Stewart Information Services Corporation (NYSE:STC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Frederick Eppinger: Yes. The rates have affected order counts. And so I would describe it as a little bit of a shock to the system. And so what you saw at the tail end of this quarter, they started dipping and that has continued into this quarter. And so as I mentioned a couple of seconds ago, I think the — if you remember last year, the shock started about now and it really started dropping towards the end of the year. So we’re still below last year in the fourth quarter. And so we are decreasing we’re still below, but I think that will come together a little bit toward the end of the year because last year went down so much. But it’s — there’s an impact to what happened in the last 3 weeks for sure.

Soham Bhonsle: So does that mean that we’re sort of above or below that sort of 8%? I get that the comps are going to get easier, right, but sort of flattish is the way to think about it then?

Frederick Eppinger: I’m [splashy], Soham. So I’m saying it’s continued down and again, we got both the seasonal impact and you got the impact of rates. So the fourth quarter of orders are going to move down again.

Soham Bhonsle: Okay. All right. Okay. I think I understand. Okay. And then I guess on market share, I’m just curious on some of the drivers there. It looks like refi share picked up quite a bit, and there was also a bit on purchase. So Fred, can you maybe just walk through what you’re seeing on the ground and maybe who you think you’re taking the share from?

Frederick Eppinger: Sure. So each of our businesses have been positioned for growth, right? So in Agency, we were just up until about 15 months ago, right, we were meaningfully behind on ease of use and integrations. That caught up. So there’s 14 states in particular that we have targeted and we’re starting to get good traction in a lot of them as we introduce — we kind of reintroduce ourselves to agents or gain shelf space, maybe we have 5% share within and now we go to 10%. So what’s happening is as we reintroduce ourselves to agents with a little bit better value proposition, and we have points of new agents. We’re getting nice share shift. And again, it’s hard work, and it’s one at a time. And I think we’re in the early innings of that, but it’s been, I think, 6 quarters or so where we’ve seen increases of share.

The other thing is a little unique about us is that we have as a percent, less refi than some of the competitors. And so as that market became with our purchase market, that helped us as well. But — and that’s the story of agency. In direct, but in essence, it’s essentially, we’re a lot better talent wise than we were 2 years ago. We did a bunch of acquisitions in core [indiscernible]. And while the markets are bad, we’re better in many markets, 30 or 40 markets. And so we’re holding our own, and we’re actually winning a little bit there too. I think that will get better as we — as the market gets more normal and we get to — we’ll go back to buy more agencies. But right now, we’re holding our own and getting a little bit because I think of the capabilities and skills in the markets we have, we were in.

On the lender business, we just — again, it’s really less than a year that we had a full portfolio of these products and services assembled. And so what’s happening there is we’re able to cross-sell and deepen our relationship with a lot of these lenders because we have a broader portfolio. And what’s interesting in lender as we worked with the top 4 before. We were about $30 million of revenue when we started this journey. So that has grown to a $300 million business. So our positioning there is so much better. So I see that kind of organically continuing as we become a legitimate alternative to the 2 big guys. And then finally, commercial that is also very organic. So what we did there is we’ve done a lot of the key markets. We’ve done a lot of hires in direct, that’s smaller commercial.