Prompt:
Human: This conference call also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Definitions and reconciliations schedules for those non-GAAP measures can be found on the EOG's website.
Some of the reserve estimates on this conference call may include estimated potential reserves and estimated resource potential not necessarily calculated in accordance with the SEC's reserve reporting guidelines.
2021 was a record-setting year for EOG.
We earned record net income of $4.7 billion, generated a record $5.5 billion of free cash flow, which funded record cash return of $2.7 billion to shareholders.
We doubled our regular dividend rate and paid two special dividends, paying out about 30% of cash from operations.
And we are continuing to deliver on our free cash flow priorities this year with an additional special dividend announced yesterday of $1 per share.
The last time we set an earnings record was in 2014.
We earned $5.32 per share while oil averaged $93.
Last year, we shattered that record earning $7.09 per share with $68 oil.
That's 50% higher earnings with a 27% lower oil price.
The catalyst for that improvement was our shift to premium six years ago.
Premium is our internal investment hurdle rate that uses low fixed commodity prices to calculate the returns that drive our capital allocation decisions, $40 and $2.50 natural gas for the life of the well.
While our premium strategy ensures high well-level returns and quick payouts in any given year, the more significant and durable impact is to our full-cycle development cost.
The benefit of making investment decisions using fixed low commodity prices has the enduring impact of steadily improving corporate level operating and cash margins over time.
That impact is now directly observable on the face of our financial statements.
And last year, we raised the bar again to double premium.
Our hurdle rate increased from 30% to a minimum of 60% direct after-tax rate of return using the same low fixed prices of $40 oil and $2.50 natural gas.
The switch promises to further improve financial performance in the years ahead and is what gives us great confidence in our ability to continue delivering shareholder value through commodity price cycles.
We expect to look back on 2021 like we do on 2016 as the year we made a permanent increase to our return hurdle that drove another step change in the financial performance of EOG.
We also delivered as we promised operationally in 2021 with production volumes, capex and operating costs in line or better than target set at the beginning of the year.
We were able to successfully offset emerging inflationary pressures during the year to lower well costs by 7%.
2021 was also a big year for ESG performance.
We reduced our methane emissions percentage and injury rates and increased water reuse.
We announced our 2040 net-zero ambition and added our goal to eliminate routine flaring by 2025 to our existing near-term targets for greenhouse gas and methane emissions rates.
We continue to develop creative solutions, leveraging existing technology to make progress on our path toward our net-zero ambition.
There's growing recognition that oil and gas will have a role to play in the long-term energy solution.
We know that to be part of that solution, we not only have to produce low-cost, high-return barrels, we also have to do it with one of the lowest environmental footprints.
As we look into 2022, the global oil market is in a position to rebalance during the year.
Our disciplined capital plan aims to increase long-term shareholder value through high-return reinvestment that optimizes both near-term and long-term free cash flow.
The plan also funds exploration and infrastructure projects to improve the future cost structure of the business.
With the improvements we made in the business last year, combined with a higher commodity price environment, EOG is positioned to once again generate significant free cash flow.
We continue to follow through on our free cash flow priorities.
Our stellar fourth quarter performance allowed us to further strengthen the balance sheet, and we are returning cash to shareholders with the $1 per share special dividend declared yesterday.
Combined with our $3 per share regular dividend, we have already committed to return $2.3 billion of cash to shareholders in 2022.
We remain firmly committed to our long-standing free cash flow and cash return priorities, and you can expect EOG to continue to deliver on them as the year unfolds.
EOG has exited the downturn a much better company than when we entered it.
Higher returns with the shift to double premium, a lower cost structure, more free cash flow, a smaller environmental footprint and a culture strengthened by the challenges we have overcome together.
Our culture is the No.
1 value driver of EOG's success.
By remaining humble and intellectually honest, we sustained the cycle of constant improvement that drives our technology leadership.
Of all the fundamentals that consistently create long-term value, none of them matter without the commitment, resiliency and execution from our employees.
Now, here's Tim to review our financial position.
EOG generated record financial results in the fourth quarter with adjusted earnings of $1.8 billion and free cash flow of $2 billion.
Capital expenditures of $1.1 billion were right in line with our forecast while production volumes finished above target.
For the full year, adjusted earnings were a record $5 billion or $8.61 per share.
This yielded return on capital employed of 23%, while oil prices for the year averaged $68 per barrel.
Perhaps most important than setting records is what drove our outperformance.
2021 illustrated EOG's success at driving down our cost structure.
ROCE would have been 10% or better at oil prices as low as $44.
Keep in mind that back in 2016, when the premium investment standard was introduced, the oil price required for 10% ROCE was in excess of $80 per barrel.
The dramatic improvements we have made to the profitability of our business reflect the benefits of using the highest investment threshold in the industry.
The bottom line financial impact of double premium is just beginning to show up.
But like our original switch to premium, it will grow over the coming years.
Our goal is to position the company to earn economic returns at the bottom of the cycle, less than $40 oil and generate returns that are better than the broader market on a full cycle basis.
Free cash flow in 2021 was a record $5.5 billion, and we deployed this cash consistent with our long-standing free cash flow priorities.
We doubled the regular dividend rate, which now stands at an annual $3 per share and represents a 2.7% yield at the current share price.
We are confident in the sustainability of our high-return low-cost business model to support a dividend that has never been cut or suspended in its more than 20-year history.
We solidified our financial position, finishing the year with effectively zero net debt.
We were also able to address additional cash return priorities.
We paid two special dividends for a combined $3 per share.
We also refreshed our buyback authorization, which now stands at $5 billion.
We will look to utilize this on an opportunistic basis.
In total, EOG returned $2.7 billion of cash to shareholders in 2021.
This represents 28% of discretionary cash flow and 49% of free cash flow, putting EOG among E&P industry leaders for cash returned in 2021.
Looking ahead to 2022, our disciplined capital plan and regular dividend can be funded at $44 oil.
At $80 oil, we expect to generate about $11 billion of cash flow from operations before working capital.
The $4.5 billion capital plan represents about a 40% reinvestment ratio, resulting in more than $6 billion in free cash flow.
This, of course, is on an after-tax basis, as we expect to be a nearly full cash taxpayer in 2022 as we were last year.
We are in an excellent position to continue to deliver on our free cash flow priorities in 2022.
EOG declared a $0.75 regular dividend yesterday, which is our highest priority for returning cash to shareholders.
The size of the regular dividend is evaluated every quarter.
As the financial performance and cost structure of EOG continues to improve, we expect that will be reflected in continued growth of the dividend.
Turning to our second priority.
This period of high oil prices allows us to further bolster the balance sheet.
To support our renewed $5 billion buyback authorization and prepare to take advantage of other countercyclical opportunities, we plan to build and carry a higher cash balance going forward.
We expect there will be opportunities in the future to create significant shareholder value by deploying a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity at the right time.
Finally, we also announced an additional cash return to shareholders yesterday with a $1 per share special dividend to be paid in March.
Along with the regular dividend, EOG has already committed to return $2.3 billion of cash to shareholders in 2022.
We are fully committed to continuing to deliver on all of our free cash flow priorities.
I'm especially proud of their safety performance.
