Owner Scorecard


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L, Loews Corp.

Revenue is led by CNA (81%) and Boardwalk Pipelines (13%), with 2 more segments behind.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
L · Loews Corp.
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$18.5B
+5.4% YoY · 8% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $18.5B 5-yr avg $16.1B
Combined ratio 148% 5-yr avg 150%
Loss ratio 77% 5-yr avg 76%
Return on equity 9% 5-yr avg 8%

Next report Est. 8/3–8/6 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late June · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~35 days after · the wire records it on arrival

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What it is
An insurance business, read on its underwriting result, the combined ratio, and the float it invests, rather than an earnings multiple.
What moves the needle
Underwriting discipline and the float. What decides it: whether the combined ratio stays below 100% so the policies make money on their own, how large the float is against equity, and what that float earns once it is invested. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?
It runs an underwriting loss, about a 148% combined ratio, and must earn the difference back on the float. Book value per share, the measure Berkshire is judged on, has compounded about 6% a year across the record. The float runs about 1.4× equity, the leverage that magnifies both the underwriting and the investing. Whether the discipline holds through a soft market, and how the float is invested, are what the 10-K decides.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

Where the money comes from

read the 10-K →

CNA is 81% of revenue, with Boardwalk Pipelines the other meaningful segment at 13%.

Revenue by reportable segment, FY2025
  • CNA81%$15.0B
  • Boardwalk Pipelines13%$2.3B
  • Loews Hotels & Co5%$945M
  • Corporate1%$196M

From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMMar 2026
Income statement
$13.1B$13.7B$14.1B$14.9B$12.6B$14.7B$14.0B$15.9B$17.5B$18.5B$18.5BRevenueRevenue
$7.0B$7.1B$7.3B$7.7B$8.1B$8.4B$9.1B$9.9B$10.6B$11.1BPremiums written (net)Prem. written
$6.9B$7.0B$7.3B$7.4B$7.6B$8.2B$8.7B$9.5B$10.2B$10.9B$11.0BPremiums earnedPremiums
$2.1B$2.2B$1.8B$2.4B$2.0B$2.3B$1.8B$2.4B$2.8B$2.8B$2.8BInvestment incomeInv. inc.
$936M$1.6B$834M$1.1B($1.5B)$2.2B$1.1B$2.0B$1.9B$2.3BPretax incomePretax
$654M$1.2B$636M$932M($931M)$1.6B$822M$1.4B$1.4B$1.7B$1.6BNet incomeNet inc.
24%11%15%22%22%20%23%20%22%23%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
$2.3B$2.6B$4.2B$1.7B$1.7B$2.6B$3.3B$3.9B$3.0B$3.3B$2.6BOperating cash flowOp. cash
$1.4B$1.6B$3.2B$700M$1.0B$2.1B$2.8B$3.4B$2.4B$2.7B$1.9BOwner earningsOwner earn.
76%76%76%78%81%78%77%75%76%76%77%Loss ratioLoss
18%18%18%19%18%18%17%17%18%17%17%Expense ratioExpense
≈ 153%≈ 149%≈ 147%≈ 153%≈ 148%≈ 148%Combined ratioCombined
$127M$119M$15M($32M)$48M$42M$189MPrior-yr reserve developmentReserve dev.
4%6%3%5%-5%9%6%9%8%9%9%Return on equityROE
3%6%3%4%−6%8%5%9%8%9%8%Retained to equityRetained/eq
$84M$84M$80M$76M$70M$65M$61M$57M$55M$52M$52MDividends paidDiv. paid
$134M$216M$1.0B$1.1B$923M$1.1B$729M$849M$608M$806MBuybacksBuybacks
($2.2B)($2.7B)($1.4B)($671M)($1.4B)($1.2B)($2.3B)($2.7B)($2.0B)($2.8B)Investing cash flowInv. cash
($166M)$201M($2.8B)($1.1B)($198M)($1.3B)($1.0B)($1.3B)($898M)($513M)Financing cash flowFin. cash
($13M)$9M($10M)$5M$9M($4M)($19M)$5M($10M)$16MExchange-rate effectFX
($113M)$145M($67M)($69M)$142M$143M($89M)($133M)$142M($46M)Change in cashΔ cash
Balance sheet
$50.7B$52.2B$48.2B$51.3B$53.8B$53.9B$46.8B$49.4B$51.1B$55.4B$54.3BInvestments (total)Investments
$22.3B$22.0B$22.0B$21.7B$19.9B$21.3B$22.1B$23.3B$25.0B$26.6B$26.9BFloat (reserves)Float
$76.6B$79.6B$78.3B$82.2B$80.2B$81.6B$75.6B$79.2B$81.9B$86.3B$85.7BTotal assetsAssets
$53.2B$55.0B$56.9B$60.3B$61.1B$62.5B$60.4B$62.7B$64.0B$66.7BTotal liabilitiesTotal liab.
$5.2B$5.4B$2.9B$2.8B$1.3B$1.3B$852M$821M$871M$955MNoncontrolling interestsNCI
$18.2B$19.2B$18.5B$19.1B$17.9B$17.8B$14.3B$15.7B$17.1B$18.7B$18.7BShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
338M338M320M303M280M260M243M228M221M209M206MShares out (diluted)Shares
$1.93$3.45$1.99$3.07$-3.32$6.00$3.38$6.29$6.41$7.97$7.92EPS (diluted)EPS
$4.17$4.62$10.09$2.31$3.69$8.23$11.53$14.81$10.85$12.91$9.36Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25$0.25Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$53.69$56.90$57.88$63.03$63.71$68.59$58.98$68.93$77.39$89.36$90.68Book value / shareBVPS
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+9.6%/yr+14.5%/yr
Owner earnings / share+13.4%/yr+28.5%/yr
EPS+17.0%/yr
Dividends / share+0.0%/yr−0.1%/yr
Capital spending / share−4.7%/yr+1.8%/yr
Book value / share+5.8%/yr+7.0%/yr
III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

