[ The transcript was presubmitted by Loews Corporation. No live call was conducted for the third quarter earnings call. ] Good morning. Loews had a great third quarter, with our three consolidated subsidiaries firing on all cylinders. Each one of these businesses is experiencing substantial growth, and today I want to focus on what that growth looks like in each subsidiary. The management teams at all three companies have worked hard to grow their businesses, and I continue to be frustrated that the market is not acknowledging their efforts with higher valuations. The market's valuation of CNA is particularly perplexing. Not only has the company grown, it has also vastly improved the performance of its underlying business. Over the past five years, net written premiums increased by 35% from $6.8 billion in 2018 to $9.2 billion over the past 12 months. At the same time, the company became markedly more profitable due to its laser-like focus on underwriting. During that time, the underlying combined ratio has improved by five points from 95.4% in 2018 to 90.4% in the third quarter of 2023. As a result, underwriting income has more than doubled over the past five years, increasing from $226 million in 2018 to $533 million over the past 12 months. CNA has also done an exceptional job of actively managing its run-off long-term care (LTC) book of business, significantly mitigating this long-tailed risk. The number of its active LTC policies has declined by more than 40%, from 420,000 in 2015 to 242,000 today. Not only has the number of active policies been reduced, the profile of the underlying LTC business has also substantially improved. For example, since 2015 CNA has increased long-term care premium rates by 45%. Additionally, to date, the company has managed well over 100,000 long-term care claims,…

For the third quarter of 2023, Loews reported net income of $253 million or $1.12 per share, compared with net loss of $22 million or $0.09 per share in last year's third quarter. This year's third quarter results included a $37 million non-cash after-tax charge for the termination of a defined benefit pension plan. As a reminder, last year's third quarter financials were restated for the adoption of the LDTI (Long Duration Targeted Improvements) accounting standard. Book value per share increased from $60.81 at the end of 2022 to $64.43 at the end of the third quarter of 2023. Book value per share excluding AOCI (Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income) increased from $74.88 at the end of 2022 to $79.92 at the end of the third quarter. This increase was driven by earnings and accretive share repurchases in the first nine months of the year. We are pleased with the performance of our largest subsidiary, CNA, which contributed net income of $235 million to Loews in 2023's third quarter compared to a loss of $37 million in the third quarter of last year. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher investment income, higher P&C underwriting income, and a significantly lower impact from the annual reserve assumption review of long-term care. The increase in net investment income was driven by improved returns on limited partnerships and common stocks as well as higher interest rates on fixed income securities, which continue to be a tailwind. The pre-tax yield on the company's fixed income portfolio increased approximately 30 basis points from 4.4% in the third quarter of 2022 to 4.7% in the third quarter of 2023. On the underwriting side, CNA continues to post profitable growth with net written premiums increasing 6%. Net written premium growth consisted of written rate increases of 5% and…

Loews has been investing a substantial amount of capital into Loews Hotels. What are the expected returns on those projects? We typically evaluate the attractiveness of new hotel projects using a cash-on-cash return metric. Specifically, we compare the project's stabilized cash flow projections to the amount of equity required and we generally target mid-to-high teens returns based on that metric. Jane, can you provide some color on how rising interest rates will impact the subsidiaries?

Most of our subsidiaries have fixed rate debt. Altium has floating rate debt, but approximately half is hedged until 2028. While refinancings will result in higher interest expense, the overall financial impact to Loews is positive as CNA is able to re-invest its portfolio at more attractive yields. Jim, can you discuss Loews' recent purchase of $175 million of CNA stock?

In the past we have purchased CNA shares to signal to the market that we believe that CNA is significantly undervalued, and this time was no different. I would also point out that this purchase did not impede our ability to continue buying Loews shares. Year-to-date we have spent $775 million to repurchase 12.9 million shares of Loews.

Jim, would you like to make any general remarks about the economy?

In my second quarter remarks I discussed how, in the past 10 years, we got to where we are today in terms of the economy and interest rates. At that time, I made the statement that fixed income securities were becoming an investible class of assets for money managers after being non- investible for the past 15 years. Today, ten-year notes yield about 4.85%, up from just under 4% three months ago. While fixed income securities may be investible, I also said not to expect capital gains from investing in those securities. They would provide a good flow of income but might not provide much in the capital gains department. A big problem with investing in fixed income securities is that the U.S. government will have what seems to be unsustainably large deficits as far as the eye can see and even farther. The current forecast is for federal budget deficits to be in the $2 trillion range going forward. That means the government will have to raise $2 trillion every year in the debt markets – a very tall order. Already we are in the danger zone with government debt at more than 120% of GDP and that ratio of government debt to GDP will go up in the future if these large deficits continue. In my comments last quarter, I said that from 2007 to 2020 "federal interest expense increased by just over 20% from $413 billion in 2007 to $508 billion in 2020, even as the national debt increased by a factor of three from $9.2 trillion to $27.7 trillion." Because of the combination of ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and QE (quantitative easing) interest rates stayed low in that period. But inflation has forced the Fed to come to the realization that the printing presses can't…