You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: Joining us today will be our Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Gilmore; and Mark Seaton, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
All of our core businesses are producing strong financial results and we are optimistic that 2021 will be an outstanding year for First American.
Today I will focus my comments on the progress we are making on a number of key strategic initiatives, and Mark will then provide details on our second quarter results.
The process of buying a home is complex and involves multiple parties.
First American sits at the center of the transaction, coordinating among realtors, lenders and consumers to protect the integrity of the process.
As the transactions become increasingly digital, First American is focused on leveraging our unique property data and technology to enhance the customer experience which make the process more efficient and secure for all parties.
First American's data assets and process expertise provide a unique competitive advantage.
Last quarter, we announced our initiative to expand our title plants from 500 to 1500.
By building an additional 1000 plants our databases will cover approximately 80% of all real estate transactions.
We've made significant progress since our launch, we are currently up to 850 plants and are on track to achieve our goal of 1500 by the year end.
These additional plants are currently being built on a go-forward basis and will accrue significant benefits to us in the years to come as our historical content becomes deeper and richer.
Due to our patented extraction process, First American is in a unique position to build these plants at a fraction of our historical cost.
Plus we are now capturing virtually every data point on 7.5 million documents per month up than 5 million last quarter, data that can be leveraged to automate title underwriting decisions and geographic areas that were previously done manually.
In addition to our data leadership, we are focused on developing digital solutions to improve the customer experience.
Across the enterprise, we are developing next-generation cloud-based technology to make it even easier for our customers to do business with us.
For example, our direct division recently launched IgniteRE, a platform that provides real estate professionals with enhanced productivity tools and enables them to manage transactions from open to close with buyers, sellers and settlement agents with secure environment.
IgniteRE and ClarityFirst, which we discussed last quarter, are two examples of technology investments we've made to strengthen our competitive edge and more will follow.
Both platforms make it easier to work with us and expand our customer relationships.
To support our technology initiatives, we acquired a 130 product managers, designers and engineers so far this year.
These critical hires reflect our commitment to expand our position as the industry leading innovator.
Turning to our venture strategy.
Since 2019, we've invested $260 million in venture-backed companies in the proptech ecosystem.
These investments give us insight into a high growth technology companies, most of which have become strategic partners.
In addition to providing strategic benefit they are contributing to profits as well.
Venture investments will continue to be a component of our capital allocation strategy.
In closing, I'm confident that 2021 will be another strong year for First American.
All of our core divisions are performing well and we have a healthy pipeline of business heading into the second half of the year.
Our balance sheet is strong and our strategy of focusing on data and technology to enhance the customer experience will continue to succeed.
We're pleased to report excellent results this quarter.
We earned $2.72 per diluted share.
Included in this quarter's results were $0.59 of net realized investment gains.
Excluding these gains, we earned $2.13 per diluted share.
I'll start with our title business.
Revenue in our Title segment was $2.1 billion, up 44% compared with the same quarter of 2020 due to the strength of the purchase and commercial markets.
Purchase revenue was up 66% driven by a 43% increase in the number of closed orders coupled with a 16% increase in the average revenue per order.
Commercial revenue was $223 million, a 104% increase over last year.
Large transactions have resumed as we closed 54 transactions in the U.S. with premiums greater than $250,000, up from just 12 last year.
This year, we expect a record year in our commercial business.
Refinance revenue declined 23% relative to last year as the rise in mortgage rates that occurred during the first quarter put pressure on second quarter closings.
On the agency side, revenue was a record $905 million, up 51% from last year.
Given the reporting lag in agent revenues of approximately 1 quarter, we are experiencing a surge in remittances related to Q1 economic activity.
Our information and other revenues were $298 million, up 31% relative to last year.
Revenue growth was primarily due to higher demand for the Company's title information products in our data and analytics, commercial and loss mitigation business lines.
Investment income within the Title Insurance and services segment was $47 million, up 10%, primarily due to higher interest income from the company's warehouse lending business and higher average balances in the company's investment portfolio, partially offset by the impact of the decline in short-term interest rates on the company's tax deferred property exchange and escrow balances.
In our Title segment, pre-tax margin was a record 19.1% excluding the impact of net realized investment gains, pre-tax margin was 15.3%.
Turning to the Specialty Insurance segment.
Pretax earnings totaled $20 million, up from $7 million in 2020.
Revenue in our home warranty business totaled $108 million, up 10% compared with last year.
Pretax income in our home warranty business was $14 million, a decline of 13% in part due to elevated claims expense.
Our property and casualty business generated a pre-tax income of $6 million this quarter.
Included in this quarter's results were the $12 million gain on the sale of our agency operations.
At the end of the second quarter our policies in force have declined by 22% at the beginning of the year and we expect a 70% decline by year-end.
The full wind down of the property and casualty business is on track to be completed in the third quarter of 2022.
The effective tax rate for the quarter was 24% in line with our normalized tax rate.
Cash flow from operations was $253 million in the second quarter, down from $344 million in the prior year, due primarily to the deferral of estimated tax payments allowed by taxing authorities during the height of pandemic in 2020.
With respect to this information security incident, as we previously disclosed, we reached a settlement with the SEC for $487,616.
The New York Department of Financial Services matter remains ongoing.
We continue to believe that it along with all other matters relating to the incident will be immaterial.
As Dennis mentioned in his remarks, we've invested a total of $260 million in venture-backed companies.
This quarter we recorded a $44 million gain related to our investment side, a real estate SaaS company that serves real estate agents, teams and brokers.
Our largest investment has been in OfferPad an iBuyer that is now party to a merger with the SPAC, which recently announced that the value of the aggregate equity consideration to be paid to OfferPad stockholders and option holders will be equal to $2.25 billion.
At that valuation, we would expect to book a gain of approximately $237 million on our $85 million equity investment.
We expect this merger to close later this year.
Due to the growth of our venture portfolio, we have expanded disclosures in our Form 10-Q, which we expect to file later today.
These disclosures will include the cost, unrealized gains and carrying amount of our non-marketable equity securities, as well as information on concentration of these securities.
We remain optimistic about our 2021 outlook.
Although refinance orders have declined corresponding to an increase in mortgage rates, the purchase and commercial markets remain strong.
Our claims experience is favorable and the general improvement in economy to tailwind into our business.

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first american financial q2 earnings per share $2.72.
q2 earnings per share $2.72.

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