speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Greetings and welcome to the First American Financial Corporation First Quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A copy of today's press release is available on First American's website at .firstam.com forward slash investor. Please note that the call is being recorded and will be available for replay from the company's investor website and for a short time by dialing -660-6853 or -612-7415 and enter the conference ID 13753085. I will now turn the call over to Craig Barbario, Vice President of Investor Relations, to make an introductory statement.

speaker
Craig Barbario
Vice President of Investor Relations

Good morning everyone and welcome to First American's earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2025. Joining us today on the call will be our newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Mark Seaton and Matt Wagner, Chief Financial Officer. Some of the statements made today may contain forward-looking statements that do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made and the company does not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made. Risks and uncertainties exist that may cause results to differ materially from those set forth in these forward-looking statements. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to yesterday's earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. Our presentation today contains certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide additional insight into the operational efficiency and performance of the company relative to earlier periods and relative to the company's competitors. For more details on these non-GAAP financial measures, including presentation width and reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financials, please refer to yesterday's earnings release, which is available on our website at .firstam.com. I will now turn the call over

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

to Mark Seaton. Thank you, Craig. I'll begin by commenting on our recent leadership changes. First, we announced that our prior CEO, Ken DiGiorgio, has departed the company. Ken was a pillar of strength at First American for over 20 years. Many of us worked with Ken for many years and valued his commitment, intellect, and dedication to First American. We wish him and his family all the best. We also announced that I have replaced Ken as CEO. I've been with the company for 18 years, serving as our Chief Financial Officer for the last 12. I believe in our purpose, which is to deliver certainty and trust to power seamless real estate transactions. We have an amazing team and a great collection of businesses led by our core Title and Escrow business. We also have several adjacent businesses that are synergistic to our core Title business, including Data and Analytics, Home Warranty, our bank, First American Trusts, and Service Mac, our subservicer. These adjacent businesses each have attractive growth characteristics and margin potential greater than our Title business. We have a bright future given our people, unique assets, and our commitment to be the best in the markets we operate in. Next, we announced that Matt Wazner has been appointed our Chief Financial Officer. Matt has been with First American for 15 years, most recently serving as our Treasurer, and prior to that, our Chief Accounting Officer. Prior to First American, Matt held roles at JPMorgan Chase and PwC. He's a perfect fit for the role and has proven to be a great leader with sound judgment, a strong financial acumen. I look forward to our investor community getting to know more of Matt in the days and weeks to come. Finally, we announced that our Chairman of the Board, Dennis Gilmore, will become our Executive Chairman. Dennis was our CEO for 12 years between 2010 and 2022, during which time we generated an 18% annual total share of a return. I worked very closely with Dennis during that time and look forward to working with him in our new roles. Turning to our business, I believe First American is poised for a good run. As we all know, our core business is Title and Escrow, which is driven by mortgage originations. Residential originations continue to be at trough levels, both in terms of purchase and refinance, but we experienced revenue improvement in both markets this quarter. Real estate goes in cycles, and we're at the very beginning of the next cycle. There's a lot of macro noise with tariffs, the path of interest rates, inflation, and uncertainty in the general economy, but I believe residential originations have hit a bottom, and now we can debate the path and pace of growth. The commercial side of the business, which began declining in the second half of 2022, is seeing meaningful improvement. Commercial volumes started picking up in the second half of last year, and the momentum continues into 2025, as our revenue was up 29% this quarter. While the macro uncertainty may cause transactions to slow, we have a great pipeline heading into the second quarter. As I mentioned earlier, we're at the very beginning of another growth cycle, and are poised to outperform the market, given our extraordinary people, deep expertise, unique assets, and commitment to do what we need to do to win. For many years now, our data and analytics businesses gained market share, while dramatically expanding its title plant, property record database, and document image repositories. As the world becomes increasingly digitized, and the power of artificial intelligence continues to grow exponentially, data is needed to drive automation, and since we have more of that data than anyone, it puts us in the driver's seat. We are leveraging our bank in new ways to add value to our customers, and it also serves as a counter-cyclical business that is helping to mitigate the challenging residential origination market that we face. We also have momentum with our technology initiatives. In many ways, we're carrying redundant tech costs, since we support both the new modern systems and the legacy tech that our business depends on today. But when this transition is complete, we'll not only reduce costs by eliminating redundant platforms, but more importantly, enhance the productivity of our operations. This will enable us to be the lowest cost producer of our products and services, all while maintaining the high-touch customer experience our clients expect. Our business will always be a people business, but data and technology become more important every day, and First American is committed to winning with these capabilities. In the short term, our order counts are somewhat of a mixed bag. For the first three weeks in April, our open purchase orders are down 4%. Our refinance orders rose 52% relative to last year, but it's off a low base, and the market continues to be challenged, with mortgage rates hovering between 5.5 and 7.5%. Commercial orders are up 5% so far this month, in line with the 5% growth we experienced during the first quarter. Finally, I'm pleased to report that we've been named one of the 100 best companies to work for by Great Places to Work and Fortune Magazine for the 10th consecutive year. This is an incredible accomplishment and a testament to our hardworking teams around the world who tirelessly service our customers and make First American a great place to be. Now I would like to turn the call back over to Matt for a more detailed review of our financial results.

