Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Loews Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mary Skafidas, Vice President, Investor and Public Relations. Please go ahead. Mary Skafidas - Vice President-Investor & Public Relations: Thank you, Laurie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Loews Corporation second quarter earnings conference call. A copy of our earnings release, earnings snapshot, and company overview may be found on our website, loews.com. On the call this morning, we have our Chief Executive Officer, Jim Tisch; and our Chief Financial Officer, David Edelson. Following our prepared remarks this morning, we will have a question-and-answer session. Before we begin, however, I will remind you that this conference call might include statements that are forward-looking in nature. Actual results achieved by the company may differ materially from those projections made in any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements reflect circumstances at the time they are made and the company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. This disclaimer is only a brief summary of the company's statutory forward-looking statements disclaimer, which is included in the company's filings with the SEC. During the call today, we might also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our securities filings for a reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures. I will now turn the call over to Loews' Chief Executive Officer, Jim Tisch. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Mary. Good morning and thank you for joining us on our call today. I hope you've had a chance to look at our press…

Your first question comes from the line of Bob Glasspiegel of Janney.

Good morning, Loews. Curious on the hotels. What would your thought process be on the pros and cons of bringing the hotel operation public given the nice growth in EBITDA. It seems like there's a pretty good story that might have interest with investors. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Bob, there's a good story, but we got to figure if that's good for Loews Corp. and also for Loews Hotels. And, right now, I think it just seems to us it doesn't make sense. So Loews Hotels is 100% owned and for the foreseeable future will stay that way.

Why doesn't it make sense? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Because Loews finances – provides a lot of finance for Loews Hotels, which is much easier when it's 100% owned. Combined with the fact that, I don't know that there is a really great business purpose to take Loews Hotels public. Being public is a lot different than being owned privately. And at this point in time, the management of Loews Hotels is focused on growing their business and not on dealing with shareholders who are looking for growth or Lord knows what else.

Okay. On the Diamond side, is there anything – you bought some shares, I think, in the $30s, if I'm not mistaken, and have been sort of inactive as the stock has drifted down. Your thought process – are you at sort of where you want to be in that for now or could you be bigger if you wanted to be? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I love quoting myself. And as I said in my comments, we just don't comment on share purchases or repurchases.

Thought I'd give it a try. Thank you. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay.

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Shanker of Deutsche Bank.

That's okay, Bob. I'm going to give it a try, too. How you all doing? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So far so good.

So can you tell me a little bit about the difference in mentality between buying a Loews share versus buying a Boardwalk or a Diamond share? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: There really isn't that much difference.

So would it just be – would it be which one is cheapest at the time that you make the decision, or – how do you – how would you negotiate that situation? Do you really want to increase ownership in something when you could just reduce your own share count? What are the types of discussions you have in that regard? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We have – we discussed all those issues as well as lots of other issues. The overriding theme of all the issues though is what is in the best interest of Loews shareholders. So we factor a lot of different things in, and I don't really want to go into any detail about what those issues are, but like I said, the overriding question is what makes the most sense for our shareholders.

Okay. And in terms of – no, I'm just going to let it be, I'll take it Jim. Do you have any thoughts on Puerto Rico and whether there's any risk to you guys? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We do not have significant exposures to Puerto Rico. With respect to Puerto Rico, man, it seems to me that they could really use some action in Washington to allow them to make use of the bankruptcy code. Otherwise, I think it's going to be a real massive mess, because holdouts can just hold out, and I don't fully understand just yet how things will settle out.

Is there an opportunity for you in Puerto Rico or is it doing anything in the muni market to give you an opportunity to do something else? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right now, the muni market is priced pretty well from an issuer's perspective. I could see a situation where if muni investors get concerned about Puerto Rico, and then you add on top of that, they get concerned about certain state and municipality pension liabilities and you could see the retail investors start to move away from the municipal market; and if that happens, you could see possibly forced selling on behalf of mutual funds. And if that's the case, oftentimes they sell the good solid names because the gamier (23:57) names often don't have a bid. And so you could see a real decline in the municipal market as a result.

And have you seen any contagion with the full Puerto Rico thing? Have there – has it rippled through to anything that you hold that's completely unrelated? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. Not at all.

