FIDELITY NATIONAL FINANCIAL, INC. (FNF): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $45.78, FIDELITY NATIONAL FINANCIAL, INC. (FNF) is priced for 13.1% return on equity. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-07-26.

Generated: 2026-09-07 · Exported: 2026-09-09 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/FNF

Headline

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

Solve inputs: computed at a 9.5% cost of equity with 4% terminal growth over a 10-year stage, on common book equity (FY2026).

How unusual the bet is: within-range

Valuation X-Ray

Asset, earnings-power and peer-multiple models all land far below the price; ONLY the growth-DCF reaches it. The bet is durable compounding the static frames structurally cannot price (a moat/durability premium).

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

Families that justify the price: Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 7.9%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=5)

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

The issuer is a funded financial business. Debt, interest, and cash flows are operating inputs, so industrial EV, net-debt, WACC, and free-cash-flow lenses do not apply; value the common-equity claim with book, earnings, capital, and payout economics.

No unit-level total common-equity value is stated. Each financial unit requires supported standalone common equity, normalized earnings, capital adequacy, and payout capacity. Consolidated debt, interest, and cash are operating balances, not an enterprise-to-equity bridge; company-level book, earnings, capital, and payout lenses remain the coherent cross-checks.

Solvency

Deposit/float-funded balance sheet: debt is funding, not corporate leverage, and GAAP operating cash flow follows loan flows. Net-debt, interest-coverage, and cash-burn lenses do not apply. The solvency frame for a financial is regulatory capital and payout capacity (CET1, stress buffer, dividends plus buybacks against earnings).

Bullet Takeaways

• Fidelity National Financial owns two businesses that want opposite things from interest rates: title insurance needs houses to change hands, and the F&G annuity arm sells better when yields are high, which is why neither half is ever quite in season at the same time.
• Title economics are transactional rather than recurring, and the FY2025 annual report says so plainly: "Title insurance premiums are due in full at the closing of the real estate transaction."
• The clearest signal to track is refinance activity, which the company reported as orders opened up 52 percent on a daily basis in the first quarter of 2026 while purchase orders closed slipped 1 percent.

Bull Case

Read these numbers as trough numbers or you will misread them entirely. Title insurance is a mature, deeply cyclical business whose revenue moves with the number of American homes and commercial properties that change hands, and the company's own president described the first quarter of 2026 as taking place in "the current historically low transactional environment". Into that environment the Title segment still produced an adjusted pre-tax margin of 13.1 percent, 140 basis points better than a year earlier, on segment revenue of 2.0 billion dollars against 1.8 billion. A mature cyclical widening its margin while its volume base is depressed is a different proposition from a growth company slowing down.

The mechanism behind the cyclicality is worth stating precisely, because it also explains the operating leverage. The annual report notes that "Title insurance premiums are due in full at the closing of the real estate transaction." There is no renewal, no monthly bill and no recurring revenue: a title insurer gets paid once, at closing, and its cost base is mostly people who search records and run escrow. Average headcount in the Title segment rose to 22,854 in the first quarter from 21,399 a year earlier, which is the company staffing for volume it expects rather than volume it has. When transaction counts recover, most of the incremental premium falls through.

Early movement is already visible in the mix. Refinance orders opened rose 52 percent on a daily basis year over year and refinance orders closed rose 75 percent, commercial orders opened rose 5 percent and closed 8 percent, and commercial revenue reached 338 million dollars, up 15 percent. Refinance is the first thing to move when mortgage rates ease, well before purchase volume follows, and purchase orders opened were up 2 percent while closings were still marginally negative. That is what the beginning of a turn looks like from inside the order book.

The second business changes the shape of the whole. F&G reached record assets under management before reinsurance of 74.5 billion dollars, an 11 percent increase over the prior year, on gross sales of 3.2 billion in the quarter. Its core product is explained in the annual report: "Our FIAs allow contract owners the possibility of earning returns linked to the performance of a specified market index, such as the S&P 500 Index, while providing principal protection." Customers buy those when yields are attractive, which is exactly when title volume is suffering. The bear will say the two businesses simply take turns disappointing, and there is something in that. The counter is that the company has been converting the combination into cash regardless: 222 million dollars returned to shareholders in the first quarter, split between 140 million of common dividends and 82 million of repurchases, with the diluted share count down to 269 million from 273 million a year earlier.

