[ The transcript was presubmitted by Loews Corporation. No live call was conducted for the second quarter earnings call. ] Good morning. Loews is off to a great start in the first half of 2023, with each of our consolidated subsidiaries performing very well. CNA had another strong quarter, its results reflecting the long and arduous re-underwriting process led by Dino Robusto over the past six years since he became CEO. In a quarter when industry catastrophe losses were more than double their historical average, CNA managed to record only 3.1 points of such losses, further evidence that the management team's steadfast focus on underwriting continues to produce stellar results. Growth at CNA was also robust in the second quarter, with net written premiums increasing 10% excluding currency fluctuations compared to the same period last year. That growth was driven by over 7 points of renewal premium change and strong new business, which was 11% higher than during the same period last year. As a reminder, renewal premium change consists of two components: rate and exposure growth. Rate is the change in price if the coverage remains the same. Exposure growth captures underwriting changes (i.e., changes in deductibles, etc.), as well as changes in the insured's characteristics, such as changes to payroll, revenue or property values. For the second quarter, higher rates contributed 5 points of renewal premium change and exposure growth added another 2 points. All in all, we are pleased with CNA's continuing solid performance. Moving on to Boardwalk, the company reported EBITDA of $213 million, which represents an increase of over 10% compared to $193 million in the second quarter of 2022. This year-over year increase was driven both by strong volumes and higher rates. As I said last quarter, Boardwalk has very limited exposure to the…

For the second quarter of 2023, Loews reported net income of $360 million or $1.58 per share, compared with net income of $167 million or $0.68 per share in last year's second quarter. This year-over-year increase was driven by higher income from our consolidated subsidiaries and higher net investment income at the parent company. As a reminder and consistent with the first quarter, prior period results have been restated to reflect the adoption of the new GAAP accounting standard of "long-duration contracts targeted improvements," or LDTI. Book value per share increased from $60.81 at the end of 2022 to $64.59 at the end of the second quarter of 2023. Book value per share excluding AOCI (Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income) increased from $74.88 at the end of 2022 to $78.56 at the end of the second quarter. This increase was driven by earnings and accretive share repurchases in the first half of the year. Our largest subsidiary, CNA, contributed net income of $255 million to Loews in the second quarter compared to $170 million in last year's second quarter. The $85 million year-over-year increase was primarily driven by higher net investment income. The increase in net investment income was driven by higher interest rates on fixed income securities and improved returns on limited partnerships and common stocks. The pre-tax yield on the company's fixed income portfolio increased 30 basis points from 4.3% in the second quarter of 2022 to 4.6% in the second quarter of 2023. CNA continued to post profitable growth in this hard insurance market, with net written premiums increasing 10% excluding currency fluctuations. That growth enabled CNA to produce its highest ever underlying underwriting income in the second quarter of this year. The company's underlying combined ratio of 91.1% increased slightly compared to 90.8% in the second quarter…

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. Do you anticipate making a sizable investment in Loews Hotels this year to support its growth projects? Loews Hotels continues to make significant investments in its growth. Last year, Loews Hotels completed a $222 million equity investment in the construction of the Loews Arlington. This year, Loews Hotels anticipates making a nearly $200 million equity investment to develop its three new properties in Orlando. Given the hotel company's strong internal cash flow generation, it self-funded the vast majority of its investment in the Loews Arlington and we anticipate that it will be able to self-fund the substantial majority of its growth projects in 2023. The equity need from the parent company is minimal” -- Loews Corporation made a $33 million equity contribution to Loews Hotels last year and anticipates investing a similar amount during 2023. Two weeks ago, Bloomberg released a story about Loews's lack of analyst coverage. Why is Loews not covered by Wall Street analysts? Do you want coverage? Does this lack of coverage impact the valuation of Loews? The article correctly states that Loews had analyst coverage in the past but lost that coverage as analysts retired or switched firms. In response to declining coverage, we reached out and encouraged various firms to initiate coverage on Loews, to no avail. We believe investment banks are reluctant to cover Loews because its multi-industry holding company structure does not fit within the banks' sector-specific coverage models. As I have stated in the past, we believe Loews trades at a substantial discount to our view of its intrinsic value. This…

Rather than comment on what's going on with inflation or the economy, this quarter I want to speak about my long-term view of interest rates. In my opinion, we are now paying the price for the 14 years of Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) and Quantitative Easing (QE) that lasted from the end of 2008 until 2022. There was a brief, minor increase in rates starting in 2016, but that increase was cut short by COVID in early 2020. During this extended period, the Fed managed not only the short end of the yield curve (which was historically their tool for managing interest rates), but also set rates across the yield curve through their massive Quantitative Easing program. Both ZIRP and QE lasted much too long and revealed an arrogance on the part of the Fed -- a belief that they knew better than the market what the appropriate term interest rates should be. As early as 2011, it was my sense that the Fed should begin raising rates above zero to get the markets accustomed to having to pay some amount to borrow money. Instead, however, I watched with concern as ZIRP and QE continued, and the markets and the government became accustomed to zero money market rates and unsustainably low term rates. As a reminder, ten-year notes bottomed out at about 50 basis points in 2020 and averaged about 2% from 2009 to 2021. In that period, federal interest expense increased by only one third from $313 billion in 2007 to $412 billion in 2020, even as the national debt increased by a factor of three from $9.2 trillion to $27.7 trillion. Additionally, from 2011 until 2021, the Fed remitted over $900 billion to the Treasury or about $84 billion a year. These remittances were made possible by…