Group Ltd., 3rd Quarter, 2026, Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Frank Fanto, and Best Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daniel. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. Joining me today are Mark Casale, Chairman and CEO, and David Weinstock, Chief Financial Officer. Also on hand for the Q&A portion of the call is Chris Curran, President of Essent Guarantee. Our press release, which contains Essent's financial results for the third quarter of 2026, was issued earlier today and is available on our website at Essingroup.com. Our press release includes non-GAAP financial measures that may be discussed during today's call. A complete description of these measures and the reconciliation to GAAP may be found in Exhibit Q of our press release and in our third quarter 2026 earnings presentation posted on our website. Prior to getting started, I would like to remind participants that today's discussions are being recorded and will include the use of forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please review the cautionary language regarding forward-looking statements in today's press release The risk factors included in our form 10-K, filed with the SEC on February 18, 2026, and any other reports and registration statements filed with the SEC, which are also available on our website. Now, let me turn the call over to Mark.

Thanks, Frank, and good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we released our third quarter 2026 financial results, which reflects solid credit performance and the continued impact of interest rates on persistency and investment income. The cash flow from our core MI business remains strong and gives us the flexibility to invest in the franchise while also returning capital to shareholders. For the third quarter of 2026, we reported net income of $163 million, or $1.82 per diluted share, representing an annualized return on average equity of approximately 12%. Our book value per share was $62.58 as of September 30th, and inclusive of common dividends has increased approximately 9% from a year ago. Turning to our MI business, our insurance and force ended September 30th at $250 billion, up 1% from a year ago. 12-month persistency was 83%, which reflects the current rate environment with over half of our in-force portfolio having a mortgage rate of 6% or lower. We expect this dynamic to continue supporting elevated persistency while portfolio growth stays muted as affordability continues to impact origination volume. Over the long term, we remain constructive on housing as favorable demographics and pent-up demand should provide foundational support to home prices and purchase origination volume. The credit quality of our insurance and force remains strong with a weighted average credit score of 747 and a weighted average original LTV of 93%. Consistent with our expectations, the portfolio default rate increased to 2.75%, reflective of seasonality and the aging of our portfolio. We continue to believe that substantial home equity embedded in our in-force book should help mitigate ultimate claims. Additionally, 95% of our insurance in-force is subject to reinsurance protection, which provides capital relief and reduces tail risk. Turning to the reinsurance segment, we expect written premiums of approximately $320 million from our P&C reinsurance activity in 2026, with roughly half earned this year at a combined ratio in the high 90s. We are currently focused on building Essent Re's P&C platform and remain disciplined with our underwriting. While mortgage risk and the related MGA business will drive the majority of the segment's earnings in the near term, we expect the P&C business to provide complementary earnings in the long term as well as capital synergy given diversification credit. Our consolidated cash and investments totaled $6.5 billion as of September 30th, and our annualized aggregate investment yield for the third quarter is 4.4%. That yield includes income from other invested assets, a portfolio of strategic investments that now totals approximately $450 million, or 7% of our total portfolio. While returns will vary from period to period, this portfolio gives us another way to deploy capital outside of our core business to generate income and grow book value. We continue to operate from a position of strength with $5.6 billion of GAAP equity, access to $1 billion of excess of loss reinsurance, and $1 billion of cash and investments at the holding companies. With trailing 12-month operating cash flow of $857 million, our franchise remains well-positioned from an earnings, cash flow, and balance sheet perspective. We remain committed to a balanced capital strategy that seeks to optimize shareholder returns over the long term while preserving flexibility for our strategic growth. Year to date through October 31st, we have purchased nearly 8 million shares for approximately $475 million. In addition, I'm pleased to announce that our board has approved a common dividend of 35 cents per share for the fourth quarter of 2026 and has also authorized a new share repurchase plan of $500 million. Now, let me turn the call over to Dave.