Bear Case

One variable has more leverage over this company than anything management does, and it pulls the two halves in opposite directions. Mortgage rates set how many houses change hands, which sets title revenue, and there is no substitute lever: the premium is earned once at closing or not at all. The same rate environment that revives home sales compresses the yields on which F&G writes annuity business. The company frames this as complementary. It is also a structural cap, because a blend of two businesses that peak in different rate regimes is unlikely to deliver, simultaneously, the returns each can produce alone. Today's price assumes it does: the market is paying about 1.9 times book equity, which requires a sustained return on equity near 14.9 percent, against roughly 8.1 percent recently earned.

Then there is what the book is made of. Total equity attributable to common shareholders stood at 7,254 million dollars at March 31, 2026, of which 5,216 million was goodwill. Strip it out and the tangible equity behind each share is a small fraction of the reported figure, which is why the approaches built on assets and book value are the ones that land below today's quote while the earnings-based ones do not. A premium to stated book that is itself mostly acquisition goodwill is a premium on a premium.

The ownership arithmetic moved against holders at the end of 2025 and it has not been widely digested. Following a stock distribution, FNF's stake in F&G fell from approximately 84 percent to approximately 70 percent. F&G's assets under management grew 11 percent over the same span. FNF shareholders now own a smaller share of a larger annuity business, and the earnings that flow up to the parent reflect the reduced stake rather than the underlying growth. Any bull case built on F&G's expansion has to be discounted for the slice that no longer belongs to the parent.

Capital return is running close to what the business earns, which limits the buffer. The quarter's 222 million dollars of dividends and buybacks sat against 243 million dollars of net earnings attributable to common shareholders, and holding-company liquidity finished the period at 495 million. Set against that, notes payable totalled 4,402 million dollars and accumulated other comprehensive losses stood at 1,895 million, the mark on a fixed-income portfolio that has not recovered. The reserve for title claim losses of 1,704 million is a separate and long-tailed obligation: title claims surface years after a policy is written, so a mistake made in a boom is discovered in the bust. None of this is fragile today. All of it means the margin for a second cyclical disappointment is thinner than the headline capital return suggests.

Valuation

Two returns matter here and they sit roughly six points apart. The company recently earned about 8.1 percent on its book equity. The price, at about 1.9 times that book, requires a sustained return nearer 14.9 percent. Everything the reader needs to weigh is contained in whether that distance is a cyclical trough or a structural ceiling.

The evidence points more toward the first than the second. This company's own long record runs closer to the required figure than the current one does, and roughly 61 percent of firms earning a return at that level have gone on to hold it for a decade, so the requirement is not historically unusual. Against its peer group the price sits in the upper half on book value, which is a premium but not an outlier. The engine reading of the whole assumption is that it falls within a plausible range rather than beyond one.

The methods split along a line that fits a cyclical at a low point. Peer-multiple approaches and the forward-growth approaches both land above today's quote, and the earnings-power approaches sit roughly level with it. Only the approaches built from book value and current profitability land underneath. That configuration says the market is paying a premium to accounting book precisely because it expects the trailing return to normalize; a business whose earnings power is temporarily suppressed will always look expensive on book and reasonable on earnings, and it does.

One caution belongs in the reader's hands. The required return moves about 1.9 points for every point of change in the cost of equity assumed, which is an unusually high sensitivity. The gap between an 8.1 percent trailing return and a 14.9 percent requirement is not fixed; it narrows or widens substantially with the discount rate used, so the requirement is better read as a range than a threshold.

For a float-funded insurer the balance-sheet lens is capital and payout capacity rather than leverage ratios. FNF returned 222 million dollars to shareholders during the first quarter through 140 million of common dividends and 82 million of repurchases, and finished the period with 495 million of holding-company liquidity and total equity attributable to common shareholders of 7,254 million. The share count has fallen since 2022, standing at 269 million diluted in the first quarter against 273 million a year earlier. What the reader is finally weighing is a title franchise earning a 13.1 percent adjusted pre-tax margin at what management calls a historically low point in transaction volume, attached to an annuity business the parent now owns less of, priced as though both halves already work at once.