In addition to outstanding operations and financial improvements, we achieved a record low injury rate.
2021 was another year of execution.
Throughout the year, we consistently exceeded our oil production targets, primarily due to strong well results.
Our operations teams continue to innovate and find opportunities to increase efficiencies and lowered the average well cost by 7%, beating the 5% target we set at the start of the year.
Our drilling teams are achieving targeted depths faster with lower cost by focusing on reliability of the tools and technical procedures that drive daily performance.
For example, in our Delaware Basin Wolfcamp play, our teams have improved days to drill by 42% since 2018.
In our Eagle Ford oil play, after drilling several thousand wells, our teams continue to refine the drilling operation to drive consistent performance from our rig fleet, resulting in a 21% reduction in the drilling costs since 2018.
And with our decentralized organization and collaborative teamwork across operational areas, we continue to generate ideas for improvement through our innovative approach to areas such as improved bit design and drilling motor performance and share them throughout the company.
On the completion side, we made great starts to expand the use of our super zipper or simo-frac technique to about one-third of our wells completed last year.
Completion costs also benefited from reduced sand and water cost through our integrated self-sourcing efforts and water reuse infrastructure.
Utilizing local sand and water pipelines includes the added benefit of removing trucks from the row of contributing to a safer oilfield with lower emissions.
Cash operating costs were in line with forecast.
And while delivering a higher level of total production, they were nearly equivalent to our cash operating cost pre-pandemic in 2019.
The savings are a result of a focus on reducing workover expenses and improvements in produced water management.
These efforts will expand in 2022 to help offset additional inflationary pressure.
We also had another great year improving our ESG performance metrics.
Preliminary calculations indicate that we reduced our methane emissions percentage by about 25% and our total recordable incident rate by 10%.
We also achieved a 99.8% target for wellhead gas capture and increased water resource from reuse to 55%.
Again, these are preliminary results as our final metrics will be published in our sustainability report later this year.
As we enter 2022, EOG is not immune to the inflation that we're seeing across our industry.
But we have line of sight to offset these inflationary pressures through innovation and technical advances, contracting for services, supply chain management and self-sourcing and materials.
Over 90% of our drilling fleet and over 50% of our frac fleets needed to execute this year's program are covered under existing term agreements with multiple providers.
Our vendor partnerships provide EOG the ability to secure longer-term high-performing teams at favorable prices while providing the vendors a predictable and reliable source of activity to run their business.
EOG's technical teams take ownership of various aspects of the drilling and completion operations to drive performance, improvements and eliminate downtime.
As a result, we will -- we still see opportunities to sustainably improve our performance.
Some of the largest efficiency gains will be in our completion operations this year.
For example, we expect to utilize our Super Zipper technique on about 60% of our wells, increasing the amount of treated lateral per day.
We're also enhancing our self-sourced local sand efforts, which we expect to not only secure the material needed for the year, but also offset the effects of inflation.
We continue to expand our water reuse capabilities that will assist in offsetting inflation in both our capital program and lease operating expense.
We remain confident that we'll be able to keep well cost at least flat in 2022.
EOG's capital efficiency continues to improve as a result of EOG's culture of continuous improvement.
2022 looks to be a year of challenges and inflationary headwinds.
And I'm excited about the opportunity to bring our talented employees to further improve our business through innovation and improved operational execution.
Here's Ken to review the year-end reserves and provide an inventory update.
Last year, we replaced more than two times what we produced and reduced our finding and development costs by 17%.
Our permanent shift to premium drilling and focus on efficiencies driven by innovation and our unique culture keys as to why our capital efficiency continues to improve, and our corporate finding costs and DD&A rate continue to decline.
Our 2021 reserve replacement was 208% for a finding and development cost of just $5.81 per barrel of oil equivalent, excluding revisions due to commodity price changes.
Since 2014, prior to the last downturn and the implementation of our premium strategy, we have reduced finding and development cost by more than 55%.
With our double premium standard and the high grading of our future development schedule, we grew our reserve base in 2021 by over 500 million barrels of oil equivalent for total booked reserves of over 3.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
This represents a 16% increase in reserves year over year.
In terms of future well locations, we added over 700 net double premium locations across multiple basins to our inventory in 2021, replacing the 410 drilled last year by 170%.
Our double premium inventory is growing faster than we drill it and the quality of the locations we are adding to the inventory is improving.
Innovation continues to drive sustainable cost improvements and operational efficiencies.
And when you combine that with our focus on developing higher quality rock, we further improve the median return of the portfolio.
We don't need more inventory.
We are focused on improving our inventory quality.
With this in mind, our double premium inventory now accounts for 6,000 of the 11,500 total premium locations in our inventory, representing more than 11 years of drilling at the current pace.
In conclusion, I'd like to note the following important takeaways.
First, investment decisions based on a low commodity price puts the emphasis on full cycle cost of development and demands efficient use of capital.
While the benefits of such discipline are realized immediately, the larger impact builds over time.
The seed to our stellar results in 2021 was the premium strategy established six years ago, and we have set the stage for the next step change in financial performance by instituting double premium last year.
Second, we are confident EOG's innovative and technology-driven culture can offset inflationary pressures this year.
Our disciplined capital plan is focused on high return reinvestment to continue improving our margins in not only 2022 but in future years as well.
Third, we are committed to returning cash to shareholders.
We demonstrated this through the return of nearly 50% of free cash flow last year, and this quarter's special dividend, our third in less than a year, doubling our regular dividend rate indicates our confidence in the durability of our future performance.
The regular dividend is our preferred method to return cash to shareholders and as we continue to increase the capital efficiency of EOG through low-cost operations and improved well performance, growth of the regular dividend will remain a priority.
We truly believe the best is yet to come.
Going forward as a company and an industry with a financial profile more competitive than ever with the broader market and a growing recognition of the value we bring to society, EOG has never been better positioned to generate significant long-term shareholder value.
Now, we'll go to Q&A.
 Assistant:

Chosen response: sees 2022 capital plan of $4.3 to $4.7 billion.


Prompt:
Human: I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe.
Joining me on the call today is Walter Ulloa, chairman and chief executive officer; and Chris Young, chief financial officer.
We appreciate you joining us today for Entravision's fourth-quarter and 2020 earnings call.
Entravision had a very strong fourth quarter.
As a result, we are well positioned for growth in the first quarter and full-year 2021.
Beginning with the top line, revenues for the quarter totaled $171.7 million, up 142% year over year and 173% sequentially.
On a pro forma basis, including Cisneros Interactive, revenues improved 51% over the fourth quarter of 2019.
Our digital segment performed well due in large part to our acquisition of Cisneros Interactive.
While I will speak to the digital segment in further detail shortly, we are particularly pleased with our performance of Cisneros Interactive led by Victor Kong.
Cisneros Interactive continues to be additive to our cash flow and EBITDA, and we have the utmost confidence that they will successfully execute their business plan in 2021.
As highlighted last quarter, political ad sales were all a strong driver of our fourth-quarter revenues.
In total, political advertising revenue for the fourth quarter was $14.2 million, surpassing our prior record set in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Excluding political ad sales, and including Cisneros Interactive on a pro forma basis, revenue increased by 39% in the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled $32.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, an increase of 195% compared to $11.1 million in the prior year period.
