Fidelity National Financial, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the FNF 2021 second quarter earnings call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Jamie Lillis, Investor Relations for FNF. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today is our CEO, Randy Quirk, President Mike Nolan, CFO Tony Park, and F&G CEO Chris Blunt. We'll begin with a brief strategic overview from Randy. Mike will review the title business. Chris will review F&G. And Tony will finish with a review of the financial highlights. We'll then open the call for your questions and finish with concluding remarks from Randy. But before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, in particular the COVID-19 pandemic. There is significant uncertainty about the duration and extent of the impact of this pandemic. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about our expectations, hopes, intentions, or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to management at the time of this call. Because such statements are based on expectations as to future financial and operating results and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The risks and uncertainties which forward-looking statements are subject to include, but are not limited to, the risks and other factors detailed in our press release dated yesterday, and the statement regarding forward-looking information, risk factors, and other sections of the company's Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. This conference call will be available for replay via webcast at our website at fnf.com. It will also be available through phone replay beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern time today and through Wednesday, August 11th. The replay number is 844-512-2921, and the access code is 137-20504. Let me now turn the call over to our CEO, Randy.

Thank you, Jamie. We are excited about our second quarter performance as our title business continues to produce record results, and F&G set records for its retail annuity sales while expanding into new institutional channels, further validating our decision to acquire the company just over one year ago. We are building a company designed to deliver more stable earnings and cash flow as market conditions change and interest rates eventually rise and pressure our title business, and we can already see the early signs of our success. I would like to thank our employees for their hard work and the sacrifices that they have made since the start of the pandemic, whether working from the office or working from home. Their dedication has allowed us to continue to lead the title industry in revenue, earnings, margins, and market share, and produce the best performance in the history of not only the company, but the entire industry. In the second quarter, we generated record adjusted pre-tax title earnings of $688 million compared to $378 million in the year-ago quarter and a 22.7 adjusted pre-tax title margin compared with 18.4% in the second quarter of 2020. Our margin for the quarter matches our record-setting margin achieved in the fourth quarter of 2020 and benefited from our investments in technology, operations, and automation over the years as we have worked to improve our efficiency in our title business and maximize our profitability over market cycles. Turning to F&G, when we closed on our acquisition in June of 2020, we expected F&G to provide a counterbalance to our earnings, which are highly sensitive to mortgage interest rates. We also believed that our acquisition would accelerate F&G's ratings upgrades and open new channels of distribution to enhance their sales growth. F&G has far exceeded our expectations as we have gained significant momentum in the bank and broker-dealer channels in the first year of launch, as well as strong sales growth in existing channels. While delivering record retail sales, we have maintained attractive spreads despite the low interest rate environment that we continue to experience. F&G has also entered the institutional market with a $750 million funding agreement-backed note issuance and was just awarded its first pension risk transfer deal over the past week. F&G ended the second quarter with nearly $332 billion in ending assets under management, which is a 20% increase since the acquisition, and it's well on its way towards achieving our goal of doubling assets as sales momentum accelerates. Looking forward, we will continue to evaluate our capital allocation strategy as we remain committed to long-term value creation for our shareholders, while also focusing on supporting the future growth of our business. Given our strong earnings and cash flows through the first half of the year, yesterday we announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.40 per share an increase of 11% from our previous quarterly dividend, and our board authorized a three-year share repurchase program of up to 25 million shares. At the end of 2020, we announced a share buyback plan of $500 million, and during the second quarter, we purchased 4 million shares for $183 million at an average price of $45.74 per share. Since announcing the buyback plan, we have purchased 11 million shares for $452 million and an average price of $41.09 per share. Let me now turn the call over to Mike Nolan to discuss the title insurance business in more detail.