Catalysts

The first-quarter report on May 6, 2026 was the strongest print in several quarters and the detail underneath was better than the headline. Net earnings attributable to common shareholders reached 243 million dollars, or $0.90 a diluted share, against 83 million and $0.30 a year earlier, on total revenue of 3,226 million dollars against 2,729 million. Direct title premiums rose 14 percent to 583 million dollars and agency title premiums rose 16 percent to 788 million, with the adjusted pre-tax title margin improving 140 basis points to 13.1 percent.

The order book is the leading indicator to watch through the rest of the year. Refinance orders opened were up 52 percent on a daily basis year over year and refinance closings up 75 percent, while purchase orders opened rose only 2 percent and purchase closings fell 1 percent. Refinance moves first when mortgage rates ease and purchase follows with a lag, so the spread between those two lines is the cleanest available read on whether a housing recovery is actually arriving. Commercial, which carries a higher fee per file, saw orders opened up 5 percent and closings up 8 percent.

On the annuity side, F&G ended the quarter with record assets under management before reinsurance of 74.5 billion dollars, up 11 percent, on gross sales of 3.2 billion and net sales of 2.2 billion. The item to track alongside those numbers is ownership rather than growth: the year-end 2025 stock distribution cut the parent's stake to approximately 70 percent from approximately 84 percent, so future F&G expansion reaches FNF shareholders at a lower rate than the segment's own figures imply.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Title (reported)

• FAF (FIRST AMERICAN FINANCIAL CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: 2-31 0001472787 us-gaap:MunicipalBondsMember 2024-12-31 0001472787 us-gaap:AdditionalPaidInCapitalMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001472787 stpr:IL 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001472787 stpr:TX 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001472787 us-gaap:AccumulatedTranslationAdjustmentMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001472787…
• FY2025 10-K: 01 2025-12-31 0001472787 us-gaap:OtherOperatingIncomeExpenseMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001472787 us-gaap:FairValueInputsLevel1Member 2024-12-31 0001472787 us-gaap:ShortDurationInsuranceContractsAccidentYear2017Member 2019-12-31 0001472787 faf:NonconsolidatedVariableInterestEntitiesMember 2025-12-31 xbrli:pure…
• STC (STEWART INFORMATION SERVICES CORP)
• FY2025 10-K: …regional offices in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Our companies are industry leaders in the spaces they operate in and while each is unique in service offerings, they all share a common belief in providing a high level of services through team focus and customer-centric mindset. For more information on…
• FY2025 10-K: …0000094344 2025 FY FALSE http://www.stewart.com/20251231#FurnitureAndFixturesAndFinanceLeaseRightOfUseAssetGross http://www.stewart.com/20251231#FurnitureAndFixturesAndFinanceLeaseRightOfUseAssetGross P3Y iso4217:USD xbrli:shares iso4217:USD xbrli:shares xbrli:pure stc:reporting_unit stc:investment utr:D stc:segment…
• ORI (OLD REPUBLIC INTERNATIONAL CORP)
• FY2025 10-K: 0074260 srt:ConsolidatedPropertyAndCasualtyInsuranceEntityMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0000074260 srt:ConsolidatedPropertyAndCasualtyInsuranceEntityMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 10-K (Mark One) ☒ ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d)…
• FY2025 10-K: …Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm." PART IV Item 15 - Exhibits Documents filed as a part of this report: 1. Financial statements: See Item 8, Index to Financial Statements. 2. See exhibit index on page 107 of this report. 3. Financial Statement Schedules. 93 SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of…

F&G (reported)

