investments at the end of the first quarter 2024 were approximately $325 million in excess of statutory premium reserve requirements while we also have a fully available $200 million line of credit. Total Stewart stockholders’ equity was approximately $1.36 billion with a book value of approximately $49 per share. Net cash used in operations improved to $30 million compared to $51 million during the prior year quarter, primarily as a result of improved first quarter results and lower liability payments. Lastly, we greatly appreciate our customers and associates and we remain confident in our service to the real estate markets. I’ll now turn the call back over to the operator for questions.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Bose George with KBW.
Frederick Eppinger: Good morning, Bose.
Bose George: [Technical Difficulty] Segment. Can you just talk about the sustainability of the run rate that you guys did this quarter?
Frederick Eppinger: Okay. I’m sorry, Bose, I missed the beginning. So, yes. I think our services business is very much sustainable. We have — again, as you know, we built out our portfolio of products, and we’ve had it together probably for about three or so quarters — four quarters, and it’s now getting some nice traction in our ability to kind of sell the fourth — cross-sell that portfolio. We also have some really interesting solutions in our data operation IR, something called a verification waterfall that has gotten a lot of traction. So I think you can always lose an account or so, but I feel like we repositioned ourselves in that market pretty nicely and we should be able to sustain that kind of run rate.
Bose George: Okay. Great. Thanks. And then just given the move in rates and then your commentary, Fred, just on the cadence of the housing recovery, how do you see your margins trending over the next sort of 12 to 18 months?
Frederick Eppinger: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I believe that we’re going to be better. I think we’re going to bounce off the bottom a little bit, but I think we will be better. And I think our margins will kind of improve, if you will, as the market gives us a little bit more growth. I don’t think that the target we talked about that $11.5 million, $12 million area, that I’m pretty confident that we could get to in a $5 million purchase market, it is probably not going to occur until we get to that ’26 time frame, if we get up to that level. So it kind of — it depends on the speed and the movement in that direction. And as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve — as you know, Bose, we’ve taken — we took some expense actions and some reallocation of resources at the end of the last year.
What I did is I — we looked at some geographies and offices and shut them down, because we couldn’t see — given this kind of more prolonged period of this kind of volume, I couldn’t see — I didn’t have transparency to those being what we wanted them to be. And we have the benefit of some of those actions. But I don’t think we’re going to be taking. I don’t think there’s a need to or I don’t think we should take any additional expense actions now. So essentially, we have what I would consider a little bit of excess capacity in our system. So as volume comes, our margins will improve with that increase. So somebody asked me at the last call, which I thought was a great question, if this year was flat to last year, would we do a little bit better?
And the answer is yes. So if you think about the margins we ended up with last year and a little bit better performance, we have, I think even in a kind of flat or marginally up market, we will do better from a margin perspective than we did last year by a point or two so.
Bose George: Okay, great. That’s helpful. Thanks a lot.
Frederick Eppinger: Yes.
Operator: We’ll go next to John Campbell with Stephens Inc.
John Campbell: Hey, guy, good morning.
Frederick Eppinger: Good morning, John. How are you, man?
John Campbell: Doing well. Doing well. I want to follow back up on Bose’s question on the Real Estate Solutions segment. I mean, I think the strength there probably isn’t getting the air time it probably deserves with investors. I mean, this quarter, it was up looks like 35% sequentially versus 4Q. Obviously, the mortgage market didn’t see that type of lift. So maybe if you could first talk to why or how you’re able to buck that, the typical mortgage market seasonal trend? And then, Fred, if we could maybe double click on the business mix, maybe where you’re seeing the most share gains, and I don’t know if you have it on hand, but if you could maybe talk to maybe the mix of revenues? What your largest businesses are? What your fastest growing businesses are? Just any incremental color there.