speaker
Matt Wagner
Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Mark. This quarter we generated GAAP earnings of 71 cents per diluted share. Our adjusted earnings, which exclude the impact of net investment losses and purchase-related intangible amortization, was 84 cents per diluted share. Revenue in our title segment was $1.5 billion, up 12% compared with the same quarter of 2024. Commercial revenue was $184 million, a 29% improvement over last year. Our closed orders were down 2% from the prior year, while our average revenue per order surged 31% due to broad-based strength across both asset class and transaction size. Purchase revenue was up 1% during the quarter, driven by an 8% improvement in the average revenue per order, partly offset by a 6% decline in closed orders. Refinance revenue climbed 40% compared with the last year, primarily due to a 28% improvement in closed orders. Refinance accounted for just 5% of our direct revenue this quarter and highlights how challenged this market continues to be with mortgage rates hovering between .5% and 7%. In the agency business, revenue was $655 million, up 16% from last year. Given the reporting lag in agent revenues of approximately one quarter, these results primarily reflect remittances related to fourth quarter economic activity. Information and other revenues were $236 million during the quarter, up 9% compared with last year, primarily due to our Canadian operations seeing higher refinance activity. Investment income was $138 million in the first quarter, up $21 million compared with the same quarter of last year, primarily due to higher interest income from the company's investment portfolio and an increase in average interest bearing deposit balances, which more than offset the reduction in investment income related to the Fed cutting rates by 100 basis points in the second half of 2024. The provision for policy losses and other claims was $33 million in the first quarter, or .0% of title premiums and escrow fees, unchanged from the prior year. The first quarter rate reflects an ultimate loss rate of .75% for the current policy year and a net decrease of $8 million in the loss reserve estimate for prior policy years. Pre-tax margin in the title segment was .2% or .9% on an adjusted basis. Turning to the home warranty segment, total revenue was $108 million this quarter, up 2% compared with last year. The loss ratio was 37%, improving from 42% in the first quarter of 2024, driven primarily by lower claim severity. Pre-tax margin in the home warranty segment was .9% or .5% on an adjusted basis. The effective tax rate in the quarter was 22.6%, which is slightly below the company's normalized tax rate of 24%. Our debt to capital ratio was 31.2%. Excluding secured financing payable, our debt to capital ratio was 23.5%. In the first quarter, we repurchased 448,000 shares for a total of $28 million at an average price of $62.99. So far in April, we repurchased 323,000 shares for $19 million at an average price of $59.95. Now I would like to turn the call back over to the operator to take your questions.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your headset before pressing the star keys. And our first question comes from the line of Terry Ma with Parkways. Please proceed.

