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Text: During the call today, we might also discuss non-GAAP financial measures.
Jim, over to you.
2020 was a year of extraordinary challenges.
The coronavirus changed our lives with astonishing speed and what began as a promising year quickly and dramatically morphed into a global health and economic crisis.
In addition to the harsh toll on human lives and livelihoods, the pandemic has brought about changes in society and business that are likely to be felt for years to come.
While we can never sufficiently express our gratitude for their bravery and their compassion, Loews and our subsidiaries have provided philanthropic support to various organizations supplying relief and aiding recovery efforts in their community.
We also want to recognize our Loews corporate and subsidiary employees who rose to this ongoing challenge with determination, focus, and professionalism.
Across the organization, our people have done their part to make sure that businesses had insurance and claims were paid that natural gas was available to heat homes, schools, and medical facilities, that packaging was available for water and medicine bottles where that a meal was delivered to a family in a hotel room.
Each of our subsidiaries went to impressive lengths to ensure the health and safety of their employees and customers.
These efforts enabled us to meet the needs of our customers and communities at a critical time while continuing to move Loews forward.
Let's look at the operational impact of COVID on each of our subsidiaries over the course of 2020 starting with CNA.
Operationally CNA's performance continues to be quite strong, while the events of 2020 were unprecedented including impacts not only from COVID, but also from civil unrest and hurricanes.
The overall trend in the property casualty insurance industry has been upwards toward a hardening market.
Not only did CNA have good growth in new business, the Company also benefited from higher P&C rates, leading to higher overall premium growth.
Throughout the year, CNA has continued to focus on underwriting discipline, partnerships and talent.
This focus has resulted in continued improvements in CNA's underlying performance which excludes catastrophe losses and prior-year development.
In 2020, CNA had an underlying combined ratio of 93.1% compared to 94.8% in 2019 and 95.4% in 2018.
That represents a more than 2 point improvement over two years reflecting progress in both the expense and loss ratios.
Earlier today, CNA declared a special dividend of $0.75 in addition to raising its quarterly common dividend to $0.38 per share.
The increase in the common dividend is reflective of the CNA Board's confidence in the ongoing operational improvements at CNA.
CNA paid total dividends of around 90% of its 2020 earnings.
CNA's ability to return capital to shareholders even after the extensive cat losses the Company absorbed this year underscores its financial strength and fortress balance sheet.
At Boardwalk in 2020, the Company met the challenge of operating its pipelines without service interruptions to its customers, not only during COVID-19, but also through the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast.
Boardwalk has completed the recontracting of its pipelines originally put into service between 2008 and 2010.
While future growth projects could become more difficult to green light in the current environment, Boardwalk continues to benefit from its long-term fixed fee contracts.
During 2020, the Company added approximately $1.3 billion of new contracts and the contractual backlog ended the year at over $9 billion or seven times Boardwalk's annual 2020 revenues.
Boardwalk reported EBITDA of $819 million for the year, essentially flat from 2019.
As for our packaging Company, Altium, demand for its products continues to be strong overall and even stronger for product segments such as household, household chemicals and beverages.
On the flip side, as a result of the pandemic, demand is somewhat weaker in segments such as automotive, commercial foodservice and school dairy.
Additionally, the Company's recycling business, Envision has been experiencing its best performance since it was acquired by Altium in 2014 driven by stronger demand for recycled products also known as post-consumer resin.
Altium's focus on new business is bearing fruit and should benefit results in future periods.
The Company continues to be successful in gaining new accounts by demonstrating reliability, continued innovation and customer focus during this difficult COVID period.
Of all our subsidiaries Loews Hotels has been the hardest hit by the pandemic.
In February, the Company had occupancy rates of around 80% for its owned and joint venture hotels.
By April, only three of these hotels were operational and occupancy rates had plummeted to about 9%.
The Company responded quickly to the COVID-induced downturn in a number of ways.
To better align to reduced level of demand, Loews Hotels aggressively cut expenses.
They rightsize capital spending, worked with lenders to defer interest and principal paydowns and reevaluated opening dates for new developments.
Importantly, in the face of this crisis, Loews Hotels continue to look out for its team member's safety and well-being, putting programs in place to assist those negatively affected as well as implementing extensive COVID protocols in hotels as they resumed operations.
During December of 2020, occupancy rates for owned and JV hotels that were operational had risen to almost 38% with 22 out of 27 Loews Hotels once again welcoming guests.
At this point in time, leisure travel is recovering at a somewhat faster pace than business travel, but it is still difficult to predict when Loews Hotels will resume normal operations.