On a pro forma basis, EBITDA increased 159% in 2020 versus 2019.
Moving beyond the fourth quarter and turning to the full-year results.
For 2020, revenues totaled $344 million, up 26% over 2019.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled $60.4 million for full-year 2020 as compared to $41.2 million in 2019 or a 47% EBITDA growth in 2020 versus 2019.
We entered 2021 primed for growth.
With the onset of COVID-19, we made a number of expense cuts in anticipation of a prolonged economic impact from the virus.
Fortunately, due in part to these proactive reductions in our SG&A, our business continued to grow quarter over quarter.
As a result, we were able to reinstate certain expenses back in the business, namely employee salaries.
I could not be prouder of the team we have assembled at Entravision.
Their commitment to both our clients and our company this past year never wavered.
I was pleased to be able to reinstate our well-deserved employee salaries to the pre-COVID-19 levels.
Even though salary expenses have been reinstated, the rest of our expense cuts remain in place, and we will continue to operate as a leaner, more efficient business, with strong free cash flow generation.
As Chris Young, our CFO, will discuss shortly, in Q4, we more than doubled our prior record of free cash flow set in the second quarter of 2006.
This strong cash flow generation should help offset some of the revenue loss from the lack of political ad sales in the first quarter of 2021.
With that as a background, let's turn to our three operating segments in further detail.
Our television division generated revenues of $50.5 million for the quarter, up 37% compared to the prior year and up 34% sequentially.
Breaking this down further, television advertising and multicast revenue was up 48% over the prior year fourth quarter, while retransmission consent revenues were up 1% year over year.
Excluding political spend, our core television revenues increased by 10%, with television political revenues totaling $11.1 million in the quarter versus the nonmaterial amount of political revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Excluding political revenue, national advertising revenues were up 20% driven mainly by Tier 2 automotive and healthcare, while local advertising revenues, excluding political, were up 2% driven by legal services and healthcare.
On a full-year basis, television revenues totaled $154.5 million, up 3% year over year.
Excluding political ad sales, core television revenues for 2020 were $131.9 million, a decrease of 12% over full-year 2019.
Turning to our top 10 television ad categories.
Although several advertising categories did see year-over-year revenue declines, many experienced improvements sequentially, another indication that our business continues on an upward trend.
Auto, our largest television ad category, increased 3% year over year, but improved 28% from Q3 2020.
Services, our second largest advertising category, was up 17% compared to the prior year period.
Health care, our third largest category, was up 26% over the prior year and also improved 102% sequentially.
Media was up 22% year over year and up 26% sequentially.
Retail, while still down 21% year over year, posted a strong gain sequentially of 60%.
Next, let's discuss our television ratings performance for the quarter.
Our Univision television affiliates built upon their market leadership in November 2020.
For adults 18 to 49 in early local news, our Univision television stations finished ahead of or tied their Telemundo competitor in 11 of 17 markets where we have head-to-head competition.
In late local news, we finished ahead of or tied Telemundo competitors in 10 markets among the 17 markets where we have head-to-head competition.
Additionally, our early local news ranked No.
1 or 2 against English and Spanish language television competitors in nine markets, and we built up audience levels from the 15-minute lead-in in eight markets.
Our late local newscasts ranked No.
1 or 2 against English and Spanish language television competitors in six markets.
Our local news teams reported the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic and an unprecedented election year.
During the full week, our Univision and UniMás television stations combined have a cumulative audience of 3.8 million persons of two plus in our markets combined compared to Telemundo's 3.1 million persons two plus.
We have 22% more viewers than Telemundo in our television footprint.
During weekday primetime, when comparing to all stations in total, we had a higher ratings than at least one of the big four networks in nine markets among adults 18 to 49 and 10 markets among adults 18 to 34.
Telecast for Univision's Latin GRAMMY Awards show on November 19 was among the top 10 broadcast television primetime programs for the night among adults 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 54 in 13 markets.
Among adults 18 to 34, the show ranked among the top 10 in 15 markets.
Our sales teams did a remarkable job selling the Latin GRAMMYS, setting a revenue record for this signature TV special, with revenues up 25% over 2019.
Now, let's turn to our audio operating segment.
Audio revenues for the fourth quarter totaled $16.2 million, an increase of 17% over the prior year period and up 41% sequentially.
Local audio revenues decreased 3% over the prior year fourth quarter, while national revenues were up 51% over prior year, largely bolstered by political ad sales.
Excluding political spend, core radio revenues declined 5% versus the prior year fourth quarter, with political revenues totaling $3 million in the quarter versus a nonmaterial amount of political revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Excluding political spend, national advertising revenues were up 8% driven by the service category, while local advertising revenues were down 11% in our audio unit as a result of the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On a full-year basis, audio revenues totaled $46.3 million, down 16% year over year.
Excluding political ad sales, core audio revenues for 2020 were down 26% over full-year 2019.
The 12 markets where we subscribe to Miller Kaplan data, we outperformed the market by 34.6 points in total revenue combined.
We outperformed the total market in 11 out of the 12 markets where we subscribe to Miller Kaplan.
Turning to radio advertising categories.
Services, our largest category, representing 26% of our total audio revenue, improved 31% over the prior year fourth-quarter period.
Legal services, including those related to immigration as well as government messaging regarding COVID-19 safety, continue to represent a large portion of the services add in this past quarter.
Auto, our second largest advertising category, declined 28% for the fourth quarter as compared to the fourth quarter of '19, but was up 49% sequentially.
Auto repair advertising was up a healthy 34% year over year as was grocery store advertising, which improved 3% over the prior year period.
We also saw increases in the product brand and paid programming categories.
The remaining top 10 advertising categories were all down year over year in the fourth quarter, with the exception of political ads, where revenues totaled $3 million in the fourth quarter compared to an immaterial amount in the prior year period.
Of particular note, during the quarter, we announced the launch of our new streaming destination, El Botón.
Listeners can now stream their favorite Entravision radio shows and stations directly on their mobile phones or desktops.
We are positioning El Botón as a hub to direct our audiences across different genres, while also aggregating content to provide our listeners a seamless search and discovery experience.
The addition of digitally streaming content to our radio offering fits with Entravision's overall positioning as an omnichannel audio solutions expert.
The firm deployment of our podcast offering, mobile app presence and first-party data subscription services are also part of Entravision's vision.
On this front, it is important to note that our recent investment in the digital space includes the acquisition of a controlling stake of Audio.
Ad, the strongest audio network and digital audio publisher platform in Latin America.
This investment enhances our proprietary Audio.
Ad network AudioEngage, currently serving the U.S. Latino market.
In addition, with the Super Bowl just a month ago, Entravision has now completed its fifth season as the NFL's exclusive nationwide Spanish language radio broadcaster.
The NFL has been an exceptional partner, and we look forward to continuing to share their programming with our radio listenership.
Looking at our audio division ratings performance for fall 2020, among the Spanish language radio stations, the Erazno y La Chokolata show is ranked No.
1 in nine out of 14 markets, including Los Angeles, released for fall among Hispanic adults 18 to 49, including ties; and No.
1 in 11 markets, including Los Angeles, among Hispanic adults 25 to 54.