speaker
Terry Ma
Analyst, Parkways

Hey, thank you. Good morning. Maybe just to start off with commercial. You saw some strong revenue growth in the quarter. This actually came in ahead of your January update. So can you maybe just talk more about what you're seeing in commercial, how the pipeline is shaping up, particularly just given all the macro uncertainty in recent weeks?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Jerry, thanks for the question. We're, I'd say we're cautiously optimistic about commercial. This is the third quarter in a row where we've seen some meaningful improvement on a -over-year basis. And we've got broad-based strength in commercial. We track 11 asset classes in commercial, and nine of them were up -over-year. And, you know, coast to coast, we've got roughly 45 commercial offices, and they're all busy with deals these days. We've got strength across asset classes. We've got strength across geography. And one thing we're seeing is that the bit-asphalibre between buyers and sellers is narrowing. So we've talked about this price discovery here the last couple quarters, and we're getting to the end of price discovery. And, you know, even office, which has been a challenging commercial market the last couple years, I mean, we had more office mega deals this quarter than any asset class. And so we are seeing a lot of strength. And we've seen volatility in the macro here these last couple weeks, but our business hasn't slowed down as of yet. And so we feel really good about the pipeline heading into the second quarter. We feel like the momentum is going to continue. And based on what we're seeing now, you know, we feel like the year is going to be good, but, you know, we'll see how it turns out. But overall, I think we're pleased with how commercial performing right now.

speaker
Terry Ma
Analyst, Parkways

Got it. That's very helpful color. And then on NII for the quarter, it was just a little bit under your guide. So any puts and takes there and how should we kind of think about that as we kind of progress through the year? Thank you.

speaker
Matt Wagner
Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Terry. This is Matt. I'll take that question. So net interest or interest income or investment income for the quarter, if you're saying it was down a little bit, I assume you're talking about sequentially from Q4 to Q1. And that was really impacted by two things. One is lower average interest earning balances in the quarter. And Q1, I'll just remind you, is kind of our seasonally low asset investment deposit earning balances just because of the seasonal flow of business. And the other impact was due to our mortgage warehouse funding business interest income was down in that business sequentially as well. Year over year, you know, we had pretty good growth that was driven by the portfolio rebalancing that we completed last year. So increased interest income for investment portfolio. And then we had growth in our average balances year over year. So when we turn towards the full year, we expect that we're going to have modest improvement over 24 for full year 25. We also expect that Q1 will be the low point for the year. So we expect it to grow from here. And just as a reminder, that's including what we see today in the forward curve of, you know, approximately three and a half rate cuts is considered in that. And also remind you that we expect, you know, for each rate cut, approximately 15 million of annual impact negatively to our investment income.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

The next question comes from the line of John Tample with Stevens Inc. Please proceed.

speaker
John Tample
Analyst, Stevens Inc.

Hey, guys. Good morning and Matt, congrats on the new role. Looking forward to working with you and Mark congrats on the move into the CEO seat. That's exciting. Mark, maybe maybe starting with you. I mean, you've been in this business for a while. I'm curious about kind of how you're viewing the path forward, whether you're looking to stick with the strategy in place or if there are areas of the business you're looking to tweak or address or attack.