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. Let me review our results for the quarter in a little more detail. For the third quarter, we earned $1.82 per diluted share compared to $2.08 last quarter and $1.67 in the third quarter a year ago. My comments today are going to focus primarily on the results of our mortgage insurance and reinsurance segments. There is additional information on corporate and other results in Exhibits D and E of the financial supplement. Our mortgage insurance portfolio ended the quarter with insurance in force of $250.1 billion. An increase of $342 million from June 30 and an increase of $1.3 billion compared to $248.8 billion at September 30, 2025. Persistency at September 30, 2026 was 83.3% compared to 84% at June 30, 2026. Mortgage insurance net premium earned for the third quarter of 2026 was $211 million. The average base premium rate for the mortgage insurance portfolio for the third quarter was 40 basis points, consistent with last quarter. And the average net premium rate was 34 basis points, down one basis point from last quarter. Our mortgage insurance provision for loss and loss adjustment expenses was $51.7 million in the third quarter of 2026, compared to $29.4 million in the second quarter of 2026 and $44.2 million in the third quarter a year ago. At September 30, the default rate on the mortgage insurance portfolio was 2.75%, up from 2.53% at June 30, 2026. Mortgage insurance operating expenses in the third quarter of 2026 were $31.9 million, and the expense ratio was 15.1%, compared to $31.9 million and 14.8% last quarter, and $31.2 million and 14.4% in the third quarter last year. At September 30th, Essendon Guaranty's PMIR sufficiency ratio was strong at 177%, with $1.6 billion in excess available assets. Turning to our reinsurance segment, net premiums written year-to-date through September 30th, 2026 were $330 million, compared with $49 million over the same period of 2025. Net premiums earned year-to-date 2026 were $137 million, Compare with $46 million over the same period of 2025. The increase in premiums reflects the growth in non-mortgage business from our expansion in the PNC reinsurance activity. The reinsurance combined ratio is 84.7% in the third quarter of 2026 compared to 77.9% last quarter and 19.2% a year ago. The change in the combined ratio was as expected, reflecting a difference in underwriting performance between the mortgage and non-mortgage lines and the changing business mix of the segment's premiums. The pre-tax underwriting income for the reinsurance segment predominantly reflects the underwriting results of our GSE and other mortgage risk share business, while the contribution from our P&C activity was not material. Consolidated net investment income was $63 million in the third quarter of 2026, up $1.3 million from the prior quarter. Income from other invested assets was $10.7 million in the third quarter of 2026, compared to $19.4 million last quarter and $1.8 million in the third quarter a year ago. The results this quarter again reflect the net favorable fair value adjustments on these investments. Total holding company liquidity remains strong and includes $500 million of undrawn revolver capacity under our committed credit facility. At September 30th, we had $500 million of senior unsecured notes outstanding and our debt-to-capital ratio was 8.3%. Due to date, Essent Guaranty paid $115 million of dividends to its U.S. holding company. At quarter end, Essent Guaranty's statutory capital was $3.7 billion with a risk-to-capital ratio of 8.2 to 1. Note that statutory capital includes $2.7 billion of contingency reserves at September 30th. As of October 1st, Essent Guaranty could pay additional ordinary dividends of $324 million in 2026. On October 2nd, Essent Guaranty paid a dividend to its holding company of $85 million. During the third quarter, Essent Group paid cash dividends totaling $31.1 million to shareholders, and Weaver purchased 1.1 million shares for $74.5 million. In October, Weaver purchased 802,000 shares for $50.8 million. Now let me turn the call back over to Mark.

