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Text: Joining us today on the call will be our Chief Executive Officer, Dennis Gilmore; our President, Ken DeGiorgio; and Mark Seaton, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
First American has again delivered outstanding financial results.
All of our core businesses continue to perform well, and we've made progress on a number of strategic initiatives.
Today, I'll discuss a few of those initiatives, and then Ken will provide an update on our current order trends and business outlook.
And Mark will conclude by providing details on our third quarter results.
As I said before and it's worth repeating, First American is laser-focused on innovation.
As real estate transactions become increasingly digital, we are leveraging our unique data assets and technology to enhance the customer experience and to make the settlement process more efficient for all parties.
One of our largest initiatives was the launch of Endpoint in 2018.
While Endpoint is wholly owned by First American, it is by design also a native digital start-up committed to reimagining the closing experience for buyers, sellers and real estate professionals.
Endpoint has captured a 3% market share in its initial market of Seattle, and currently operates in 11 additional markets across California, Texas and Arizona, and we plan to add more markets in the near future.
A major factor in Endpoint's success has been its ability to track world-class tech talent.
Endpoint has approximately 100 product managers, engineers and designers and plans on doubling the team over the next 12 months.
Fully embracing the tech ethic of continuous improvement, Endpoint often releases enhancements to its technology designed to further improve efficiency.
As a result, Endpoint is increasingly becoming the first choice of digital-forward companies, including those in the PropTech ecosystem.
Given this track record earlier this week, we announced an additional $150 million commitment to Endpoint.
Endpoint will use these funds to continue to hire the best tech professionals, further improve the digital closing experience and expand its capabilities for PropTech companies and digitally forward real estate professionals.
We are about to close on our previously announced acquisition of ServiceMac, an innovative mortgage subservicer with unique solutions.
Founded in 2017, ServiceMac will complement our title and closing operations and over to nine will add assets to our Trust Bank and will enhance our ability to provide additional offerings to lenders and servicers.
Turning to our venture portfolio.
We continue to believe our investment strategy is creating both value strategically and financially.
We've made direct investments in 16 companies in the PropTech ecosystem.
Through these investments, we have gained valuable insights to these companies, many of which have become strategic partners.
Financially, our investments generated $278 million of gains this quarter led by OfferPad, which went public via SPAC in September.
Based on the strength of the real estate markets and our strategic position as an innovator in the title and settlement space, in August, we announced an 11% increase in our dividend, and our Board also approved an additional $300 million share repurchase authorization.
As you mentioned, our business continues to perform well.
And with a strong real estate market, we expect these trends to continue.
So far in October, commercial orders are up 14% over prior year.
And while our residential purchase orders at 2,000 per day are down 7% compared to an unusually strong October 2020, they are up 11% compared to October of 2019.
As expected, due to the recent uptick in mortgage rates, refinance orders have fallen from 1,700 per day in September to 1,500 per day in October.
That said, our outlook for the remainder of this year and into the next is positive.
The housing market remains healthy and although home price appreciation is expected to moderate, which will impact the growth in average revenue per order we've experienced recently.
We expect purchase volumes to continue to grow as demand remains strong and more supply comes on to the market.
Our commercial business continues to experience an elevated amount of activity as deals that were delayed in 2020 due to the pandemic are now closing, and we believe uncertainty around tax law changes could be pulling certain deals forward into this year.
Despite these tax uncertainties, we expect that a favorable economic backdrop and relatively low interest rates will deliver another strong year in commercial in 2022.
While we expect residential refinance volumes to continue to decline as mortgage rates increase, we believe we will be able to offset this decline with increased investment income generated by our bank and from escrow deposits.
During the last cycle, growth in investment income more than offset the decline in refinance revenue.
We're pleased to report excellent results this quarter.
We earned $4 per diluted share.
Included in this quarter's results were $1.85 of net realized investment gains.
Excluding these gains, we earned $2.15 per diluted share.
I'll start with our title business.
Revenue in our title segment was $2.1 billion, up 21% compared with the same quarter of 2020 due to the strength of the purchase in commercial markets.
Purchase revenue was up 9%, driven by a 12% increase in the average revenue per order.
Commercial revenue was a record $262 million, an 84% increase over last year.
Large deals are up as we closed 89 transactions in the U.S. with premium greater than $250,000, up from 31 last year.
We continue to expect a record year in our commercial business.
Refinance revenue declined 36% relative to last year as mortgage rates have risen since the beginning of the year.
In the agency business, revenue was a record $999 million, up 38% from last year.
Given the reporting lag in agent revenues of approximately one quarter, we are experiencing a surge in remittances related to Q2 economic activity.
Our information and other revenues were $308 million, up 9% relative to last year.
Revenue growth was primarily due to higher demand for the company's title information and loss mitigation products.
Investment income within the Title Insurance and Services segment was $50 million, up 11%, primarily due to higher average balances in the company's investment portfolio.
In our title segment, pre-tax margin was 16.4%.
Turning to the Specialty Insurance segment.
Revenue in our home warranty business totaled $108 million, up 7% compared with last year.
Pretax income in home warranty was $9 million, up from $4 million in the prior year.
The loss rate in home warranty has fallen from 64% to 57% as we believe many of the factors that triggered elevated claims at the onset of the pandemic are reversing.
Our property and casualty business had a pre-tax loss of $11 million this quarter.
At the end of the third quarter, our policies-in-force have declined by 40% since 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 25.3%, higher than our normalized tax rate of 24% due to higher state taxes related to investment gains realized in the quarter.
As Dennis mentioned in his remarks, we've made direct investments in 16 venture-backed companies in the PropTech industry.
The $292 million of capital we've invested into this effort had a market value of $669 million as of September 30.
This quarter, we recorded $278 million of gains related to our venture investments.
The largest gain was from our investment in OfferPad, an iBuyer that recently merged with the SPAC.
During the quarter, we recognized a $195 million gain related to OfferPad.
This investment is subject to a high degree of market volatility, and we expect -- that we expect to impact our quarterly results.
In addition to OfferPad, we also realized a combined $79 million of gains related to our investments in Orchard, a company simplifying home buying and selling; Sundae, a real estate marketplace for sellers of dated or damaged property; and Pacaso, a platform enabling people to buy and coal in the second home.
Beginning this quarter, we have moved all our venture-related activity to our corporate segment.
Prior to the third quarter, realized investment gains from our venture portfolio were recorded in the Title Insurance segment.
In the third quarter, we increased our share repurchase authorization by $300 million and had $463 million remaining on our authorization as of September 30.
During the quarter, we repurchased 208,700 shares for a total of $14 million at an average price of $67.37.
Cash flow from operations was $399 million in the third quarter, up 27% from the prior year.
In addition, we raised $650 million of a 10-year senior notes at a 2.4% interest rate.
We expect to use our cash on hand to fund acquisitions in our core title and settlement business in adjacent markets, invest in innovative solutions such as Endpoint and return capital to shareholders.
Our debt-to-capital ratio as of September 30 was 28.5% or 22.7%, excluding secured financings payable, slightly higher than our target ratio of 18% to 20%.

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q3 earnings per share $2.15 excluding items.

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