Good morning. Welcome to Fairfax's 2023 first quarter results Conference Call. Your lines have been placed in a listen-only mode. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, to ask a question, please press star one on your phone keypad. For time's sake, we ask that you limit your questions to one. Today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. Your host for today's call is Prem Watsa, with opening remarks from Mr. Derek Bulas. Mr. Bulas, please begin. Good morning and welcome to our call to discuss Fairfax's 2023 first quarter results. This call may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ, perhaps materially, from those contained in such forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of uncertainties and risk factors, the most foreseeable of which are set out under Risk Factors in our base shelf prospectus, which has been filed with Canadian Securities Regulators and is available on SEDAR. Fairfax disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law. I now turn the call to our Chairman and CEO, Prem Watsa. Thank you, Derek. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Fairfax's 2023 1st quarter conference call. I plan to give you a couple of highlights and then pass the call to Peter Clarke, our President and Chief Operating Officer, to comment on the quarter, and Jennifer Allen, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide some additional financial details. Beginning January 1st, 2023, we were required to adopt IFRS 17 accounting. This has resulted in many changes to our financial statements, the most significant change being the discounting of our insurance liabilities and the provision of a specific risk margin for the uncertainty. I wanna stress that this new reporting requirement will not change the way we manage the business, and we will continue to focus on underwriting profit on an undiscounted basis with strong reserving. We will continue to show our combined ratios and operating income on an undiscounted basis. Preparing for this transition has been a massive amount of work over multiple years for our accounting, actuarial, and finance teams all across the world, and particularly for Jennifer Allen, our Chief Financial Officer, and her small team at Fairfax. A big thank you to all. The most important point I can make for you is to repeat what I said in our annual report and our recent annual general meeting, our AGM. For the first time in our 37-year history, I can say to you we expect, of course, no guarantees, our operating income to be more than $3 billion annually for the next three years. Operating income consists of $1.5 billion from interest and dividend income, $1 billion-plus from underwriting profit, and a half a billion from non-insurance companies. This works out to about $100 per share after interest expenses, overhead, and taxes. Our first quarter is running at these levels. Fluctuations in stocks and bond prices will be on top of that. This will really matter over the long- term. Our fixed income portfolios remains conservatively positioned, with approximately 80% in government securities and only 14% in short-dated corporate bonds. We have locked in our interest and dividend income at over one and a half billion, $1.5 billion for the next three years. We continue to do all we can for our Ukrainian employees. Our whole company is behind all three outstanding Ukrainian presidents as they look after our employees under extremely difficult conditions. I will now pass the call to Peter Clarke, our President and Chief Operating Officer, for further updates. Peter? Thank you, Prem. We had net earnings of $1.25 billion for the first quarter of 2023, driven by strong performance across all sources of earnings. As Prem highlighted, we had record adjusted operating income of $843 million, generated through underwriting income of $314 million, interest and dividend income of $312 million from our insurance and reinsurance operations, and our share of profit of associates of $218 million. Leading to the strong first quarter were net gains on investments of $771 million and the benefit of the effects of discounting and risk adjustment of $310 million. Our combined ratio for the first quarter, 2023, was 94% and included catastrophe losses of $192 million, or 3.7 points on our combined ratio, while our gross premium was up 7.2%. We continue to see favorable market conditions in many of our major lines of business. We'll talk a little more about that within the underwriting results later. Our investment return for the quarter was 2.6%, with strong interest in dividend income, increased share of profits of associates, and unrealized mark-to-market gains on our equities and bonds. The net gain on our bond portfolio of $319 million in the first quarter consisted of realized losses of $332 million, principally from the sale of short-dated bonds and unrealized gains of $651 million, primarily from government bonds. The sales of the shorter-term bonds were replaced with three-to-five year U.S. Treasuries, extending our duration to approximately two and a half years. Our net gains on our equity and equity-related holdings were $410 million in the quarter, driven by unrealized mark-to-market gains on