Thanks, Dave. In closing, Essent remains a well-capitalized, high-quality franchise with strong and consistent cash flow generation. We are well-positioned to keep growing book value per share, returning capital to shareholders, and investing in opportunities that strengthen our franchise for the long term, while continuing to support affordable and sustainable homeownership. Now let's get to your questions. Operator?

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Terry Ma with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hey, thank you. Good morning. Maybe just start off with persistency. Can you help us understand what you've been seeing in the mix of MI cancellations between scheduled versus borrower-initiated? And then just looking ahead, how should we think about cancellation activity and the impact on persistency?

Yeah, hey Terry. It seems to be a popular topic this quarter amongst all the MIs. Not sure why. I would look at – I think you're focused on the right metric, Terry, because I do think there's not that many things that move the business. Persistency is one of them. So when you think just bigger picture, I know, you know, in terms of cancellation, a lot of it is going to be that 2021 book that just simply amortizes off over. It started already, but it's probably going to be peak in like 28, you know, 29. And then when you start thinking about growth, normal growth, you know, kind of consistent with this slow market, you know, I would think of persistency kind of in the 80% range. So it's fairly muted, clearly lower than we've been. But remember, we've also experienced persistency of 60%, I believe it was, in 2020 and parts of 21. So bigger picture, I really do think you have to focus it there. In terms of like MI cancellation, you know, by, you know, we actually had to look it up, right? I mean, it's not something we track day in and day out, but I mean, it's probably 37,000, you know, in the quarter. You know, 15 of those was refinance and the other 22 was cancellation. About four or five maybe, it's a little tough with the codes, was borrower initiated and the rest was just amortization. So, I mean, big picture again, Terry, the process works. It's a good, MI is a really good product and it's been around for a long time since, you know, really since almost 70 years. It's fairly effectively priced on an average Thank you for joining us. in claims over the years. So again, good product. I know there's a lot of kind of clearly emphasis on MI cancellation and clearly you want to make the process. We're always what's best about for the borrower. So if there's ways in the future working with the GSEs and working with FHA to kind of ease the friction, we're supportive and we'll work with them to do that.

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And then maybe just a quick housekeeping question. Just on the current period provision for the quarter, the $81 million on MI, anything to kind of call out or unpack there? It's quite a bit higher than we were expecting. Thank you.

Hey, Terry. It's Dave Weinstock. Really, I think when you look at our provision, I think one of the things that's really driving is that the average loan size is increasing. So when you look, you know, when you look at our supplement, and specifically if you look at Exhibit M, which kind of looks at reserves per bucket, we're reserving pretty much the same way we always have. Our reserve methodology hasn't changed. The loans that we're insuring have grown. I would say in the past 18 months, they've probably grown from an average of like, you know, $300,000 to now to about $400,000. So that's going to be, you know, what's increasing the loan size and the risk and force, and it's going to increase the dollar of our provision. But overall, I think that's what you're seeing.

Yeah, and I mean, sorry, again, I think it's a good question, and I agree with Dave. The severity, just the bigger loans are going to hike the provision up. at the end of the day it's really going to be about unemployment so I mean a lot of these still have to roll the claim if they do you know clearly the pre-22 book has a lot of building equity it will be it's going to be I would say the post-22 book is really the more normal so you're going to see we're seeing higher severities that's really the business I wouldn't really look at 2021 as the business that was really an anomaly that's starting to work its way out And if you begin thinking longer term or from a modeling perspective, Terry, we've always said kind of we expect 2 to 3 percent claim rate. That's what we price for. And then in terms of combined ratio, kind of in that 35 to 45 ratio. So this is, you know, I don't want to say it's always within our expectations, but it doesn't really surprise us. And I still think just look at our cash flow. over the past 12 months, still in excess of $800 million. So not a lot of cash is leaving the company yet. I mean, again, we'll start paying more claims over time, but I do think what you're seeing is a normal MI business, and based on that, it's still pretty good.

Got it. Super helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Harder with BTIG. Your line is open.

Thanks and good morning. I'm hoping you could just talk about your view on competition. You know, you guys continue to kind of be slightly below a pro-rata market share, you know, and just kind of how you think, you know, what that tells us about your view of, you know, the risk-adjusted returns in the market.

Hey, Doug. Welcome back. Nice to have you back on the calls. I would say the competitive market is still pretty similar. We haven't seen much of a change. I think for us we always do, we probably fall back a lot on the unit economics and we tend to look at our earned premium, base premiums a little bit higher than the industry. We focus a little bit on that and we like to do It's a small market, Doug, so we'd love to be one of six, so a little bit higher on the share, but we're not particularly concerned given the smaller nature of the market, and we're kind of using this opportunity to test a lot of things. We'll test pricing. Remember S&Edge, which is really our credit engine and does help us, and we can get into that a little bit more just in terms of advantage, but it really helps us kind of connect We're really looking at our estimated claim rates. We'll test geographies, we'll test lenders, we'll test certain tails. It's working as well as we'd like. Sometimes we know we may sacrifice a little bit of volume for that, but I think longer term, given the small nature of the market, we're not particularly concerned. In terms of the competitive environment, I would look at it as every MI seems to have their own buy box, right? Some like lower LTVs, some like higher credits, some like certain geographies, certain lenders. But I do think it kind of balances out in the end. So I wouldn't read too much into our kind of take on the market because we're a little bit lower.

