Fidelity to Buy All Stock of Title Firm

Fidelity National Financial Inc., Irvine, Calif., has agreed to purchase the shares it does not own of ANFI Inc., an Orange, Calif.-based regional title underwriter that until recently was known as American National Financial Inc.Each share of ANFI will be exchanged for 0.4540 shares of Fidelity. Based on Fidelity's Dec. 16 closing price of $32.86 per share, each share of ANFI is worth $14.92, an 11% premium. Fidelity currently owns 28% of ANFI. After the deal is completed, ANFI will be merged into Fidelity's Ticor Title unit. ANFI has title operations in California, Arizona, and Nevada. For the first nine months of this year, it had revenues of $139 million and net income of $16 million. Robert Napoli, senior research analyst with U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, has raised his 2002 earnings per share estimate from $5.06 to $5.21, in addition to increasing the 2003 EPS estimate from $3.40 to $3.65. His primary reason for the increase was a continued strong mortgage origination market, which is not expected to slow until the end of the first quarter of 2003.