• JXN (Jackson Financial Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …Chairman of the Board; Director Steven A. Kandarian /s/ Laura L. Prieskorn President and Chief Executive Officer; Director Laura L. Prieskorn /s/ Don W. Cummings Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (Principal Financial Officer) Don W. Cummings /s/ Craig A. Anderson Senior Vice President, Controller…
• FY2025 10-K: …jxn:ClosedLifeAndAnnuityBlocksSegmentMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001822993 us-gaap:CorporateNonSegmentMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001822993 jxn:CorporateAndReconcilingItemsMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001822993 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember jxn:RetailAnnuitiesSegmentMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001822993…
• EQH (Equitable Holdings, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …/s/ Robin M. Raju Chief Financial Officer (Principal Financial Officer) Robin M. Raju /s/ William Eckert Chief Accounting Officer (Principal Accounting Officer) William Eckert /s/ Francis Hondal Director Francis Hondal /s/ Arlene Isaacs-Lowe Director Arlene Isaacs-Lowe /s/ Daniel G. Kaye Director Daniel G. Kaye /s/…
• FY2025 10-K: …us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2024-12-31 0001333986 eqh:LifeMember eqh:SeparateAccountMutualFundMember us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2024-12-31 0001333986 eqh:OtherMember eqh:SeparateAccountMutualFundMember us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2024-12-31 0001333986 eqh:SeparateAccountMutualFundMember 2024-12-31…
• BHF (Brighthouse Financial, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …us-gaap:CashFlowHedgingMember bhf:NetDerivativeGainLossMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001685040 us-gaap:ForeignExchangeContractMember us-gaap:CashFlowHedgingMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001685040 us-gaap:ForeignExchangeContractMember us-gaap:CashFlowHedgingMember us-gaap:InvestmentIncomeMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31…
• FY2025 10-K: FinancingReceivablesEqualToGreaterThan180DaysPastDueMember 2025-12-31 0001685040 bhf:AgriculturalPortfolioSegmentMember us-gaap:RealEstateLoanMember bhf:FinancingReceivablesEqualToGreaterThan180DaysPastDueMember 2025-12-31 0001685040 us-gaap:ResidentialPortfolioSegmentMember us-gaap:RealEstateLoanMember…
• CRBG (Corebridge Financial, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: …us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2024-12-31 0001889539 crbg:PolicyholderAccountBalanceAboveGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRateRangeFrom0050AndGreaterMember crbg:PolicyholderAccountBalanceGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRateRangeMoreThan0500Member us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2024-12-31 0001889539…
• FY2025 10-K: …2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001889539 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember crbg:LifeInsuranceOperatingSegmentMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001889539 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember crbg:InstitutionalMarketsSegmentMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001889539 us-gaap:OperatingSegmentsMember us-gaap:CorporateAndOtherMember 2023-01-01…
• CNO (CNO Financial Group, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: 4608 cno:FixedInterestAnnuitiesMember us-gaap:PolicyholderAccountBalanceAboveGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRateRangeFrom0151AndGreaterMember cno:PolicyholderAccountBalanceGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRangeRangeFrom0000To0299Member 2024-12-31 0001224608 cno:FixedInterestAnnuitiesMember…
• FY2025 10-K: …2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001224608 cno:AllocatedExpensesMember cno:InsuranceProductLinesSegmentMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001224608 cno:AllocatedExpensesMember cno:InsuranceProductLinesSegmentMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001224608 cno:AllocatedExpensesMember cno:InsuranceProductLinesSegmentMember 2023-01-01…
• VOYA (Voya Financial, Inc.)
• FY2025 10-K: 2023-01-01 2023-12-31 0001535929 us-gaap:InterestRateContractMember us-gaap:FairValueHedgingMember us-gaap:InvestmentIncomeMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001535929 us-gaap:InterestRateContractMember us-gaap:FairValueHedgingMember us-gaap:GainLossOnInvestmentsMember1 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001535929…
• FY2025 10-K: 1 2023-12-31 0001535929 us-gaap:ForeignExchangeContractMember us-gaap:NondesignatedMember 2025-01-01 2025-12-31 0001535929 us-gaap:ForeignExchangeContractMember us-gaap:NondesignatedMember 2024-01-01 2024-12-31 0001535929 us-gaap:ForeignExchangeContractMember us-gaap:NondesignatedMember 2023-01-01 2023-12-31…
• LNC (LINCOLN NATIONAL CORPORATION)
• FY2025 10-K: …2019 - August 2021), IBM, a technology company. Craig T. Beazer 58 Executive Vice President and General Counsel (since December 2020). Jennifer Charters 53 Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer (since November 2024). Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Flagstar Bank (June 2018 -…
• FY2025 10-K: …us-gaap:PolicyholderAccountBalanceAboveGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRateRangeFrom0001To0050Member lnc:PolicyholderAccountBalanceGuaranteedMinimumCreditingRateRangeFrom1.01To2.00Member 2024-12-31 0000059558 us-gaap:FixedAnnuityMember…

Methodology Note

• Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
• Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
• Economic-unit decomposition (SOTP): each disclosed business unit is assigned its native valuation basis before any multiple is applied. Operating units are valued on enterprise value; funded financial units are valued on their own common equity, because their borrowings fund earning assets rather than levering the parent. A company total is stated only once every material unit carries a supported value and the parent capital bridge reconciles.
• Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
• Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.