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The First American Corp. Q4 2007 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-03-04 02:44:43.0

Tags: First American Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Darrin Peller, Lehman brothers.

Darrin Peller - Lehman brothers

Thank you. The higher reserves level, the higher plan? your provision number being up I think it was about $122 million that you classified as an excess reserve or reserve build. I think you commented it was associated with more of the '02 through '04 years. I guess can you? I am sorry, '04 through '06 years. Can you comment on now where you think your reserve is both for those years? I mean are you actually now reserved at around 7.5% for those years? And then, also on the prior years, it looks like you laid out the claims between 4% to 5%? or maybe 4% to 6%. Do you think those might need some sort of reserve build in the future?

Frank V. McMahon - Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer

Darrin, it's Frank McMahon. I don't know if you've seen our slide presentation, but we had given the ultimate loss ratios by policy year.

Darrin Peller - Lehman brothers

Yes, I’m looking at that.

Frank V. McMahon - Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer

I had indicated that a very significant amount of that strengthening, close to 90% related to '04, '05 and '06 with a big... large component of that 90% being '05 and '06. So we’ve provided the ultimate and I would just caution you though, when you do those comparisons understand that the denominator is different for different companies. So you can't compare our ultimates to Fidelity unless you add?

Darrin Peller - Lehman brothers

That's correct.

Frank V. McMahon - Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer

You have to take their escrow revenue and add it to their denominator. So... but what we have shown is ultimate loss ratios for 2006 is 7%, for 2005 is 7.8% and for 2004 is 6.2% and we believe those compare favorably to other industry participants.

Darrin Peller - Lehman brothers

Right. Thanks, I saw that. But the data that shows the '03, '02, ’01 years still shows losses at about 4.6%, 4.8%, 5.4%. I guess the question is, so far that's 4.6 and 5.4, etcetera, but? I mean as we have seen in the past the '04 through '06 years came up I think for Fidelity National about two quarters ago or one quarter, they had a reserve build because of those years... those earlier years. And so are you being prudent about those now with your reserves or should we expect to see something down the road with those? with regards to bringing higher provisions for those years?

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