I appreciate that, Mark. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe I'll just start with something you just mentioned there, Mark, about Vantage and Essendedge. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sure. I mean, I think, you know, Vantage is coming into the market and it's not very big right now. I mean, here it's probably Less than 5% of our originations. I don't think it's going to impact the MI industry that much. I think it's going to impact the MBS buyers and certain buyers of loans more because they're so focused on FICO. But I think when we look at it, FICO, FICO 10T, VS4, the GSEs are looking at posting their scores. I think our advantage with Edge is we're looking at the raw credit data. So we're coming up with our own score. So we're agnostic to kind of, you know, we use it, you know, we'll impact those scores, but it's not really driving our ultimate claim rate. And anything we're on the card with, you know, clearly that's going to go Vantage or FICO depending on the lender. We also run that through Edge on the back end. So we feel like we have a real good common denominator. And we may start disclosing that over time. We'll see how it goes, but it'll at least give investors what our view is on credit and the ups and downs. I think from a bigger picture, I think with Vantage, you could see a little bit of pricing compression if they start to pick the best of all. And I would be surprised if the industry doesn't respond and raise pricing a little bit. I mean, you're talking like a basis point or two. It's not big dollars, but I'd be surprised if the industry doesn't react. I think on the other hand, I do think you may see a larger market. I would believe, especially if there's some inflation... You could see FHA borrowers migrate to conventional, which I think, again, if that's better for the borrower, that's good. So I think net-net is probably a positive for the industry, you know, over the next year or two. Got it.

The other question I had was just in terms of insurance-enforced growth at current market size, right? I mean, if you think about 80% persistency you have, 50%, I guess, approximately 50 billion running off each year. And IW is running about that same level. Should we expect insurance inflows to be flat or even down next year?

Well, it's hard. It's tough for me to say right now. I do say that it has been relatively flat. I mean, we're entering 27, kind of the fifth plus year of just a flat market. So I think given where rates were, we were able to grow insurance and force a little bit over the past few years. I wouldn't be surprised if it flattens out a bit. That being said, Mihir, I do think we're levered more for the upside. I do. I think when you think about where housing's been relatively stagnant and we can talk all day long about demographics, but I do believe there's a pent up demand for housing and kind of the longer This kind of slowness hangs around the larger the snapback will be. So bigger picture, look at a trillion six of industry in force for the whole industry. I wouldn't be surprised to see that grow to two. Not next year or not, but let's say over a certain period of time, again, take our share. So I do think growth will resume. And I don't think You know, and I don't think a lot of investors see that. And that's fine, right? It's hard in this environment. But I do think we have that kind of growth because housing will come back. It always does. It always resumes. It'll grow in line with GDP. Just you have to think through why it's not growing. And part of it was 2021 was such an anomaly. We literally pulled five, six years worth of growth into one year or two years. Home prices up 50 percent in two years. It's just not normal. So now you're seeing more of the normalization. So we're flattening out. We're fortunate as a company that because of the persistency in the benign credit environment, we're still driving a lot of cash flow to the bottom line. But some of the other participants, the transaction-oriented businesses, it's less so. But I do think we kind of look at it internally as we're paid to wait in the way we're kind of managing capital over time because remember insurance in force if it doesn't grow the capital needed to support it doesn't grow so that becomes you know free cash flow which again we've used predominantly the last 18 plus months to repurchase shares which we think that you know right now is a pretty good use of proceeds you know for the company.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Roland Mayer with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning and thank you for the time. Mark, I think you said in response to a question that you price for a two to three percent claims rate, but then you still book new notices and much higher figure than that. What would it take to close the gap?

Well, remember, when we book new notices, that's not what our ultimate, you know, these things roll. So that's our initial claim rate, 2% to 3% rolls at the end. So it's kind of apples and oranges. So think of it, again, as the ultimate claim rate. So just picture you in economics, right? So premium rate, net premium rate, kind of loss rate, which is your claim rate, that's kind of your kind of return on asset. Then you have your expenses and your investment income. It's relatively straightforward. But I do think The claim rate historically for us has been less than 1%. We're pleased with it, but normally you're going to have to look in that 2% to 3% range. Hence, when you run through the map, that gets you to that 35% to 45% combined ratio. I do think that's a good guide. 35% to 45% combined ratio, 80-ish persistency longer term is actually a good guide as you start to model this stuff out.

