Raymond Quirk
Analyst · Barclays. Please go ahead
Thank you, Bill. As Bill mentioned, this fourth quarter was a solid finish to 2015 for our title business, as we again led the title industry with a 13.8% pre-tax title margin. The commercial market remains very strong with record fourth quarter and full year 2015 revenue. The purchase market showed continued growth, as our open and closed purchase orders grew by approximately 8% for the fourth quarter and full year 2015. Refinance activity declined somewhat during the fourth quarter, although with the recent market volatility and decline in rates, refinance volumes have the potential to be more stable than most would have expected as we head into 2016. We also had somewhat higher personnel costs in the fourth quarter due to the TRID implementation efforts. As we go through the fourth quarter, we're able to enact a more significant seasonal staffing reduction, as the real estate mortgage systems became more comfortable with the new TRID-driven disclosure and closing procedures. For the fourth quarter, we were able to reduce head count by 350 positions with 180 or more than 50% of those reductions coming in the month of December, as all parties continued to become more comfortable with the new closing process. We expect the personnel expense impact from TRID to continue to decline in the first quarter and have a smaller impact on our first quarter operations and financial results. For the fourth quarter, total open orders averaged approximately 7,000 orders per day, with October the strongest at 7,600 orders; November at 7,400 orders; and December at a seasonally lower 6,000 orders. FNTG purchase orders opened and closed in the fourth quarter both increased by approximately 9%. The mix towards purchase transactions was approximately 55% for open orders and 52% for closed orders during the quarter. For the month of January, total open orders per day bounced back to average approximately 7,300 orders per day, and FNTG purchase-related open orders increased by 3% on a per-day basis versus 2015. We had another very strong quarter in our commercial business generating $303 million of total commercial revenue, an 11% increase over the fourth quarter of 2014. As we only began tracking total local commercial orders and fee per file in January of 2015, we are not able to compare those total metrics to the prior year. However, national commercial revenue of $183 million increased by approximately 10%, as the fee per file grew by 4% and closed orders increased by 6%. For full year 2015, total commercial revenue was more than $1 billion, a 20% increase over full year 2014. As you can tell from those growth numbers, fourth quarter total commercial revenue growth was 11%. It was lower than the full year 20% growth figure. We are comfortable with slower growth in the commercial market as we can generate significant profits from any commercial market that is close to what we have today. The total fee per file of $2,272 increased by 7% versus the fourth quarter of 2014, as the mix shifted to slightly more purchase closings in the fourth quarter versus the prior year period and the strong commercial fee per file provided a benefit as well. Let me now turn the call over to Tony Park to review the financial highlights.