Across our 14 O&O radio stations, the Erazno y La Chokolata show reached more than 608,000 Hispanics 18 to 49 in the fall 2020 survey.
For fall 2020, Piolin ranked as the No.
1 or 2 Spanish language midday show, including Los Angeles, in 10 out of our 13 markets released among Hispanic adults 18 to 49, including ties.
El Show de El Genio Lucas was No.
1 or 2 among Spanish language radio stations in eight out of our 11 El Genio markets among Hispanic adults 18 to 49 and Hispanic adults 25 to 54.
In Entravision's audio markets, the Hispanic list is recovering at a faster rate than the total market average.
All 2020 Hispanic adults 18 to 49 weekly reach was at 95% of 2019 levels, while fall 2020 reach for total adults 18 to 49 was at 91% of 2019 levels.
Now, moving on to digital.
Our third and final operating segment is digital.
Digital revenues totaled $105 million for the fourth-quarter 2020, a substantial increase of 424% as compared to the prior year period.
Sequentially, digital revenues improved 669%.
On a pro forma basis for Cisneros Interactive, digital revenue increased 67% compared to the prior year period.
On a quarterly basis, digital revenues surpassed that of our television segment.
On a full-year basis, digital revenues totaled $143.3 million, an increase of 108% compared to 2019.
Throughout the past year, we made a number of strategic moves aimed at furthering Entravision's digital segment by building a portfolio of exceptional digital service offerings with creative and programmatic capabilities that meet our clients' needs around the globe.
First, in May, we brought our digital capabilities together through the launch of Entravision Interactive, which provides advertisers and agencies a single source to engage consumers globally.
Then in October, we announced our strategic majority investment in Cisneros Interactive.
Through our majority investment in Cisneros Interactive, we represent the strongest global audience in ad tech platforms such as Facebook, Spotify and LinkedIn across Latin America.
Last, but not least, in November, we announced the appointment of Juan Saldivar as our new chief digital strategy and accountability officer.
Juan has over two decades of experience in media, marketing, technology, venture capital and e-commerce industries as a result of working for Bertelsmann in Germany, Spain and Mexico and as Executive Director of Televisa's digital interactive for 7 years.
Juan has been a member of our board since 2014, and he and his team were instrumental in the acquisition of Cisneros Interactive and its integration into Entravision.
Prior to Juan's appointment, we did not have a single leader running all of our digital business units.
With Juan, a fluent Spanish speaker at the helm of our U.S. and global digital businesses, we expect to be able to grow our solutions, technology and talent pool that serve today more than 4,000 clients in 21 countries.
Entravision believes it is critical to understand, participate and build technology to serve the programmatic advertising space.
On this front, Smadex, our Barcelona-based machine learning DSP platform with proprietary technology has continued to grow and serve the most demanding clients in the gaming, mobile performance and app space by matching the strongest transparency, contextual demographic features and performance standards.
Due to the impact of COVID-19, digital platform usage has increasingly increased all over the world and specifically in Latin America, where it has accelerated Internet adoption and penetration.
Digital video is also a core pillar within our digital and interactive strategy.
Our video network continues to expand and close exclusive connections with Tier 1 publishers.
In 2021, Entravision will continue exploring the most prominent growth markets around the globe as it deploys its digital services and considers strategic and complementary investments and acquisitions.
Overall, while 2020 was a challenging year, our business reemerged, in the fourth quarter, exceeding our expectations and demonstrating the strength of Entravision's business model.
One last thing I would like to comment on before handing it over to Chris is our political performance in 2020.
As we discussed earlier, 2020 was a record for Entravision in terms of political revenue.
We generated over $28 million in political revenue in 2020, which is an incredible 65% increase over our prior year record of $17 million in 2012.
According to a recently published UCLA Latino study of the 2020 presidential election turnout, approximately 16.6 million Latinos cast votes in the 2020 election.
This represents a 31% increase and nearly double the nationwide growth of 16% in ballots cast between 2016 and 2020.
Latino voters supported Joe Biden by a margin across the country, consistent with margins that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012.
That said, without the Latino vote, president Biden probably would not have been able to win Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico.
We expected the outcome of the Latino vote in 2020 to be strong, but it went beyond our estimates.
I believe that, going forward, the Latino voter is only going to become more important, and you're going to see much more investment in the Latino vote, particularly in the markets where we operate: California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas and certainly, Florida, Virginia and Massachusetts.
So I'm very bullish about the future and the continuing important role Latinos will play in U.S. politics.
As Walter has discussed, revenue for the fourth-quarter 2020 totaled $171.7 million, an increase of 142% from the fourth quarter of 2019 and up 173% sequentially.
When comparing on a pro forma basis and including Cisneros Interactive's revenue in our 2019 results, revenues increased 51% year over year.
For our TV division, ad revenues totaled $41.8 million, up 48% year over year.
Retransmission revenue totaled $8.8 million and was up 1% year over year.
For our audio division, revenues totaled $16.2 million, up 17% over the prior year period.
Lastly, digital revenues totaled $105 million, up 424% year over year.
When comparing on a pro forma basis and including Cisneros Interactive's revenue in our 2019 results, digital revenues increased 67% year over year.
As Walter spoke to earlier in today's call, over the past few quarters, we've taken strategic steps to limit our expenses due to market conditions.
Throughout this process, it has become apparent to us that we maintain most of these cuts in 2021 while still running the business at an optimal level.
SG&A expenses were $14 million for the quarter, a decrease of 1% compared to $14.1 million in the year ago period.
Excluding the Cisneros acquisition, SG&A expenses were down 23%.
Direct operating expenses totaled $31.9 million for Q4 of 2020, an increase of 6% compared to Q4 of 2019.
Excluding the Cisneros acquisition, direct operating expenses were down 2%.
Finally, corporate expenses for the fourth quarter increased 18%, totaling $9.3 million compared to $7.9 million in the same quarter of last year.
The primary driver of corporate expense was salary expense as we retroactively restored salary cuts executed earlier in the year, along with bonus expense.
During the fourth quarter, our share buyback program remained on hold.
We also maintained a dividend of $0.025 per share and continued to eliminate expenses at the operating and corporate levels deemed secondary to serving our core media business.
We will continue to evaluate our buyback and dividend each quarter, which will be at the discretion of our board of directors.
Expense-wise, we expect that our operating expenses, excluding digital cost of goods sold and corporate, will be roughly flat in the first quarter as compared to the prior year period.
Excluding expenses related to Cisneros, operating expenses are expected to be down approximately 13%.
Consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $32.6 million for the fourth quarter, up 195% compared to the fourth quarter of last year.
On a pro forma basis, accounting for the Cisneros Interactive acquisition, adjusted EBITDA was up 159% year over year.
This was a record quarter for EBITDA generation due in part to the 2020 presidential election cycle and the contribution of Cisneros Interactive.
Entravision's 51% portion of Cisneros Interactive adjusted EBITDA was $3.6 million for the fourth quarter.
Similar to adjusted EBITDA, the fourth quarter of 2020 also represented a record quarter for Entravision's free cash flow generation.
Strong free cash flow has been the cornerstone of Entravision's business and supported our ability to grow both organically and through acquisitions without the need to take on significant leverage.
