Yahoo Finance Stewart Information Services Corporation (NYSE:STC) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Stewart Information Services Corporation (NYSE:STC) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 27, 2024
Stewart Information Services Corporation isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Hello and thank you for joining the Stewart Information Services First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have an opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. Please note today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn today's conference over to Kath Bass, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Kathryn Bass: Thank you for joining us today for Stewart's first quarter 2024 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. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the company's press release and other filings with the SEC for a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially. During our call, we will discuss some non-GAAP measures. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures, please refer to the appendix in today's earnings release, which is available on our website at stewart.com. Let me now turn the call over to Fred.
Frederick Eppinger: Thanks, Kath, and thank you for joining us today for Stewart's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Yesterday, we released financial results for the quarter, which David will review with you. Before doing so, I'd like to share our thoughts on the current housing environment. I'll also provide updates on our core business lines and continued -- and our continued progress on important initiatives that we believe will set Stewart up for long-term success. As I've noted previously, the housing market is bouncing along the bottom. From a macro perspective, this quarter was a continuation of what we have seen in the past several quarters. Mortgage rates remain elevated, hovering just below 7% during the quarter, which has prolonged the low transaction volumes our industry is facing.
The combination of these factors, along with low sales inventory, yields an overall weak housing market. On previous calls, we shared our expectation that 2024 will be a transitional year for the industry with 2025 seeing more normal volumes of approximately 5 million units for existing home sales. Following activity this quarter, we now believe the transition has been slowed with much of the improvement pushed into 2025 and a more normal market returning in '26. I'm pleased with our progress on our strategic priorities and we continue to see share gains in most of our businesses. We remain focused on building an improved competitive position by being more efficient and having a more disciplined operating model that functions well throughout all real estate cycles.
We are dedicated to growing scale in attractive markets across all lines of our business and we have made great strides in improving the customer experience in all our channels through upgrades on our technology capabilities and operations. Attracting and retaining key talent is always important, and we have been even more focused on retaining talent through this market so that we have the right team in place as the cycle improves. In the anticipation of our growth and return to normal home sales volumes, we have also implemented technology to enhance our title production processes and are also working on utilization of technology to improve our data management and data access. This progress at more normal production levels will result in considerable improvement in our delivery costs.
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