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks for the question, John. I think at least, you know, in a short term or the medium term, there's not going to be any dramatic immediate changes with our strategy. I mean, I feel really good about the path we're on and we work on it as a team. I mean, you know, Ken, I and the rest of the executive team, I mean, we're a team here. We work on it together and I've fully bought into the strategy that we're on and not just in the last couple years, but for the last 10 years. I feel really good about the businesses we're in. I feel like the path of the core title business is a good path. It's a good industry to be in. And again, like I said, like we're at the first pitch of the first inning here of the next real estate cycle. I think that's a good place to be. I think when you look at our adjacent businesses, you know, we're very optimistic about those two. I think they've got as much as we like the title business. I think some of these adjacent businesses we have have higher growth prospects and have higher market potential. And I think we've got a right to win in those businesses. So I like what we're playing and I like how we're going to win in those businesses in terms of, you know, we've got to have the best people in the industry. And I think we do. And we've got to win with data and technology. And I think with data, I think we're winning. I think with technology, we're doing an okay job. I think there's a lot of improvement we can make, but we've got a lot of momentum now in technology. I think the last couple of years, we've really built a good foundation and now we just need to kind of prove it in our results. And I think that's going to happen in a couple of years. So I think strategically, I really like the path that we're on and we just got to execute. And I'm sure there might be some things, you know, around the margins that will change over time. But, you know, you're not going to, you know, wake up and see some pressure saying we get into some big business that has nothing to do with our core title in escrow business. And so as a general statement, I like the path and there might be some changes around the margins, but, you know, we're on a good path right now.

speaker
John Tample
Analyst, Stevens Inc.

Okay, makes a lot of sense. And then on the success ratio for this year, I know there's always a lot of moving parts, but, you know, assuming you're going to get enough growth for that to matter. And then, you know, on the investment side, it does seem like you've tapered back a good bit, but just, you know, as far as what you have earmarked for this year, as far as investment activity, taking that into account, would you expect to, you know, to abide by your typical success ratio this year?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, I, you know, we've talked about the 60% success ratio and we were 51 in the first quarter, I think. And I think that's, you know, I would say somewhere between 50 to 60 for the full year. And, you know, quarters are going to be volatile, but for the full year, I think we abide by that. And we are becoming more productive too. I mean, we haven't quite filed the queue yet, but, you know, our CapEx is down another 19% year over year. And so we're continuing to make progress on those fronts, but from a success ratio perspective, I think 50 to 60 is reasonable for this year.

speaker
John Tample
Analyst, Stevens Inc.

Okay, great. And if I could squeeze in one more, just on the April title order data on purchase, you know, down for, it looks like from a sequential standpoint, that's a pretty decent step down relative to what you usually see from, you know, from March to April. I know 30 year rates have been a bit volatile. I mean, I think in early, maybe mid part of April, we hit a 20-25 low and then here of late, we're back above the 7% level. So just curious about if you had this granularity just the week to week, facing, was there a pretty big step down later in the month, or just kind of how that looked?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so, you know, we've seen some volatility within the month of April. The first week, we were up 5%. Second week, we're down 10. Third week, we're down 6. That's purchase, so that includes reseal and new home. And with new home, there's more volatility in that number. So as a general statement with our purchase orders down 4 in April, we have seen, we saw, you know, big decline in the second week. It's not as bad as the third week, but we have seen that. I would say, you know, relative to the beginning of the year and even relative to the last earnings call we had in February, I think our outlook for the year is more positive now. I think commercial is doing better than we thought. I think the purchase side is less than what we thought. Heading into the year, we thought purchase revenue is going to be up kind of high single digits, and now we're looking at maybe low single digits, but on a net basis, I think we're more optimistic about the business today than we were a couple months ago.

speaker
John Tample
Analyst, Stevens Inc.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. It's like commercial is certainly got some strength. I appreciate the time, guys. Thanks a lot,

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

John. The next question comes from the line of Boz George with KBW. Please proceed.

speaker
Boz George
Analyst, KBW

Hey guys, good morning and I think congratulations to Mark and Matt. Actually a couple of questions on expenses. Actually first, on the margin impact from endpoint in Sequoia, what was that this quarter?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

So, this quarter it was 130 basis points and maybe just a couple things on that. Boz is, it hasn't come down in the last couple quarters. Q1, they're seeing this little business for earnings, right? So earnings are more depressed in the first quarter. I mean that number is going to be higher. So we would expect it to narrow over the next couple quarters. But the other thing too is we really started breaking out the endpoint and Sequoia earnings separately because we really wanted investors to think about our core business differently, right? We wanted to separate it out so investors could really monitor how our core business is doing without the drag, let's say, of some of our innovation initiatives. But really for both endpoint and Sequoia, for both of those, we're in the early stages of integrating them into our core business right now. And so I think at some point here, soon, if not today, it's not going to make as much sense to disclose that separately because now we're at the point where we think investors should judge us kind of on a consolidated basis because we need to get the value out of these investments. And so even though we still track it today, it's starting to get more integrated into our business and it's just not going to be as meaningful to track. And we think that's fine for investors to judge us with those being included, if that makes sense to us.