Thank you. That's helpful. And then I guess from a competitive dynamic, we've seen a lot of multi-year quota share deals announced in the industry at fairly cheap costs of capital. Do you expect that to drive any change in pricing decisions as a result of the improved reinsurance dynamics?

Great, great question. I don't know. We don't do it. I mean, we look at it, we price on an unlevered basis. We do not take The reinsurance cost and rotate that back into the front end. And part of it is just how the market works, right? I mean, there's only six participants. So if you use that to lower price, it's easily matched. And I'd be surprised if the other participants use it that way, too, because it's really just reducing premium in the industry. So I think what we would do, the way we look at it, is we'll price for kind of an unlevered return. And anything that is, you know, We've seen a few participants go three years, which again speaks to the demand for reinsurance and MI. There's really not a lot of GSE reinsurance, so we're kind of the only game in town. We like it and we think it's a great tool, but I would remind you that we do like capital too. I think reinsurance protects you in the event of a lower, call it higher unemployment, more losses. Reinsurance clearly protects you. Capital lets you take advantage of those types of situations. I'll give you the example. It's dated now, but in 2020, and we talked earlier we were the lowest in market share you know but in 2020 we were we've only been number one in market share twice in our history and both times were in 2020 uh the second and third quarter when we had uh we went out and had raised capital in May we had a lot of capital we wrote I think we had a 20 percent handle one and part of it was because some of the you know there wasn't you know there wasn't as much capital uh around the industry and there's a little bit of a shock event we took advantage of it so Again, I think you have to look at it both ways. Reinsurance is a great tool. It's really part of our, when we think about buy, manage, and distribute, it's a key piece of it. But when you think about capital longer term, you also have to worry about the tail. So when we think about how do we think about excess capital, clearly, insurance and force isn't growing. We have a lot of excess capital. Could we use it for You know, opportunities outside of the core, relatively small. We'd love to plow it back into the core business. And then we look and say, how much do we need in an event? So remember, we hold first loss. We really hedge out against the Mez. You know, we reattach at the top. So for our business, Roland, I know you cover the PNC market. A cat event for us is a severe macroeconomic recession. You know, what's the probability of that happening in the next Two to five years, probably pretty low, not zero. So I think we've been through it. I've managed through the GOC. I've been through the subprime crisis of the late 90s. You know, we've seen the movie before. So we like, you know, we think having dry powder to take advantage of an event. And also when you think about just the, you know, kind of the price of the, it's a call option, right? I mean, so the price of holding on that additional capital we actually think is relatively cheap. versus returning all of the shareholders. I think for us, from a capital return, we're going to be in excess of 100% this year. We bought back 10% of the company last year. Wouldn't be surprised if we're close to that this year. Again, I think we're fortunate in terms of how much capital we're generating. I think we're using most of it to buy back capital, so we think that's the best use of funds now, but we're still retaining a little bit. We like to have dry powder, either for an opportunity that presents itself on on the offensive nature or just being defensive.

Thank you. And then if I could just sneak in one more. We're coming up on 1-1 renewals here. Is there any interest in expanding the P&C appetite? And can you discuss your premium expectations there?

Yeah, I mean, I think we're clearly in conversations now with Lloyd's around, you know, kind of our funds at Lloyd's commitments. I think there's a few where we'd like to increase our allocation. There's one or two we're going to decline. because they're using 100% FAO, there's not a lot of alignment. The key there is to continue to test. We talked about testing. We're continuing to test the market. We like our approach with Lloyd's. It's clearly different We'll see how it goes. A lot of the submissions are coming in, but It's really the same unit economics kind of framework that we have on the MI side. So we're looking at it. We're building out the infrastructure. But I'll give you a lot more color in February. It's a little early to tell because we're just starting to see it. But again, lots of capital floating out there. We don't need to kind of push on growth there for the sake of growth.

All right. Thank you for the answers.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Again, please press star one one to ask a question. Our next question comes from both George with KBW. Your line is open.

Hey, everyone. Good morning. Just a couple of bookkeeping questions for me. What was the share repurchase activity just in October?

Yeah, those it was. About 50 million shares. Let me just pull it back up. Yeah, about 51 million shares for a little over $800,000. Okay, great.

And then, actually, in terms of the tax rate, it was up a little bit.

I got it backwards. Let me correct that. I read it backwards. 802,000 shares for about $51 million. Makes more sense.

