David B. Edelson
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Loews
Thank you, Jim and good morning everyone. For the third quarter, Loews reported net income of $220 million or $0.85 per share compared to net income of $139 million or $0.50 per share in last year's third quarter.
Let me describe the quarter in a nutshell before getting into more detail. CNA's performance was driven by strong property casualty underwriting income before catastrophe losses, healthy net investment income, and a net reserve release in the Life & Group segment. These positives were partially offset by significant weather-related catastrophe losses. Boardwalk's operating results benefited from strong transportation revenues generated by its growth projects and increased utilization throughout its system. And Loews Hotels continue to emerge from the COVID-induced downturn with its resort properties, especially those in Florida, leading the charge. Loews Hotels generated positive net income for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2019.
Let me now dig more deeply into the third quarter and the year-over-year comparison. 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 held its earnings call earlier this morning. I would encourage you to review the transcript for more details. In the meantime, let me provide a few highlights. CNA contributed net income of $229 million, up from $192 million in Q3 2020. The main drivers of the year-over-year increase were higher property casualty underwriting income before cat losses and the absence of three charges that occurred last year, two of which were in the Life & Group segment, a charge from the unlocking of the long-term care active life reserve, a charge from strengthening the structured settlement claim reserve, and a less significant charge from the early retirement of debt. Conversely, higher catastrophe losses than in last year's third quarter detracted from the year-over-year comparative results.
Focusing on property casualty underwriting income. The combination of a 6% increase in net earned premium and a 1.5 point improvement in the underlying combined ratio led to a 27% increase in CNA's underlying underwriting gain, which excludes cat losses and prior year development. Net cat losses in the quarter were $178 million pre-tax, including $114 million for Hurricane Ida. Last year's Q3 cat losses were modestly lower at $160 million pre-tax driven by three Southeast hurricanes and the Midwest derecho. CNA's expense ratio, which just a few years ago hovered in the mid-30s, came in below 31%, down from 31.8% in Q3 2020 and 31.6% last quarter. This is the lowest expense ratio posted by CNA in about 13 years.
CNA's consolidated after-tax net investment income was essentially flat year-over-year as returns on limited partnership and common stock investments were robust in both periods. CNA conducts its annual reserve reviews for its Life & Group segment in the third quarter. Last year, the company booked a net reserve charge of $83 million pre-tax for its long-term care and structured settlement books of business. This year, the comparable number was a net reserve release of $38 million pre-tax as CNA had no change in its long-term care active life reserve, a $40 million pre-tax release from its long-term care claims reserve, and a de minimis charge related to structured settlements. We consider this favorable outcome a further indication of CNA's enhanced insight into and prudent reserving around the long-term care business. CNA ended the quarter with total assets of $66.5 billion, shareholders' equity of $12.7 billion and consolidated statutory surplus of approximately $11.1 billion.
Turning to Boardwalk. Boardwalk contributed net income of $38 million, up from $20 million in Q3 2020. The main driver of the year-over-year increase was higher natural gas transportation revenue, driven, like last quarter, by growth projects recently placed in service and higher system utilization. Boardwalk's EBITDA, which is shown and defined in our quarterly earnings supplement, was $186 million in the quarter and $635 million year-to-date. Through nine months, natural gas transportation throughput increased by more than 11% year-over-year across the system.
Turning to Loews Hotels. Loews Hotels contributed net income of $13 million; a dramatic improvement from the $47 million net loss posted in Q3 2020. Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined in our earnings supplement and excludes non-recurring items, rebounded from a $38 million loss last year to a positive $59 million in Q3 2021; close to $100 million swing. The year-over-year improvement was driven by a dramatic revenue increase as all properties, including all 9,000 rooms at the Universal Orlando Resort, were open for the full quarter. This was the first time all 9,000 rooms in Orlando were open for a full quarter.
On Page 11 of our quarterly earnings supplement, there is a good snapshot of Loews Hotels year-over-year and sequential operational improvement, which highlights the drivers of the company's revenue increases during this COVID period. With more available rooms, higher occupancy and healthy average daily rates, revenues have climbed markedly since the depths of the pandemic. We have invested $32 million in Loews Hotels year-to-date, all in the first quarter. Given the company's stronger than expected cash flow, the parent company does not expect to invest any further cash in Loews Hotels during the remainder of this year.
Turning to the Corporate segment. The parent company's investment portfolio generated a pre-tax net investment loss of $30 million as compared to income of $23 million last year. The loss stemmed from the performance of the equity portfolio. The parent company portfolio of cash and investments stood at $3.6 billion at quarter end with about 80% in cash and equivalents.
During the quarter, as Jim mentioned, we repurchased 6.2 million shares of our common stock for $333 million and we received about $92 million in dividends from CNA. After quarter end, we spent less than $5 million repurchasing our stock. As of last Friday, there were under 254 million shares of Loews common stock outstanding, down about 6% since the beginning of the year and about 25% over the past five years.
Loews continues to be characterized by strong cash flow into the parent company and an extremely liquid balance sheet with cash and investments far exceeding parent company debt.
I will now hand the call back to Jim. Jim?