To Our Shareholders
Loews delivered a strong performance in 2021, as each of our consolidated subsidiaries contributed meaningfully to our growing profitability and fundamental value. The company’s net incomereached $1.6 billion or $6.07 per share, reversing a prior year net loss of $931 million or ($3.32) per share. In 2021, we bought back 21.1 million shares of Loews common stock for a total of $1.1 billion, which was equivalent to almost 8% of the shares outstanding at the start of the year.
During the four-year period from January 2018 through December 2021, Loews has spent $4.1 billion on repurchases, retiring about 26% of our common shares outstanding at the beginning of 2018.We ended 2021 with cash and investments totaling $3.4 billion. The fact that these positive results were achieved in a year marked by the persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chain disruptions and the return of inflation, is a reflection of Loews’s well-established approach to creating value, over the long term, for all shareholders. We have built a company composed of diverse businesses under the leadership of highly capable management teams. And we have strategically allocated our capital – whether to fund share repurchases, invest in the growth of our subsidiaries or (albeit rarely) acquire a promising new business.
Each of our consolidated subsidiaries made solid progress in 2021, leading to higher year-over-year net income contributions. While Loews’s subsidiaries operate in vastly different industries and markets, there are a number of common factors that we believe justify our investment in these businesses, including their attractive growth prospects, increasing operational efficiency and strong management teams.
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