Stewart Information Services Corporation

Hello, and thank you for joining the Steward Information Services second quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have an opportunity to ask a question during the question and answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. Please note, today's call is being recorded. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It is now my pleasure to turn today's conference over to Brian Glaze, Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Shelby. Thank you for joining us today for Stewart's second quarter 2022 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 Heise. To listen online, please go to Stewart.com website to access the link for this conference call. Our renowned participants at 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 risks and uncertainties 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 in the statements regarding forward-looking information, risk factors, and other sections of the company's Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Let me now turn the call over to Brad.

Thank you for joining us today for Stuart's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. David will go over the quarterly financial results in a minute, but before that, I'd like to cover our overall view of Stuart and our position in the current market. As I have discussed before, much of the work here at Stuart over the last two years has focused on restructuring, refocusing, and rebuilding the company's operations to better position ourselves to be a more successful and resilient company that ultimately can become to what we refer to as the premier title services company. The goal is to create a sustainable business that performs through all types of real estate cycles and economic conditions. We have focused on improving margins, generating growth, and creating a stronger competitive position by improving our scale, improving our operational capabilities, and our financial discipline. As part of our journey, we have focused on enhancing the customer experience through technology investments that have meaningfully changed our ease of use and expanded our product offerings in our agency, lender, and direct business. I am pleased with the progress we made and demonstrated in the second quarter. as we maintain strong margins and continue to make progress on our operating priorities in a more challenging market. We have seen the market transition to a higher interest rate environment. The interest rate increases have put significant pressure on refinance transactions, which we have been historically less dependent on, and to a lesser extent, purchase transactions, and we expect that the current environment will continue throughout the second half of 2022. While the more challenging environments do it because of our significant improvement, it's well prepared to successfully manage through these market changes. I'd like to emphasize that even though the market has transitioned, our journey continues. We remain focused on our structural improvement, attaining critical scale and priority markets, aided by leading technology support and innovation to drive superior and consistent service delivery to our customers. To achieve our goal of becoming the premier title services company, we recognize that we must continue to make thoughtful investments, even in this environment. In our direct operation, shared growth remains our important goal and our overall strategy in target MSA markets. Over the last couple of years, we have focused on more than 20 regional title companies, acquisitions of 20 regional title companies, and are always evaluating opportunities to deploy available capital. We are hard at work integrating these acquisitions into our production and other systems to improve the customer experience as well as improve the overall operating efficiencies that we will be building over the last few years. Above all, we are managing our business in a disciplined way given the current environment. That never stops. In our agency business, we have made significant progress on our deployment of technology and service that provide greater connectivity, ease of use, and risk reduction for our agent partners. As the industry accelerates the implementation of online and paperless transactions, we are identifying ways to better support our agents as they undergo the critical transition. We believe our opportunity to grow scale in our growth markets and improve our share with winning independent agents is on a very solid path forward. We are seeing revenue growth in our commercial operations, and we are investing in these operations for the future as they are an important component of our overall strategy. We are optimistic regarding the commercial markets overall, although the tougher capital markets may create some temporary headwinds in some parts of the country. To be clear, there is more work to be done as we maintain our focus on growing and enhancing our competitive position, improving scale, and operating capabilities. We recognize that maintaining customer service levels, a fundamental part of who Stuart is, while also managing expenses is more important than ever. Even in the changing market conditions, we still see opportunities to invest and grow share in our target market, allowing us to profitably grow throughout the cycle. Let me just finish by reiterating my positive long-term view of the real estate market and our ability to continue to grow and become the premier title services company. I would also like to thank our associates for all their hard work and our customers for their continued support. David will now update everyone on the results.