Not at all. Okay. Well, thank you for all the questions and good luck. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Millman of Millman Research Associates.

Thank you. So – maybe this is impossible to answer, but where do you see oil prices, petroleum prices, going in the next five years? And in the long term, are we looking at different fuel sources? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So I'm glad you asked about five years instead of six months or one year, because five years, I think I might actually be able to give you a thoughtful answer. I would see that five years from now oil prices will be at least 50% higher than they currently are. That in order to find a barrel of oil today, it probably costs a minimum of $70 a barrel to get that marginal barrel of oil that's needed. My guess is, five years from now, it will be a bit higher than that. And I think what has to happen is, the world has – the world oil producers have to supply the 1 million barrels of growth, plus approximately 5 million barrels to replace the depletion from the world's productive capacity. So that 6 million barrels a day has to be found every year for the next five years, or about 30 million barrels of new production. In order for the world to be able to produce that, even with Iran coming back on to the market in the not too distant future, I think it will take significantly higher oil prices. And five years from now, I think it's certainly reasonable to think that the price will be $70, $75 or $80 a barrel. That doesn't account for another wild card, which is political instability. A lot of oil comes from the Middle East and we have – while we have political instability in the Middle East in certain places, we don't currently have that having a significant effect on oil production. But in the future, as we all know, anything can happen.

So it sounds like your assumptions are that we are going to need to replace the oil and doesn't suggest that maybe other things are replacing oil from gas to shale to non-petroleum-based products? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, first of all, I think shale can continue its growth, but I don't know that it's going to be the panacea for oil production over the next five years. But right now, it looks like shale production in the United States – shale oil production in the United States has flattened out. And I think what we're seeing is that it will take higher prices to get shale production moving again. I think that offshore oil will be a big beneficiary, because in the future, 20% to 25% of our oil – of world oil production will have to come from offshore. And so, that actually makes me very positive when I think about Diamond Offshore.

How much comes from offshore now? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: About 20%.

Okay. Moving on, in five years, how much contribution or percent contribution to earnings will come from hotels? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: The good news is we don't make forecast and I try not to make forward-looking statements about our businesses in any detail, so I'm not going to answer that.

So let me ask it in a non-detailed way, will it be greater than 10%? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't know. You're going to have to run your own numbers.

Okay. Thank you. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Bunyaner of TLF Capital. Michael, your line is open.

Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Michael.

Just a follow-up question, the rig count or the supply, especially in the U.S., at least according to Baker Hughes, both of the horizontal rigs as well as gas rigs is down between 50% on the horizontal rigs, and I believe gas is down about 40-plus percent. How much more supply shrinkage do you think is necessary for the production to begin to really decline? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Supply shrinkage of – or utilization of drilling rigs?

Yes. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I don't know, because what we've seen over the years is tremendous improvement in efficiency of these drilling rigs. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips, but gas rigs, for example, are down dramatically from five years ago, yet gas production is up significantly. So I don't quite know what those numbers look like, or what the numbers are in answer to your question. I'd suggest you try asking the people at Baker Hughes or Halliburton who would have a much better idea of what that is.

Thank you. What do you think is a probability of the law changing where the United States will allow the export of oil? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Look, I'm not much of a political analyst. For me, it's a great amateur sport.

Right. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: But I would say, my guess is, there is a pretty good chance that they're going to get the proverbial ball over the goal line this year and allow for the exportation of oil from the United States. From my perspective, it certainly makes a lot of sense. Right now, we have a system that favors the refiners by making available to them oil at very cheap prices, because it can't be exported. And instead, the refiners are exporting 3 million barrels to 4 million barrels a day of refined products. So all we're doing with our current system is subsidizing refineries and penalizing oil producers.

One last one from me. What was the cash – the corporate cash at the end of the quarter on the balance sheet? James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: About $5.1 billion.

Thank you so much and good luck with the rest of the year. James S. Tisch - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you.

Thank you. Now I'll turn the call to Mary Skafidas for any additional or closing remarks. Mary Skafidas - Vice President-Investor & Public Relations: Thanks, Laurie, and thank you all for your continued interest in Loews. The replay will be available on our website, loews.com, in approximately two hours. If any of you have additional follow-up calls, please call me directly at 212-521-2788. That concludes today's call.