David B. Edelson
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Loews
Thank you, Jim and good morning everyone. For the second quarter, Loews reported net income of $754 million or $2.86 per share compared to a net loss of $835 million or $2.96 per share in last year's second quarter. As Jim commented, our second quarter operating results were excellent, driven by CNA and Boardwalk both of which had stellar quarters. While Loews Hotels did post a loss, its business has rebounded more strongly than expected especially at its highly desirable resort properties. Our second quarter results both this year and last year were impacted by unusual items.
Absent these unusual items, which I will describe in a moment, our Q2 net income rebounded to $316 million this year from $122 million last year. This year's second quarter included a net investment gain of $555 million before tax and $438 million after tax on our sale of a 47% stake in Altium Packaging. The investment gain is essentially the sum of the realized gain on the shares sold and the unrealized appreciation on our retained 53% stake. Last year's second quarter included a net investment loss related to the bankruptcy and concurrent GAAP deconsolidation of Diamond Offshore.
This loss totaled $1.2 billion before tax and $957 million after tax. Setting aside these two unusual items, all three of our consolidated subsidiaries, CNA, Boardwalk, and Loews Hotels, recorded materially higher year-over-year net income contributions with CNA leading the charge. CNA had its earnings call earlier this morning, and I would encourage you to review the transcript for more details on the quarter. In the meantime, let me highlight a few salient points. CNA contributed net income of $330 million, up from $135 million in Q2 '20. The two main drivers of the year-over-year increase were higher property casualty underwriting income generated by lower catastrophe losses and higher underlying underwriting income, as well as higher net investment income.
The combination of an 11% year-over-year increase in net earned premium and an almost 2-point improvement in the underlying combined ratio to 91.4 led to a 41% increase in CNA's underlying underwriting gain, which excludes catastrophe losses and prior-year development. Catastrophe losses were modest in the quarter at $54 million pretax in contrast to the elevated level of catastrophe losses booked in Q2 2020. Last year's second quarter catastrophe losses were $301 million pretax and included reserves for COVID, civil unrest and weather-related events. CNA's all-in combined ratio, which includes catastrophe losses and prior-year development improved by over 15 points from 109.2 in Q2 2020 to 94 this year.
The year-over-year in CNA's net investment income was driven mainly by higher returns on its portfolio of limited partnership investments. In contrast, net investment gains were lower in Q2 2021 than in the prior-year quarter. A quick comment on CNA's second quarter net written premium; while net earned premium across all property casualty segments rose 11%, CNA's net written premium declined 1% overall and 12% in commercial. The year-over-year decline in written premium was attributable to a quota share treaty CNA added to its property reinsurance program during the second quarter.
Because the treaty will cover property policies already in force as well as policies written during the treaty term, CNA recorded a onetime written premium catch-up that reduced the quarter's net written premium by $122 million predominantly in the commercial segment. CNA ended the quarter with total assets of $66 billion, shareholders' equity of $12.7 billion, and consolidated statutory surplus of approximately $10.9 billion. Turning to Boardwalk, Boardwalk contributed net income of $47 million, up from $34 million in Q2 '20. The main driver of the year-over-year increase was higher natural gas transportation revenue.
Boardwalk's more than 5% increase in net operating revenue was driven by growth projects recently placed in service and by higher system utilization caused largely by deliveries to LNG markets and power plants. Through six months, natural gas transportation throughput increased by 11% year-over-year. Turning to Loews Hotels; Loews Hotels contributed a net loss of $21 million, a dramatic improvement from the $72 million net loss posted in Q2 2020. Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in our earnings supplement and excludes nonrecurring items, rebounded from a $54 million loss last year to a positive $26 million in Q2 '21.
The year-over-year improvement was driven by a dramatic revenue increase as most properties were open for the full quarter and all properties were operational by quarter-end. Business at resort properties benefited especially from increased leisure travel. Looking backwards, the second quarter of 2020 was exceedingly difficult for Loews Hotels as almost all its properties suspended operations for most of the quarter. GAAP net operating revenue plummeted 94% from the second quarter of 2019 and revenue at the company's JV properties, which is not included in GAAP net operating revenue, declined a similar percentage.
For a good snapshot of Loews' steady operational improvement, I would encourage you to review, I believe its page 11 of our quarterly earnings supplement, which shows the meaningful increases since Q2 last year in available rooms, occupancy and average daily rate. A quick comment regarding Diamond Offshore; we included Diamond Offshore as a reporting segment until its bankruptcy filing and deconsolidation in late April 2020. Our second quarter 2020 results included a net operating loss of $24 million attributable to Diamond. Turning to the Corporate segment; Altium has been reported as part of the Corporate segment since we acquired the company in 2017.
Following our sale of a 47% stake, it remains in the corporate segment but is now accounted for under the equity method. The Corporate segment also includes the unusual items I mentioned earlier, namely a net investment gain this year related to our sale of a 47% stake in Altium and a net investment loss last year stemming from the bankruptcy and deconsolidation of Diamond Offshore. I would note that this year's second quarter results also reflect a $15 million pretax write-off of our equity investment in Diamond upon its emergence from bankruptcy. The parent company's investment portfolio generated pretax net investment income of $24 million as compared to $110 million last year.
Last year's results benefited from the significant recovery of the equity markets in the second quarter, a quarter in which the S&P 500 returned almost 21%. The parent company portfolio of cash and investments stood at $3.9 billion at quarter-end with about 80% in cash and equivalents. As Jim mentioned, during the quarter we repurchased 3.9 million shares of our common stock for $219 million, and we received about $92 million in dividends from CNA. In addition, we received about $410 million in net proceeds from the Altium transaction during the second quarter. After quarter-end, we repurchased another 2.6 million shares of our common stock for $140 million. As of last Friday, there were approximately 257 million shares of Loews's common stock outstanding, down more than 8% from June 30, 2020.
I will now hand the call back to Mary.