[ The transcript was presubmitted by Loews Corporation. No live call was conducted for the fourth quarter earnings call. ] Loews had a strong fourth quarter, finishing the year with our consolidated subsidiaries producing stellar results. Before discussing these financial results, however, I'd like to provide an update concerning the litigation related to our 2018 acquisition of the minority interest in Boardwalk Pipelines. We are pleased to report that in late December of 2022 the Delaware Supreme Court ruled in Loews's favor, reversing the lower Court of Chancery's ruling that had awarded former Boardwalk minority unitholders damages in the amount of $690 million, plus interest -- or just over $900 million in total. With the main issue settled and behind us, there remain three unresolved issues still under consideration in the litigation process. In December, the case was remanded to the Chancery Court so that the Court could rule on these three remaining items. Turning back to Loews's financial results, let's take a look at our property and casualty insurance subsidiary, CNA Financial. CNA's performance was strong, with underwriting results at or near its top quartile peers. The company reported a fourth quarter and full year underlying combined ratio of 91.2%, which is in line with the company's excellent performance in 2021. CNA's all-in combined ratio increased slightly in the fourth quarter to 93.7% due to higher catastrophe losses from winter storm Elliott. For the full year, however, the all-in combined ratio improved from the prior year by 3.0 points to 93.2% driven by lower catastrophes and more favorable prior year development. In more good news, net written premiums grew 9% in 2022, due to improved retention and strong new business, which grew by 13%. Last year's substantial interest rate increase was also positive for CNA, since it is enabling…

For the fourth quarter of 2022, Loews reported net income of $364 million or $1.53 per share, which compares favorably to net income of $343 million or $1.36 per share in last year's fourth quarter. This year-over-year increase was driven by higher investment income from the parent company and higher income from Boardwalk, partially offset by lower net income from CNA. For the full year, Loews reported net income of $1.012 billion or $4.16 per share compared to $1.578 billion or $6.07 per share in 2021. Last year's results included a $438 million after-tax investment gain from the partial sale and deconsolidation of Altium Packaging. Putting aside lower investment income at both CNA and Loews, all of our subsidiaries posted strong growth in operating performance, which I will discuss in more detail later. Book value per share declined from $71.84 at the end of 2021 to $61.86 at the end of 2022 due to the effect of higher interest rates lowering the fair value of CNA's fixed income investments. Excluding accumulated other comprehensive income, where this unrealized loss sits, book value per share increased by nearly 7% from $71.09 to $75.78. The increase was driven by 2022's earnings and accretive share repurchases. Turning to our insurance subsidiary: CNA contributed net income of $223 million to Loews in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to $239 million in 2021. The slight year-over-year decrease was driven by lower investment results and higher catastrophes due to Winter Storm Elliott, partially offset by higher underlying underwriting income. The fourth quarter of 2022 also benefited from lower adverse reserve development on CNA's loss portfolio transfer related to asbestos and environmental liabilities. For the full year, CNA contributed net income of $802 million to Loews versus $1.077 billion in 2021. The decrease was driven by unfavorable…

Every quarter, we encourage shareholders to send us questions in advance of earnings that they would like us to answer in our remarks. Please see below for the questions we have received, along with some additional questions we found relevant. CNA just declared a special dividend of $1.20 versus $2.00 last year. Does this change impact your outlook for the company? This change is attributable to lower investment income from losses in the LP and common stock portfolios. The increase in the company's regular quarterly dividend from $0.40 to $0.42 is a reflection of the CNA Board's confidence in the future performance of CNA. The company remains operationally strong, and we are very bullish on the company's prospects. Not only do we believe that CNA will benefit from higher interest rates, we also believe the company will continue to produce strong underlying results. CNA's management team has done a tremendous job over the past several years transforming CNA into a top quartile underwriter. Since Dino Robusto took over, the company's underlying combined ratio has improved from 97.9% in 2016 to 91.2% in 2022. How will a potential recession impact your subsidiaries? Overall, our subsidiaries operate in fairly recession-resilient industries. That said, we would expect a recession to have some impact, which we'll outline subsidiary by subsidiary. Insurance is an essential service that businesses need regardless of the broader economic environment. In fact, a recession may benefit the insurance industry by bringing down loss cost inflation. The industry is currently feeling the effects of high inflation, which we would expect to moderate in a recession. However, growth in certain insurance lines may be impacted by a slowdown in business activity. For example, workers compensation premiums would likely be lower if there are fewer individuals in the workplace. Boardwalk is perhaps our…

I looked back in my notes and saw that this is the eighth time I will have commented on the economy and interest rates over the past few years. I'm pleased to say that - so far - I haven't embarrassed myself with my forecasts. I'll quickly recap my remarks here to share how my thinking has evolved in response to the Fed's actions. I started out in early May of 2021 by ringing the inflation alarm bell and talking about higher commodity prices along with cost-push and demand-pull inflationary warnings. At that time, I said the Fed had their proverbial heads in the sand concerning inflation. I also said that politicians and economists were truly kidding themselves about Modern Monetary Theory (the notion that one can have unlimited federal spending and loose money with no adverse economic impacts). In the next few calls, I went on to note that inflation warning signs were proliferating. I cited concerns about the cycle of inflation and the scarcity of employees. I warned against easy monetary policy in a strengthening economy and said that a near zero Fed funds rate was a danger. I stated that the squeeze on Treasuries brought about by quantitative easing -- resulting in ten-year notes trading between 50 basis points and 1.50% -- was a red flag, as was the dramatic rise in M2 at over a 20% rate of growth. In February of 2022, however, I started to change my tune as the Fed seemed finally to admit they had a problem. It was now abundantly clear that fiscal stimulus combined with easy monetary policy had brought year-over-year CPI to 7.5% (on its way to 9% in June of '22), and the Fed sat up and took notice. In May of '22, I gave kudos to Chairman…