We expect this high free cash flow conversion rate to continue for the foreseeable future.
Earnings per share for the fourth-quarter 2020 were $0.24 compared to $0.09 per share in the same quarter of last year.
Net cash interest expense was $1.3 million for the fourth quarter compared to $2.2 million in the same quarter of last year.
Cash capital expenditures for fourth quarter totaled $1.3 million compared to $4.1 million in the prior year.
This brought us to $9.1 million in cash capital expenditures for the full year of 2020.
Turning to our balance sheet, which remains very strong.
Cash and marketable securities as of December 31, 2020 totaled $147.2 million.
Total debt was $215 million.
Net of $75 million of cash and marketable securities on the books, our total leverage, as defined in our credit agreement, was 2.3 times as of the end of the fourth quarter.
Net of total accessible cash and marketable securities, our total net leverage was 1.3 times.
Turning now to our pacings for the first quarter of 2021.
As of today, our TV advertising business is presently pacing a minus 14%, with core TV, excluding political, pacing at a minus 4%.
Our audio business is pacing a minus 8%, with core audio, excluding political again, pacing at a minus 6%.
And our digital business, including revenue from Cisneros Interactive, is pacing plus 500%.
Factoring in Cisneros revenue generated in Q1 of last year of approximately $42.2 million, our digital business on a pro forma basis is currently pacing at a plus 65%.
As part of our expanding business operations and geographic footprint, Entravision acquired a majority interest in Cisneros Interactive during the fourth quarter of 2020.
As a result, we anticipate that we won't be in the position to file our 10-K by the standard SEC filing deadline of next Tuesday, March 16.
If that's the case, we will file a notice with the SEC to extend our 10-K filing deadline for an additional 15 days.
Our auditors have informed us that they anticipate completing their audit procedures by the end of March, and we expect to file the 10-K as soon as practical.
All this said, we believe Cisneros Interactive has been an excellent addition to our digital business.
We're excited about the future of Cisneros Interactive and how this business has enhanced our product portfolio and service offerings and aligns with our mission and sales operations.
As is evident from our fourth-quarter performance, Entravision enters 2021 at a very strong revenue run rate.
Even without political revenues this year, with a leaner cost structure, we expect higher profitability from each of our operating segments.
As Chris noted, our free cash flow generation remains high and our balance sheet is strong.
As a result, our leverage is very low, which leaves us with a lot of dry powder to continue to make acquisitions while still investing in our organic growth.
In addition to growing our digital business organically, we also look to grow our digital efforts through acquisitions, including acquiring complementary businesses in similar geographic regions as Cisneros Interactive.
We plan to target companies with similar multiples to that of Cisneros Interactive and that are accretive to earnings.
It is clear there is a solid runway ahead for Entravision.
And while this past year was challenging, we learned to operate our business units more efficiently and have positioned our company for continued success.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
entravision communications corp - expects to file form 12b-25 for extension of filing deadline for 2020 form 10-k.
entravision communications corp - qtrly net revenue increased to $171.7 million from $70.8 million.
entravision communications corp - qtrly earnings per share $0.24.


Prompt:
Human: I'm Hallie Miller, Evercore's Head of Investor Relations.
These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed in Evercore's filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and current reports on Form 8-K.
We continue to believe that it's important to evaluate Evercore's performance on an annual basis.
As we have noted previously, our results for any particular quarter are influenced by the timing of transaction closings.
Let me begin by expressing my affection and respect for Ralph.
He's been an outstanding leader, partner, and friend.
I will have a lot more to say about Ralph at the end of our comments.
But first, let's talk about the quarter.
The positive environment for M&A and capital raising experience during the first half of the year extended into the third quarter.
Our results reflect this momentum and the success of our strategic initiatives aimed at broadening and diversifying our platform.
The strength and depth of our talented teams, coupled with our broad and expanding platform of capabilities, provides us with the tools and the intellectual capital to advise our clients on their most important strategic capital and financial needs.
Dollar volume of announced M&A globally was more than $1.5 trillion in the third quarter, representing a 9% sequential increase.
It was also the fifth straight quarter that announced M&A activity surpassed $1 trillion.
Strong economic conditions and thematic trends around growth and technological disruption continue to drive activity.
The ongoing high level of activity has positively affected our results, and it has sustained our backlogs as well.
Activist activity remains high with a 23% year-over-year increase in the number of new activist positions in the last 12 months.
Equity issuance continues to outpace historical levels with a greater total amount raised year-to-date than any year other than 2020 and larger than 2019 and 2018 combined.
Levels have stabilized somewhat from earlier in the year when SPAC underwriting activity was substantial.
In the private capital advisory space, momentum in capital raising for financial sponsors continues, and secondary market activity remains high, particularly activity related to single-asset structures.
The strong availability of credit and the pace of economic recovery has limited the need for traditional restructuring work.
The leverage remains elevated.
There continue to be opportunities for bespoke financings and assignments with financial sponsors and creditors.
In equities, despite the usual third quarter seasonality, we benefited from heightened volatility at the end of the quarter and our expanded offering set for clients.
In summary, with the backdrop of a strong economic environment.
Our business continues to perform exceptionally well.
Our teams are busy helping clients, and we are pleased to have the majority of our workforce back in the office in some form.
We did not see anything that would indicate an imminent pullback in the momentum, but we continue to monitor inflation, Fed actions, interest rates, the regulatory environment, supply chain disruption, and COVID's impact on the reopening process.
Of course, our results are always affected by the timing of deal closings.
With that, let me turn to key business highlights from the quarter.
We ranked number 1 in the Refinitiv League Tables for dollar volume of announced M&A, both globally and in the U.S. among independent firms for the latest 12-month period, and we rank 7 among all firms in the U.S. for the same period.
Celeste will discuss our financials in more detail later in the call.
However, I would like to highlight that we achieved a fourth straight quarter of Advisory revenues greater than $500 million, and our year-to-date advisory revenues of $1.78 billion are more than all of 2020, which was a record year for us.
Based on current consensus estimates and actual results, we expect to maintain our number 4 ranking based on advisory fees among all publicly traded investment banking firms over the last 12 months and to grow our market share relative to these same firms.
We are working on several of the top 25 announced global M&A transactions this year, including advising GE Capital Aviation on its pending $30 billion sale to AerCap Holdings, advising the board of directors of Canadian Pacific on its pending $29 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern, serving as the lead advisor to Grab on its $40 billion SPAC merger, serving as the sole advisor to Nuance on a pending $19.7 billion sale to Microsoft, and advising MGM Growth Properties on its $17.2 billion sale to VICI Properties.
Our underwriting business had another solid quarter booking more than $50 million in revenues and the pipeline for activity remained strong.
It's clear that further investment on our ECM business, including building out our sector coverage and enhancing our capabilities with convertibles, is contributing meaningfully to the growth of this business and the firm overall.
We continue to achieve increasingly better leadership positions in the ECM transactions in which we participate.
We served as active bookrunner on, approximately, 60% of the 24 equity deals and equity-linked deals we completed during the quarter.
We continue to diversify the mix of our revenues.