speaker
Boz George
Analyst, KBW

Okay, great. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. And then Mark, just going back to the comment you made right at the beginning, just about the costs of the new and legacy systems, is that sort of referring to these investments as well? Or could you just kind of elaborate on that and kind of how that plays out?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, it's primarily related to these investments. And really, we've got these new platforms, whether it's Tidal in the case of Sequoia or whether it's closing and escrow in the case of Endpoint. And we've got systems that we've been running on for 20 years that support 99% of our orders. I mean, our business runs on these systems. And we've been developing these new modern systems on the side, and they're working. We're very pleased with the milestones. And I can go into details on this and hope to at some point, but we're very pleased that this is going to really propel us into the next generation and make us more competitive. And we know they work, but they haven't proven they can work at scale. And that's what we need to do now. We need to scale our business management involves, and it's not going to happen in a quarter. But we are in the process of doing that. And once we're fully rolled out, well, then we can start sort of dismaying the old systems and we'll be running on new technology that's going to make us more productive. And so we're really kind of have these redundant costs here. But over time, we'll get savings from that. And I don't think we're going to be spending any more than we are now. I think that, you know, as I mentioned before, like our CapEx has done 19%. And we're doing a good job of just becoming a lot more efficient with our tech spend. So I don't I think we're spending as much as we need to right now. I think our spending will go down and we'll see productivity improvements gradually, you know, over the next couple of years.

speaker
Boz George
Analyst, KBW

Breaking up a little bit, but thanks. Thanks very much. I think I got it.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with True Security. Please proceed.

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

Thank you. Good morning and congrats. Mark, what do you think of if we do go through a recession, how do you

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

see the cost and

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

take,

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

which you can be enthusiastic, so to speak, at least in terms of the impact, potential lower interest rates on the housing market? How would commercial react? And just a few thoughts on what you might anticipate.

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks a lot for the question, Mark. And you were kind of broken up breaking up a little bit here on this side. So maybe we have a faulty line here. But let me try to answer your question just about how our business would impact, be impacted in recession. I think. Yeah, there's there's good news and bad news, you know, with a recession. I think of the general statement, a recession, you know, isn't good for the purchase market. But again, the purchase market is pretty low. I mean, last year, we, the industry had as many, you know, existing home sales as we did in 1995. I mean, it's really, you know, the purchase market is like a one out of 10 right now. And so, yeah, would it be impacted with a recession? Sure. But it's pretty, it's pretty low right now. I think with a recession, it depends on what happens with rates, obviously, and most recessions, what happens is rates lower and we get a refi wave. And so that typically serves as somewhat of an offset for us. And so I think the refi business would, would pop a little bit. And then on the commercial side, commercial will typically follow purchase, right? They're, you know, they're not exactly 100% correlated. But if we're in a recession, I mean, that would, that would cause some, some decline in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, or at least some softness in the commercial market. So I wouldn't say we're hoping for recession. I don't think that would be a good thing for, for the, for the economy. It wouldn't be a good thing for first American, but we do have some, some offsets in that scenario.

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

Any change in philosophy that you might have around share buybacks? I think the company historically has been fairly deliberate in the, in the buybacks. You've been active here lately, but how do you view buybacks as the use of capital?

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

I think there's some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some,

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some some,

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some,

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some stock is undervalued. And I feel great about the future of the company and the trajectory of our earnings. And so because of those reasons, we repurchase shares. But that's kind of how we think about it going forward.