We expect that circumstances will vary by hotel property with the occupancy at hotels increasing gradually as the travel industry recovers from the pandemic.
That being said, we believe properties such as those in Orlando, Miami Beach and Arlington, Texas are well positioned to participate in the early stages of the travel resurgence.
It bears mentioning that throughout the pandemic Loews and its subsidiaries continued to have ample access to the capital markets.
Loews, CNA and Boardwalk each issued $500 million in bonds between May and August of 2020, taking advantage of the low rates available in the credit markets.
Altium Packaging completed a debt recapitalization in January of 2021, which resulted in a $199 million payment to Loews basically returning a third of our equity and we still own a 100% of the business.
This is our first dividend from Altium since acquiring the Company in 2017.
The success of these offerings is a testament of the strength of Loews' corporate and subsidiary balance sheets and investor's confidence in our credit worthiness.
Before I hand the call over to David, I want to talk about capital allocation.
Throughout this year, I have emphatically stated my strong belief that the market has been significantly undervaluing Loews' shares.
I also stated that while Loews plans to maintain a substantial liquidity position as our rainy day fund.
We would still take advantage of the markets discount and continue to buyback our shares.
With our stock trading considerably below our view of its intrinsic value, share repurchases have recently been our most attractive capital allocation option.
That being said, our decision to buyback stock has not come at the expense of any of our subsidiaries.
We provided about $150 million to Loews Hotels in 2020 to help it right out the effects of COVID on the hospitality industry.
We will continue to support Loews Hotels in 2021 as it prepares for travel and tourism to come back with the expectation of a return to more normalized operations in 2022.
During the fourth quarter, we purchased almost 6 million shares of Loews stock for about $244 million while preserving ample liquidity and ending the quarter with about $3.5 billion in cash.
Over the course of the year, Loews repurchased nearly 22 million of our own shares for an average cost of below $42 per share, which is lower than Loews' current market price and considerably lower than what we believe to be the intrinsic value of the company.
In my view that's a great use of capital in order to create value for all shareholders over the long-term.
And now David over to you.
Today we reported fourth quarter net income of $397 million or $1.45 per share compared to $217 million or $0.73 per share in last year's fourth quarter.
For the full year, we reported a net loss of $931 million or $3.32 per share while in 2019 our net income was $932 million or $3.07 per share.
I will briefly summarize our strong fourth quarter results and then turn to the full year.
CNA drove the year-over-year increase in our fourth quarter income with an assist from Boardwalk.
The absence of results from Diamond Offshore which last year posted a fourth quarter loss also helped.
Let me share some highlights on CNA's fourth quarter.
For more details, check out the transcript from today's CNA Investor Call.
CNA's net income contribution to Loews rose 42% to $346 million making up the bulk of our consolidated fourth quarter net income of $398 million.
The core P&C business performed extremely well.
Net written premium grew 12% year-over-year.
The combined ratio improved 2.1 points to 93.5 driven by lower expense and underlying loss ratios as well as reduced cat losses.
After tax P&C net investment income was down slightly, as higher returns on LP and common stock investments were not able to fully offset the impact of lower yields on the fixed income portfolio.
Net investment gains, however, were greater than during the prior-year quarter.
The Life & Group segment posted strong results.
Boardwalk pipelines net income contribution rose from $48 million in last year's fourth quarter to $83 million which included $26 million after-tax of settlement proceeds related to a customer bankruptcy.
Fourth quarter net revenues excluding these proceeds were up 4% driven by growth projects recently placed into service.
Loews Hotels posted a net loss of $68 million in Q4 2020 versus a net loss last year of $59 million.
This year's net loss was caused by the continuing revenue challenges stemming from the pandemic with operating revenue, down 81% year-over-year.
In last year's fourth quarter, Loews Hotels incurred a $69 million after-tax charge from the impairment of two hotel properties as well as some pre-opening expenses on properties under development.
Before turning to the full year, one last observation on the quarterly comparison.
The fourth quarter of 2019 included a $38 million net loss from Diamond Offshore.
Diamond is no longer one of our consolidated subsidiaries and thus did not affect our Q4 2020 earnings.
Now for our full year results.
We reported a net loss of $931 million or $3.32 per share.
Let me start by recapping the drivers of the loss, which primarily relate to Diamond and Loews Hotels.
Diamond filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 26, 2020.
Through that date, Diamond had contributed net losses of $476 million to Loews mainly attributable to rig impairment charges.
Further because of the bankruptcy filing, in the second quarter, we deconsolidated Diamond, wrote down the carrying value of our investment in the Company and booked a $957 million after-tax investment loss.
In total, Diamond accounted for $1.43 billion of net losses to Loews in 2020.