While healthcare still makes up the bulk of our underwriting revenues, we are seeing more variety within healthcare sector beyond biotech, as well as greater contribution from sectors such as TMT, industrials, and consumer, which in aggregate, more than tripled their share of ECM revenues in the third quarter compared to this time last year.
A few notable transactions from the quarter include: in pharma, active book runner on Ascendis Pharmacy's $450 million follow-on offering; in consumer, passive bookrunner on Olaplex's $1.8 billion IPO; in TMT, passive bookrunner on Bumble's $1.1 billion follow-on offering; in consumer, we were financial advisor to Warby Parker for its direct listing.
Even with the slowdown in the market for SPAC underwriting, we completed five during the quarter, including three as lead-left bookrunner.
We once again ranked in the top 20 for underwriting revenue as estimated by Dealogic for the latest 12-month period for deals listed on the U.S. exchanges, excluding bought deals and ATMs. We remain focused on working our way toward the top 10 for the market share.
Our work with financial sponsors in our private capital advisory groups, our secondary [Phonetic] advisory business and our primary fundraising business continue at a strong pace.
These businesses continue to show significant momentum, and their impact on our results continues to grow.
Our success here is driven by three things: first, our strong client relationships; second, our strong track record; and third, our comprehensive coverage approach, which includes the sale of assets, LP positions, and GP stakes and our capability in raising capital.
As I commented, our momentum continues to build as many of our clients are repeat clients and our reputation attracts more opportunities.
The breadth and interconnectivity of our platforms means that we can work with financial sponsors on the fundraising side, then work with them on the advisory side as they deploy capital which can then lead to the next fund raise.
In restructuring, the strong economic recovery and access to capital is enabling companies to restructure out of court.
Our team continues to work through prior assignments.
liability management engagements and creditor assignments and continues to partner with our debt advisory team in private financing activity.
In equities, we remain engaged with our clients and focused on producing and delivering high-quality research and service for them.
Clients continue to use our excellent research and value the service we provide them through our core product.
Independent third-party data indicates that while the market wallet declined in the second quarter both sequentially and year-over-year, we successfully increased our market share versus both prior periods.
In fact, we were the largest share gainer of any firm globally transacting in U.S. cash equities.
We are extremely proud that Evercore ISI was once again highly ranked in Institutional Investor's All-America Research survey.
Highlights include top-ranked independent research firm for the eighth straight year; number 2 ranked firm among all firms for analysts; record 43 individual positions and 40 team positions; and Ed Hyman and was awarded the number 1 position in economics for the 41st time.
The convertibles business that we added a year ago continues to gain momentum as we build out the team and integrate it with our capabilities in research and sales.
Finally, AUM and our Wealth Management business finished the quarter at $11.3 billion as long-term performance remains solid and new business continues to be positive.
John and I will remain in our current roles until then, at which time he will become the sole Chairman and CEO of Evercore, and I will become Chairman Emeritus.
I will have more to say about my almost 13 years here on my last earnings call in early February, but I want to say that John and I have been partners in running Evercore for the last five years, for the first 3.5 years with John as Executive Chairman and I as CEO, and for the last 15 months as Co-Chairman of the Board and Co-CEOs.
It has been a great partnership.
When I convinced John to un-retire five years ago, and it took me 18 months to convince him, it was my deep hope that he would succeed me as CEO.
Today that hope has been fulfilled.
He is beyond ready to take on this role.
He is excited about taking on this role, and I couldn't be more optimistic about the future of the firm under his leadership.
I'm also very proud that we have put in place a next generation of leadership in almost every part of the firm.
Of the four leaders of U.S. advisory, three are in their 40s.
Of our two leaders of our advisory business in Europe, one is in his early 50s.
Our CEO of Evercore ISI is in his early 50s.
Our new see FFO and our General Counsel are in their 40s.
Our new Head of ECM is in her early 40s, and our new head of Evercore Wealth Management is in his early 50s.
With these extraordinarily capable young men and women in leadership positions, our firm is in a great position for the next decade or two.
I'm also proud of the incredible strength of our culture, which truly has allowed us to thrive over the last 20 months and the last 12.5 years.
Our core values of clients first, excellence, integrity, teamwork, respect for each other, investment in our talent, and diversity, equity, and inclusion have sustained us during this very challenging period, and they will allow us to continue to gain market share in the coming years.
He often jokes about our founder, Howard Evercore, who of course never existed.
But from the beginning, he simply wanted the firm to provide high-quality honest advice to clients and to maintain the highest standards of integrity.
Roger and I have worked together in four different places, and this is the first time that we've worked closely together.
And like my partnership with John, it has been a great partnership.
Roger's a very modest man, but I don't think he would mind me saying that he is today the single best person on the planet at what he does, and he has been a great partner to me over the last 12.5 years.
Let me now talk about our growth aspirations and our return of capital approach.
Our growth aspirations have evolved over the years from our goal of achieving $1 billion in advisory revenues to becoming the largest independent investment banking advisory firm in the world and the fourth largest in advisory fees among all firms, a goal that we first achieved in 2018 and have achieved every year since.
And our goal lately is to steadily gain market share and to narrow the gap between Evercore and the top 3 global firms by advisory revenues, all of whom, of course, are universal banking firms.
The breadth and diversity of our capabilities and, of course, a strong environment for M&A and capital raising have supported our growth trajectory and our industry-leading advisory SMD productivity.
But we believe that we certainly have meaningful growth opportunities in both revenues and market share gains in the future.
We have many opportunities to seize, but let me highlight three: first, we are highly focused on filling sector and geographic white space, both in North America and in Europe in our advisory business; and on continuing our client coverage initiatives focused on financial sponsors and large multinational corporations.
Second, we are deepening and broadening our product capabilities, particularly in ECM and debt advisory, including the addition of SPAC expertise and convertibles capability so that we have more fee opportunities with each of our clients and can increase our share of fees paid by our clients.
And third, we are investing heavily in advisory capabilities that serve the fastest growing segments of the economy, including the four techs: FinTech, Biotech, Cleantech, and traditional tech, particularly software.
Hiring A-plus talent and developing strong talent from within is critical to continuing to grow, and we have made notable progress on our hiring objectives this year.
Two new advisory SMDs joined us earlier this year, Kristy Grippi as our new Head of ECM and Juan Pedro Cozar as our Head of Iberia, and they already are having significant and positive impact on our business.
Three additional Advisory SMDs, Brad Wolff covering Biotech, Brad David covering financial sponsors, and Adi Jayaraman covering FinTech have joined us, and we expect them to begin to have an impact soon.
Three additional Advisory SMDs have left their firms and will join Evercore later this year covering the power and renewable space and basic materials.
These SMD additions in 2021 put us at the top end of our historical range of four to eight Advisory SMD recruits per year, and we continue to have meaningful and ongoing conversations with other potential recruits in areas of strategic significance.
Add to that the two Advisory SMDs who were promoted earlier this year, and we have 10 new SMDs in Advisory that are ramping up in areas of strategic importance to us.
In addition to hiring at the most senior levels, we are adding talent at all levels of seniority to continue to enhance our coverage, to meet the needs of our clients, and to support the elevated pace of activity that John described.
If we can continue to hire strong talent at all levels and offer more capabilities to serve clients, we will be able to enhance our already-strong and industry-leading Advisory SMD productivity levels and continue to grow the firm.