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

Very good. And then finally, the bank contribution to earnings and the contribution to, or I think we have a question here. Any initiatives or what we might expect out of the bank in the next year or two? And maybe you can even throw in if the economy does show some volatility, how might that influence the bank contribution?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

The bank is a real strategic asset for us. It makes our escrow operations extremely efficient because title companies work with banks every single day. And since we have a bank and a title company, we can integrate our systems. And it's very, it's easier to operate and open up and close bank accounts with us than any other company out there. So there's operational benefits. But, you know, obviously a big benefit is financial. And we have really over the last decade or so, we've really tried to maximize the number of deposits that we get internally. So historically it's been an internal utility where we hold escrow deposits in connection with real estate transactions. We push a lot of those to our bank. We push a lot of those to third party banks. The thing that's exciting about our bank to us is there's a lot of growth potential. So historically we've really had one big customer that's first American title. But every single month we're signing up new customers. And we have what's called an agent banking strategy where we're trying to and having success with banking title agents that are out there having title agents put their escrow deposits at First American Trust. And every single month we're signing up new agents and getting more deposits. There's also synergies with service macro subservicer who carries certain types of deposits that we have at our bank. And so we're opening it up to third parties more. And we're having a lot of success with that. We stumbled early because we needed to invest in new technologies. We needed to create a customer service team. But we finally figured out the system and the flywheel is really going right now with agent banking. So we're really excited about the future. I would say as a general statement too, the higher the... When I said offset, earnings offset in my script, when we have a higher Fed funds rate and higher rates, it's generally not good for the residential business. As I said before, the residential business is like a one out of 10. But the bank is going to have record earnings this year. We won't have higher earnings than we will in 2025 from the bank. So higher interest rates are a good thing for the bank. Now, if we get in a lower interest rate environment, obviously that's going to help our title business and it's not going to be as good for the bank. But we have taken more duration in the bank because we just feel like we kind of want to lock in these good spreads that we have. So the bank is a real strategic asset and we feel like we can grow it over time. And it's unique because none of our competitors have one and it's a good thing to have.

speaker
Mark Hughes
Analyst, True Security

Appreciate that detail. Thank you.

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Thanks a lot,

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Mark. The next question comes from the line of Mark DeRoyce with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed.

speaker
Mark DeRoyce
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Yeah, thanks. Mark, could you give us an update on where you stand with the rollout of Endpoint Sequoia?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So with Sequoia, we've had a pilot in two markets, in Phoenix and Riverside. When we started the pilot, the goal was to have 50% of purchase transactions automated, 50%. And we've cleared that into 50%. So our hit rates are higher than what we initially thought and we're going to be able to do it for lower cost than we thought. So we've exceeded our base case with respect to Sequoia. The next step with Sequoia is we're in the early stages of rolling it out through the entire state of California. So that's sort of early stages right now. And we're coming up right now with the national rollout plan. Don't have it yet, but the team's working on it. For Endpoint, we've made so much progress with the system itself. We are running it live in Seattle. It's working really, really well. I think it's exceeded our expectations. Now we're kind of in the early stages and it's going to be a lot harder to roll out the technologies within Endpoint than it is on Sequoia for a lot of different reasons. But we're in the early stages of coming up with a national rollout plan to try to figure out how we can get this technology and other technologies that we have in the hands of our Esquerofficers. So really with the goal of eliminating more of the administrative tasks and giving our Esquerofficers more time with their customers, more time closing transactions where they can get paid more. And they can just deal with these edge cases where things go wrong in an Esquero transaction as opposed to spending so much time on administrative tasks. So that's the vision. And I would say we're going to have a national rollout plan by the end of the year with Endpoint. We're coming up with it right now to figure out which offices we want to do and what type of people we want to roll it out to. But we're going to have a rollout plan by the end of this year as a goal. And we want to have users on it. We want to test users in our core business by the end of the year too.

speaker
Mark DeRoyce
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Great. That's helpful. Any updates on you know what the status is of the proposed rate cut in Texas and some of the efforts to push back on the initial proposal?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