Yes. Great. Thanks. And then the tax rate. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. On the tax rate, what's a good number going forward? It was up a little bit. Is it more flattish going forward?

Yeah, I would. I would. I mean, Dave can kick in, but I would think kind of I would guide a little higher bows. I mean, that's kind of 17 ish, maybe even 18 ish. Just remember the friction costs we have. from getting it from the U.S. to Bermuda. So there's a 5% withholding tax, so you can kind of do the weightings, but I'd be a little conservative there if I were you.

Okay, great. And then actually just one more. The other income line item, just to confirm, that's the GSE CRT business, right?

Actually, other income for MI this quarter, which had a little bit of an increase. As we've disclosed, with our ILN transactions, there's a little bit of an accounting nuance there where we have an embedded derivative, or the literature says we have an embedded derivative in those ILN transactions. We mark them to market every quarter. We did have a transaction terminate in the third quarter, which released a liability and ultimately flowed into income. So that's what you're seeing there. We have that disclosed in the financial supplement. Not something you see every quarter at that magnitude, but that's really what you're seeing.

Okay, great. And so the CRT stuff goes through the regular premium line?

The CRT business and Ray will go to the premium. That's right.

Okay. Great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Rick Shane with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions this morning. Look, we see defaults picking up and some of that is seasonality and some of that is I am curious where you guys sort of think we are from a cyclical perspective and can you give us any characterization of the defaults that emerge during the third quarter so we can think about cures or risk associated with them?

Yeah, hey Rick, I still don't, we don't see really any trends. I mean the defaults are up so they're close to 22,000 I do, and we sound like a broken record here, but when the book's 40 months old and these guys have been around for a while, some of them are going to default a little bit more. The newer book, this 23, 24, 25 book, I just think it's not as good as the earlier book. You're going to see, as Dave said, larger loan sizes, so some of it's coming through that in terms of their provision. We don't really see it. You know, we look all the time, right? So you're looking at defaults and you're looking at it. There's a couple ways you have to look at it clearly by geography, right? Given where home prices could be up and down. You're looking at it by lender. You also have to look at it by servicer. And that's something you have to be, you know, I think investors have to be cognizant of if there is a downturn, you know, can the servicer actually collect the payments from the borrower? And that's going to be critical. We're not seeing much. And again, I would always tie it back to unemployment. As always, I appreciate the transparency, Mark. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeffrey Dunn with Dowling & Partners. Your line is open. Thanks. Good morning.

Unit economics are double-digit, but when we consider the necessary capital buffer, Mark, do you think MI is a double-digit return business in a normalized market?

Yes, yeah, firmly. I mean, again, don't confuse unit economics with our balance sheet. I would look, we firmly think it's 12% to 15%. That's our hurdle. It's also the hurdle with strategic investments as we put money to work there. It's clearly the hurdle at S&RE. It's the hurdle at title, and quite frankly, title is not hitting that hurdle because of where rates are. I think, again, that the lag between our unit economics and the business is really just the capital we're holding on the balance sheet. And again, Jeff, we just think that's a relatively cheap option to hold. And so it's probably a couple points in terms of excess capital that we're holding. But again, given Given where we are in the market and just our experience, you know, we're perfectly comfortable holding that capital. And meanwhile, we're still returning a lot to shareholders, but hopefully that helps you. Thanks very much.

Appreciate it. And then I apologize. I got the October buyback, but missed the quarter's buyback too.

Yeah, Jeff, so for the quarter, we repurchased about 1.1 million shares for $74 million. That was for the third quarter.

Yeah, pretty light in the quarter, Jeff. I wouldn't read too much into it. I think we kind of look at it more on a yearly basis. I think we bought a lot back in the second quarter. And again, I think it's public, but I think we bought back one million shares at like $56 in June. You know, someone just had to dump the shares, and I think it was the week that Google was raising their $84 billion, and people were looking so... We like to take advantage of those things. And again, if you look at the bigger picture, we continue to grow book value per share. We've grown it whatever since the IPO, 17%, 18%. The stock looks like a bad EKG in terms of the performance. It goes up, but it's pretty volatile. And I think our view is we like to continue Thank you.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to management for closing remarks.

I'd like to thank everyone for joining today. Excellent questions and have a great weekend.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating you may now disconnect.