Loews Hotels has been severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic with operating revenue, down 71% for the full year.
Similarly, income in joint ventures swung from positive $69 million in 2019 to a $73 million loss in 2020.
This dramatic change in Loews Hotels operating environment caused the Company to incur a net loss of $212 million for the year.
Loews' net income declined even after entirely excluding the impact of Diamond in the Loews Hotels from our results in both years.
This decline was entirely attributable to higher catastrophe losses at CNA and lower results from investment-related activities at CNA and the parent Company.
CNA booked pre-tax catastrophe losses of $550 million in 2020, up from $179 million in 2019.
Weather related events comprised 50% of the year's cat losses with COVID-19 and civil unrest making up the remainder.
The negative year-over-year impact to Loews of CNA's unusually elevated catastrophe losses was $262 million after-tax.
After-tax net investment income in CNA's P&C business fell year-over-year because of lower returns on fixed income securities and limited partnership in common stock investments.
This accounted for $148 million decline in Loews' net income.
Similarly, the Loews parent company's net investment income declined $141 million after-tax, driven mainly by lower returns on LP and equity investments.
Finally, CNA swung from net investment gains in 2019 to net investment losses in 2020.
This swing reduced our net income by $60 million.
In total, these items, cat losses net investment income at CNA and Loews and CNA's net investment losses accounted for a year-over-year decline in Loews' net income of $611 million.
CNA's core P&C business excluding catastrophes performed extremely well.
Net written premium increased 6% on the back of new business growth, solid retention and rate increases averaging 11%.
The underlying combined ratio for the full year, which excludes cat losses and prior year development was $93.1 million down from $94.8 million in 2019, with improvement in both the loss and expense ratios.
All of this led to a 38% increase in pre-tax underlying underwriting income.
CNA's long-term care business continues to benefit from active, operational, and risk management of the block.
Even including the impact of this year's active life and claim reserve reviews, the Life & Group business generated positive results driven by better than expected morbidity in long-term care.
CNA's balance sheet remains rock solid.
Moreover, it continues to reduce its risk profile, most recently with the agreement signed last week to cede a legacy portfolio of excess workers' compensation policies to a subsidiary of Enstar.
Boardwalk had a good year operationally.
Net operating revenues excluding the settlement proceeds from a customer bankruptcy in each year were down less than 1% reflecting the last vestiges of expirations and renewals at lower rates of long-term contracts put in place 10 plus years ago.
The Company's growth projects together with a strong market for storage and park and loan services made up for most of the falloff, and Boardwalk continues to effectively manage its expenses.
Altium Packaging, which is included in our corporate segment had a strong year operationally with revenues up almost 10% driven by organic growth, new business, exceptional results in its recycled plastics business, the full year impact of acquisitions made in 2019 and higher year-over-year resin prices.
2020 was a record year for new business awards for Altium, further highlighting its reputation for quality, reliability, innovation and customer service.
As I've mentioned in the past, Altium's results have had little effect to-date on our net income, while Altium generate healthy EBITDA and free cash flow, its GAAP income has been weighed down by depreciation and amortization from recent acquisitions and accelerated trade name amortization.
Last week, Altium completed a recapitalization, issuing a $1.05 billion seven-year secured term loan.
The proceeds of which went to refinance its existing debt and pay Loews' a dividend of $199 million.
As Jim mentioned, this is the first distribution Loews has received from Altium since we acquired the company in 2017.
Importantly, this transaction in no way hamstrings Altium's ability to continue pursuing tuck-in acquisitions.
As a reminder, our initial equity investment in Altium was slightly more than $600 million.
Turning to the parent company.
The parent company portfolio of cash and investments stood at $3.5 billion at year-end, with about 77% in cash and equivalents.
During the fourth quarter, we received $192 million in dividends from our subsidiaries, $90 million from CNA, and $102 million from Boardwalk, which represented Boardwalk's only dividend to Loews in 2020.
For the full year, we received total dividends of $947 million from CNA and Boardwalk.
Today, CNA declared a $0.75 per share special dividend and a regular quarterly dividend of $0.38 per share up a penny from $0.37.
Combining the two, Loews will receive $275 million in dividends from CNA this quarter as well as the $199 million received from Altium last week.
We repurchased 5.8 million shares in the fourth quarter for $244 million and 22 million shares during the full year for $917 million.
Since year-end, we have repurchased an additional 2.2 million shares for a total of $100 million.
I will now hand the call back to Mary.

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compname posts q4 earnings per share $1.45.
compname reports net income of $397 million for the fourth quarter of 2020.
q4 earnings per share $1.45.

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