  • Combined ratio ≈ 148%
    Underwriting loss
    Total benefits, losses and expenses $16.2B ÷ premiums earned $10.9B
    Industry peers: median 100%
    What this means

    The heart of a property-casualty insurer: claims and costs as a share of premiums. Below 100% means it is paid to hold the float, the gold standard; above 100% means it loses money on the policies and must make it back on investments. Approximate here, taken from the filer's total benefits, losses and expenses over premiums, so it can sit a point or two off the company's headline figure; a number held below 100% across cycles is the mark of a disciplined underwriter, the rarest thing in the business.

  • Below the cost of equity
    Net income $1.7B ÷ equity $18.7B
    Industry peers: median 13%
    What this means

    What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.

The float

  • 1.4× equity
    Loss and claim reserves $26.6B, 1.4× equity
    What this means

    Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Measured here from loss and claim reserves only; it excludes unearned premiums and funds held, so the true float is somewhat larger than shown. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.

  • 10.4% on the float
    Net investment income $2.8B, 10.4% on the float
    What this means

    What the float and capital earned this year. This is the second engine: an insurer that breaks even on underwriting still wins if the float is large and invested well.

The cost and the reserves

  • Not enough data
    What this means

    Needs the full float arithmetic and a cleanly tagged underwriting total; a partial figure would mislead.

  • Past reserves fell short
    Prior-year development, FY2025: unfavorable (past years strengthened) · record: 1 favorable, 6 unfavorable of 7
    What this means

    Each year an insurer restates what its old accident years actually cost. Persistent favorable development means management reserved honestly and released the cushion; persistent unfavorable development means past profits were overstated by under-reserving — the industry's chronic sin, and the single most tell-tale line an owner can read. Signed as the company files it: negative favorable, positive unfavorable.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal yearChief executivePay, as filed“Actually paid”Owner earnings
2021James S. Tisch$6.1M$6.7M$2.1B
2022James S. Tisch$6.4M$6.5M$2.8B
2023James S. Tisch$6.9M$7.3M$3.4B
2024James S. Tisch$7.1M$7.7M$2.4B
2025Benjamin J. Tisch$8.8M$12.0M$2.7B

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.

  • Insider ownership19%

    The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.

  • CEO pay ratio93:1

    What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →
  • Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
    Management names Credit & receivables, Insurance reserves as critical estimates

    each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

Peers, Insurance — Property & Casualty

The same industry, side by side on the underwriting lens. Each column names the period it is read over, and a median resting on fewer than three years carries that count beside it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.

CompanyRevenuelatest FY, USDCombined ratiomedian over the recordLoss ratiomedian over the recordYield on floatmedian over the recordROTCEmedian over the record
HIGThe Hartford Insurance Group Inc.$28.4B107%68%5.3%1y16%
ACGLArch Capital$19.9B88%55%5.1%14%
LLoews Corp.$18.5B149%76%9.7%6%
EGEverest Group$17.7B100%70%5.5%9%
MKLMarkel Group Inc.$15.5B59%3.1%12%
CNACNA Financial Corporation$15.0B127%76%9.1%8%
WRBW.R. Berkley$14.7B62%5.1%14%
CINFCincinnati Financial Corporation$12.6B98%66%10.5%14%
Group median103%67%5.4%13%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

An insurer is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Loews Corp.’s record justifies.

$
The assumptions

Tangible book / share, delivered7%/yr’20→’25

The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for an insurer.

Enter a price above to run it.

Price / tangible book
Justified by the return
Normalized return on tangible equity6%
Price / book
Earnings yield
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)
Graham’s price gate

Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.

Tangible book $18.4B on 206M shares, a 6% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Loews Corp. (L), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/L, data as of 2026-07-18.

Manual order: ← KYMR its page in the Manual LAB →

Industry order: ← KWY the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter LMND →