And, of course, there is additional inherent growth potential from the 30-plus Senior Managing Directors, including the 10 from this year, that have joined or have been promoted over the past three years and are still ramping up to full productivity.
And finally, we continue to add world-class senior research analyst like Mark Mahaney, the I.I.-ranked Internet analyst who joined us earlier this year.
Now let me discuss our capital return approach.
Our goal has always been to return to our shareholders all of our earnings not invested in the business in the form of dividends and share repurchases.
We achieved this goal in aggregate over a multi-year period through 2019.
And during the period 2015 to 2020, we reduced our adjusted weighted share count by 9%, or a little over 2% a year.
2020, of course, was an anomalous year.
We took several actions in 2020 to build a fortress balance sheet for our business.
First, in the early days of the pandemic, when there was heightened uncertainty about the length and depth of the economic slowdown, we became more conservative in our capital return policy, temporarily suspending discretionary buybacks and keeping our dividend flat for two quarters.
This resulted in increased cash holdings, particularly as our business recovered toward the end of the year.
Second, we decided to become more conservative in our long-term capital management approach.
In addition to what we historically held cash for, minimum working capital requirements, including capital to support our underwriting activities, accrued cash bonuses and a portion of upcoming and a historical deferred compensation, we decided to prefund all of our awarded deferred cash compensation obligations, thus building a truly fortress balance sheet for our business.
This catch-up was a one-time event.
Finally, we meaningfully increased the capital levels of our U.S. broker-dealer in the third quarter of 2020 to support our significantly expanded underwriting business, which as you may recall, had two very large transactions in the second quarter and is operating at a considerably higher level with a broader array of products than it has prior to 2020.
Ultimately, because of our surprise in the fourth quarter, we ended 2020 with an excess cash position even when considering the funding of all of these capital requirements for the underwriting business and fully funding our awarded deferred compensation obligations.
We also ended the first quarter of 2021 with an excess cash position.
And while we have been working down our excess cash position, we still have more cash than we need to meet our fortress balance sheet requirements.
So far this year we have returned $631.5 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.
We intend from this point forward to continue our pre-2020 practice of returning to shareholders all of our earnings not invested in the business, and also to work down opportunistically over time our excess cash position.
This will in turn shrink our adjusted diluted weighted average share count over time as we did from 2015 until now, although going forward at a more accelerated pace than the 2-plus percentage shrinkage over the last five years.
It also will drive meaningful earnings per share growth.
Of the first 12 years that I have been doing Evercore earnings calls, in 11 of those 12 years, we have had record revenues and earnings per share.
So here we go.
Sitting where we are today, with year-to-date revenues roughly $100 million below last year's full-year record and nine month earnings per share about $0.80 above last year's full-year record, let me guide all of you by saying that 2021 will be another record year in revenues and earnings for Evercore.
By the way, I got permission from our General Counsel to say that.
And it's really a pleasure to be here doing my first earnings call with you and John as Evercore's CFO.
For the third quarter of 2021, net revenues, net income, and earnings per share on a GAAP basis were $824 million, $160 million, and $3.74, respectively.
Year-to-date, net revenues, net income, and earnings per share on a GAAP basis were $2.17 billion, $444 million, and $10.19, respectively.
My comments from here will focus on non-GAAP measures, which we believe are useful when evaluating our results.
Third quarter adjusted net revenues of $832 million grew 104% year-over-year.
Year-to-date adjusted net revenues of $2.19 billion increased 62% compared to the prior year period.
This represents our best third quarter ever, our second-best quarter ever overall, and the first time adjusted net revenue surpassed $2 billion in the first nine months of the year.
Third quarter Advisory fees of $709 million grew 161% year-over-year.
Year-to-date advisory fees of $1.78 billion increased 84% versus the prior year period.
Our advisory fees include, approximately, $93 million of revenue from transactions that closed in early October.
As a reminder, in accordance with relevant accounting principles, we recognize revenue for deals that close early in the following quarter and certain closing conditions were satisfied at quarter-end.
To compare, we recognized $59 million in the second quarter of 2021 and $20 million in the third quarter of 2020.
Third quarter underwriting fees of $54 million reflected a decline of 18% year-over-year.
This compares favorably to the overall market for U.S. equity and equity-linked issuance which declined nearly 25% year-over-year as SPAC activity slowed dramatically.
We have been selective in SPAC underwriting activity, which helps protect our revenues from experiencing volatility associated with this market.
Year-to-date underwriting fees of $182 million are essentially flat versus the prior-year period, which as a reminder, included two sizable transactions in the second quarter of 2020 that totaled nearly $45 million in revenues.
Third quarter commissions and related revenue of $47 million increased 6% year-over-year even as market volumes and volatility declined.
Check collections, which are driven by research votes, were strong.
Convertible securities, which we began trading in January, continued to contribute positively.
Year-to-date commissions and related revenue of $151 million declined 2% versus the prior year period as market volatility declined significantly.
Third quarter asset management and administration fees of $20 million increased 21% year over year on higher AUM.
Year-to-date asset management and administration fees of $57 million increased 21% versus the prior year period.
Our adjusted compensation ratio for the third quarter is 58.5%, which brings our year-to-date comp ratio to 58.8%.
This reflects our current best estimate on compensation for the full year.
As John indicated, our backlog is strong, but as always, our revenue in a given period depends on the timing of deal closings and that is even more so this year than in others.
Additionally, as has been widely reported, market pressures on compensation levels for junior and mid-level bankers remains high and hiring has been strong.
As we always do, we will continue to evaluate the key drivers of our compensation as the year progresses and make adjustments in the fourth quarter if appropriate.
Third quarter non-compensation costs of $83 million increased 17% year over year driven by higher professional fees due to higher activity levels and strong recruiting efforts, higher T&E due to both increased travel and entertainment, and higher occupancy expense due to more space as we grow as well as expenses relating to our return to the office.
On a sequential basis, non-compensation expenses increased 14% driven by higher professional fees which reflected the aforementioned recruiting costs, higher other operating expenses, and higher T&E.
Within other operating expenses, the increase was a result of higher bad debt expense.
As many other firms have likely experienced, T&E has not rebounded as quickly as we anticipated earlier in the year.
We expect non-comp expenses, including T&E, to continue to increase as we evolve toward more normal operations and T&E will naturally also tick up as we add SMDs and teams over time.
In 2019, of our T&E expense, 83% was related to travel.
Year-to-date travel is running at about 20% of 2019 levels, and we expect that to settle at 70% to 80% of pre-pandemic levels.
We expect other T&E expenses to return to those experienced before the pandemics.
Third quarter adjusted operating income and adjusted net income of $262 million and $188 million increased 237% and 258%, respectively.
Year-to-date adjusted operating income and adjusted net income of $674 million and $505 million increased 156% and 177%, respectively, versus the prior year period.
We delivered a third quarter adjusted operating margin of 31.5%, while third quarter adjusted earnings per share of $3.96 increased 257% year over year.
Our year-to-date adjusted margin is 30.7%.
Adjusted earnings per share of $10.41 increased 170% versus the prior year period.