It's going to go into effect July 1st. I know there's a lot of groups fighting it. We're operating under the assumption it's going to happen. And so we're planning for it. There's things we can do on the margins to mitigate the risk, but we're not going to be able to mitigate the entire blunt of it. But one of the things that's helpful for us is we're big national business with scale. I think it really hurts a lot of the title agents in Texas that don't have the scale where 100% of business comes from Texas. It's a lot worse for the smaller title companies. And I don't think it's good for the industry as a whole. But we're planning on it happening as of July 1st.

speaker
Mark DeRoyce
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Okay, got it. And then finally, you made the point a couple times that the macro uncertainty could cause a slowdown in commercial. Are you just saying that out of abundance of cash from our past experience, or are you actually seeing anything tangible, whether it's in conversations with customers that point you to that?

speaker
Mark Seaton
Chief Executive Officer

When we look back the last couple of recessions, we've had the purchase in the commercial market both decline together. So there is evidence of that. Now what I'd say is we haven't seen it yet. We haven't seen it yet. Now we've seen one deal that I'm aware of in the US that has been postponed. It wasn't really recessionary. I think it was just because of the tariff uncertainty. We've seen a couple of international deals postponed, commercial deals. But when I say postponed, these are refinanced deals that are going to happen eventually. And we just thought they were going to close in the first quarter and now they're pushed off. So we haven't seen a decline at all. And all we see is strength right now in commercial. But if we see a recession, if we're going to recession, I got to imagine our commercial business is going to get softer, because that's how it's always been the last few recessions.

speaker
Mark DeRoyce
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Okay, got it. Thank you. Thanks,

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Mark. And the next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Dunn with Dowling and Partners. Please proceed.

speaker
Jeffrey Dunn
Analyst, Dowling and Partners

Thanks. Good morning. I appreciate your thoughts on the philosophy of buyback. But I was wondering if you could walk us through how you're thinking about the resources for buyback. If the window remains open, can you walk through some math with respect to expected cash flows, opcode, dividend capacity, common dividend and debt service obligations? What's the actual pool that could be an opportunity for buyback as we think about the year?

speaker
Matt Wagner
Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Jeff. This is Matt. I'll start on that one. So at the end of Q1, when we look at what's the capital that we have available for those type of activities, at the holding company, we had about 100 million of cash. And you know, we feel good about that level of cash is kind of what we need. And then when we turn to the Tico, the way we look at the Tico and measure what we believe is excess capital in the Tico is we try to approximate what we believe we need for rating agencies, requirements, and then also to run our business. So we think we have about 160 million roughly in excess capital at the Tico as well. So those right there, that's resources that we could use. We're also generating meaningful earnings every month, right? So that's a potential. As you know, we have our corporate revolver, it's $900 million. So if we were to need additional liquidity or capital, we could access our revolver. And then when we think about dividend capacity, right now, the Tico's dividend capacity is $535 million. So there's no regulatory constraints for what we would need to be able to pull out of the Tico if we wanted to access some of that excess capital. And when we look at our debt to cap, we're at a comfortable .5% right now. It's a little bit over what our target would be through the cycle, which is 20%, but we're very comfortable at .5% given where we are in the cycle. And where we think we want to be is generally not over 25% for a sustained period of time. But for rating agency purposes, as long as we're not over 30% for a sustained period of time, the rating agencies would be fine. Our covenants are at 35%. So we do have quite a bit of kind of capacity to access debt if we needed to on our facility. So those are kind of, that's kind of the pull that we think of capital available.

speaker
Jeffrey Dunn
Analyst, Dowling and Partners

Great. Thank you.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

That's helpful. Thank you. There are no additional questions at this time. And that will conclude this morning's call. We'd like to remind listeners that today's call will be available for replay on the company's website or by calling -660-6853 or -612-7415 and enter the conference ID -530-085. Thank you. The company would like to thank you for your participation. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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