Stewart Information Services Corporation

Stand by, your program is about to begin. Hello and thank you for joining the Steward Information Services second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note this call may be recorded. Lastly, if you should need any If you should require any operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn today's conference over to Nat Otis, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ashley. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for Stewart's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. We will be discussing results that were released yesterday after the close. Joining me today are CEO Fred Eppinger and CFO David Hisey. To listen online, please go to the Stewart.com website to access the link for this conference call. I will remind participants that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Because such statements are based on an expectation of future financial operating results and are not statements of fact, actual results may differ materially from those projected. The risk and uncertainties with forward-looking statements are subject to include but are not limited to the risks and other factors detailed in our press release published yesterday evening and the statement regarding forward-looking information, risk factors, and other sections of the company's foreign 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Let me now turn the call over to Fred.

Thank you, and thank you for joining us today for Stuart's second quarter 2021 earnings call, and I want to thank everybody for your interest in Stuart. Dave will take you through the details of this quarter's financial results in just a minute, but before then, I want to touch on a couple of broader points. When I began at Stewart almost two years ago, I discussed both the value of our people and brand, as well as the financial strength of our core business. Stewart clearly was not a typical turnaround story, yet significant changes were necessary. To compete effectively, we needed to focus on a strategy founded on targeted scale, operational improvement, talent upgrades, and acquisitions in core and ancillary business lines. We realized that our journey to become the premier title services company would not happen overnight, but we began to put in place the pieces necessary to build a resilient long-term success. As you know, the rebuild has been happening in the face of the pandemic and historic origination void. I want to once again applaud our associates who have worked through these challenges, but our team understands our mission and is aligned to moving fast to achieve our long-term goals while taking care of our loyal customers. I bring this up today as we deliver on record earnings because the improvements in process and investments in talent, scale, services and technologies we have made, though not complete, have begun to take hold. While we clearly benefited from extraordinary residential order activity and a nice uptick in our commercial businesses quarter, the contribution of our structural changes and operational discipline to our results is exciting to see While we are bullish on the real estate over the long term, we are realistic in our assessment that the current market will not last forever. That said, on a daily basis, we are making decisions and taking actions that will define us through the current market and the next full real estate cycle. That is what drives us, and that is what you're beginning to see in our results. I'm often asked the question, how do you appropriately quantify the changes that Stewart has made so far in our journeys? With all that we've been working on, it can at times be challenging to measure all the ways we've improved our operations by being more efficient, adding new talent, unlocking existing expertise, eliminating redundancies, rescaling operations, and embracing new and improved technology. But I feel comfortable that the picture that can lie ahead if we execute on our plan is embedded in our performance in the first half of 21. In conclusion, as always, I want to thank our associates for all their hard work and congratulate them on their results. Our journey continues and we are a quarter closer to our goals. Thank you and David now will update everybody on our results this quarter.