Turning to our balance sheet, as of September 30th, we held $479 million in cash and equivalents and $1.3 billion in investment securities.
As Ralph mentioned earlier, even with our strong return of capital, our balance sheet grows throughout the year as we accrue for annual bonus compensation that is paid in the first quarter.
Our balance sheet also reflects the minimum levels of cash for operating our business, including capital to support our underwriting activities, commitments related to deferred cash compensation previously awarded, and cash needs for anticipated deferred compensation to be awarded in the first quarter, plus earnings that we recorded in the third quarter that have not yet been returned.
Year-to-date we have bought back 4.1 million shares in total; approximately, half of which is in excess of what we bought back to offset dilution from RSU grants.
Ralph has led this firm over the last 13 years guiding us with vision, extraordinary leadership, and management skills, building a firm of broad and deep capability with the highest quality talent on the street.
Over the last five years, I've had the great good fortune to partner with Ralph and Roger to work together to continue our journey of growth, supported by the same underpinning of principles on which Roger founded the firm 25 years ago.
I've loved being Ralph's partner and friend.
Beyond being an extraordinary business leader, he is an extraordinary person.
I will miss his active involvement in the running of the firm but plan to continue to call upon his sound counsel and judgment.
As I consider the current state of the firm, I feel both pride and optimism, proud of what we've accomplished, our expanded client base, a platform of broad, diverse, and growing capabilities and the quality of our people who deliver each day for our clients and our shareholders and an optimistic about what is ahead.
We have the right strategy to build upon our successes to date, and I along with all of our business leaders intend to stay focused on long-term growth.
As we look ahead, I believe the prospects for Evercore are clear and exciting.
With that, I'm pleased for us to answer questions.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
compname posts quarterly adjusted earnings per share $3.96.
qtrly diluted earnings per share $3.74.
qtrly adjusted earnings per share $3.96.


Prompt:
Human: Well, we had an exciting quarter.
I'm not sure how else to describe it.
Among other accomplishments, we celebrated the addition of store #2000 to our portfolio.
We were recognized by Inside Self-Storage as the Best Third-Party Management company in the industry, and we achieved some of the strongest operating results in our company's history.
Same-store occupancy once again reached a new all-time high during the quarter at over 97%, with vacates continuing at lower-than-historic levels.
Our strong occupancy resulted in exceptional pricing power.
Achieved rates to new customers in the quarter were 43% higher than 2020 levels and 41% greater than 2019 levels.
In addition to the benefit from new customer rates, we have continued to bring existing customers closer to current street rates as state of emergency rate restrictions continued to be lifted throughout the country.
Other income improved significantly year-over-year, primarily due to increased late fees contributing 30 basis points to revenue growth in the quarter.
We had modestly higher discounts due to higher street rates, but their impact was offset by lower bad debt.
These drivers produced same-store revenue growth of 18.4%, a 480 basis point acceleration from Q2.
And same-store NOI growth of 27.8%, an acceleration of 760 basis points.
In addition, our external growth initiatives produced steady returns outside of the same-store pool, resulting in FFO growth of 41.2%.
Turning to external growth.
The acquisition market remains very active but expensive in our view.
Our investment team has never been busier, and we have found the most success acquiring lease-up properties and/or acquiring stores with the joint venture partner.
While most of our transactions have been in relatively small bites, the total is adding up, allowing us to increase our investment guidance to $700 million for the year.
Also, our approach has resulted in better-than-market average yields.
But we are much more focused on FFO per share accretion than total acquisition volume, and we plan to continue to be selective in the current environment.
We continue to look at all material transactions in the market and we have plenty of capital to invest when we find opportunities that create long-term value for our shareholders.
We had an incredibly strong quarter on the third-party management front, adding 96 stores.
Our growth was partially offset by dispositions where owners sold their properties.
It is worth mentioning that oftentimes, we are the buyer of these properties, and they are simply moving from one ownership category to another.
In the quarter, we purchased 11 of our managed stores in the REIT or in a joint venture for a total of 30 stores purchased from our third-party platform through September.
Fundamentals have remained even stronger than our already positive outlook, allowing us to raise our annual FFO guidance by $0.28 at the midpoint.
While we still assume a seasonal occupancy moderation, it has been less than our initial estimate of 300 basis points from this summer's peak.
Our revised guidance now assumes a 200 basis point moderation which would result in 2021 year-end occupancy generally similar to that of 2020.
We expect continued strong growth in the fourth quarter to cap off what has been an incredible year for Extra Space Storage.
I would now like to turn the time over to Scott.
As Joe mentioned, we had an excellent quarter with accelerating same-store revenue growth, driven by all-time high occupancy and strong rental rate growth to new and existing customers.
Core FFO for the quarter was $1.85 per share, a year-over-year increase of 41.2%.
Property performance was the primary driver of the beat with additional contribution from growth in tenant insurance income and management fees.
As a result of our strong FFO growth, our Board of Directors raised our third quarter dividend an additional 25% after already raising it 11% earlier this year, a total increase of 38.9% over the third quarter 2020 dividend.
We delivered a reduction in same-store expenses in the quarter, including a 3% savings in payroll, 42% savings in marketing and a 4% decrease in property taxes due to some successful appeals.
Despite the payroll savings we've enjoyed this year, like most companies, we've felt material wage pressure across all markets, including our corporate office.
Some of the payroll reduction has been the result of higher turnover and longer time to fill -- and longer time required to fill vacant positions.
We will experience continued payroll pressure in 2022 as we have raised wages to retain and recruit the best team in the storage industry.
This will also impact our G&A expense.
In the second quarter, we completed our inaugural investment-grade public bond offering.
And we completed a successful second offering in the third quarter, issuing another $600 million 10-year bond at a rate of 2.35%.
We also refiled our ATM in the quarter, and we have $800 million in availability.
Our access to capital has never been stronger.
And between net operating income and disposition proceeds, our leverage continues to be reduced.
Our quarter end net debt to EBITDA was 4.5 times, giving us significant dry powder for investment opportunities while maintaining our credit ratings.
Last night, we revised our 2021 guidance and annual assumptions.
We raised our same-store revenue range to 12.5% to 13.5%.
Same-store expense growth was reduced to negative 1% to 0%, resulting in same-store NOI growth range of 18% to 19.5%.
These improvements in our same-store expectations are due to better-than-expected rates, higher occupancy and lower payroll and marketing expense.
We raised our full year core FFO range to be $6.75 to $6.85 per share.
Due to stronger lease-up performance, we dropped our anticipated dilution from value-add acquisitions and C of O stores from $0.12 to $0.11, even after adding a number of additional lease-up properties to our acquisition pipeline.
We are excited by our strong performance year-to-date and the success of our team driving our growth strategies across our highly diversified portfolio.
As we often say, it's a great time to be in storage.
 Assistant:

Chosen response:
compname reports q3 ffo per share $1.85 excluding items.
q3 ffo per share $1.85 excluding items.
sees 2021 ffo per share to be $6.75 - $6.85.
extra space storage - increased same-store revenue by 18.4% and same-store net operating income by 27.8% in quarter compared to same period in 2020.


Prompt:
Human: 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%.
 Assistant:

Chosen response: q3 earnings per share $2.15 excluding items.