our Fairfax TRS, BlackBerry, Mytilineos, and Foran Mining. As mentioned in previous quarters, our book value per share of $803 does not include unrealized gains or losses in our equity accounted investments and our consolidated investments, which are not mark-to-market. At the end of the first quarter, the fair value of these securities is in excess of carrying value by $439 million in unrealized gain position, or $19 per share on a pre-tax basis. Under IFRS 17, our net earnings are affected by the discounting of our insurance liabilities and the application of a risk margin. In the first quarter of 2023, our net earnings benefited by $310 million pre-tax. The effects come from the discounting of losses occurring in the current year, changes in the risk margin, the unwinding of the discount from previous years, and changes in the discount on prior year insurance liabilities. As interest rates fluctuate, we will see positive or negative effects on net earnings from discounting. Jen Allen will provide further details. Our insurance and reinsurance businesses continue to grow all over the world as we wrote $7.1 billion of gross premium in Q1 2023. Our gross premiums were up 7.2% this quarter versus the first quarter of 2022, an increase of approximately $500 million. This growth is driven by the strong margins that prevail in many of our markets and increased pricing on property business, especially catastrophe exposed. Our global insurer and reinsurer segment had the largest absolute premium growth at $233 million, up 6% this quarter versus the first quarter of 2022. Allied World was up 7.5% in the quarter, while Odyssey was up 6.5%, both driven by double-digit premium growth in their reinsurance operations. Brit's premium was relatively flat, with premium up at Ki 36%, while premiums were down at Brit's other businesses, largely due to reductions in its North American property binder business. Our North American insurance segment increased gross premiums $149 million or 8.4%. Both Northbridge and Crum & Forster had double-digit growth. Northbridge was up almost 14% in CAD, driven by high customer retention and strong growth in new business. Crum & Forster premium grew 12%, driven again by its accident and health business. Zenith premiums were flat year-over-year due to the competitive nature of the workers' compensation market. The premium of our international operations was up the most of all segments on a percentage basis, increasing 12% in the first quarter versus the first quarter, 2022. Growth was strong at Fairfax Asia, up 36%, driven by Singapore Re and Pacific Insurance. We also saw double-digit growth at Fairfax Brazil, Polish Re, and Colony Insurance. The international operations growth was muted in U.S. dollar terms by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar against most currencies year-over-year. On closing of our acquisition of an additional 46% of Gulf Insurance, we will begin consolidating their results, adding an approximately $2.7 billion in premium annually to our international business. Over time, we believe our international operations will be a significant source of growth, driven by underpenetrated insurance markets and strong local economies. Our companies continue to grow into favorable market conditions, although that growth has been slowing. While we see rate increases reducing in some lines, public D&O and cyber, for example, overall rate levels remain attractive. With a very hard reinsurance market, especially for property business and other macro factors, we believe favorable market conditions will continue throughout 2023 or longer. As previously mentioned, our combined ratio was 94% in the first quarter of 2023, producing underwriting profit of $314 million. The combined ratio included catastrophe losses of $192 million, adding 3.7 combined ratio points, about half of which was from the earthquake in Turkey. This compares to a combined ratio of 93.1 and catastrophe losses of 2.8 points in the first quarter of 2022. As our premium base has expanded significantly and with the benefits of diversification, we have been able to absorb significant catastrophe losses within underlying underwriting profit. Our global insurers and reinsurers posted a combined ratio of 93.5, led by Brit, who had a combined ratio of 90.8, benefiting from low catastrophe losses and recent underwriting actions. Allied World had another strong quarter at 91.7%, and Odyssey Group was at 96.4%, which included 10.4 points of catastrophe losses, incurring the majority of our Turkey earthquake losses. North American insurers had a combined ratio of 94.1%, led by Northbridge, who had a great quarter at 91.1%. Crum & Forster continued to produce sub 95 combined ratios at 94.7%, while Zenith had an elevated combined ratio posting at 99.3%, benefiting less than prior quarters from favorable reserve development. Our international operations had a combined ratio for the quarter of 96.4%. Fairfax Asia had a very good quarter with a combined ratio of 92.9%. Our Latin American operations came in at 94.4% despite some difficult economic conditions, and our Eastern European operations were at 96.1%. Bryte Insurance in South Africa had a difficult start to the year with a combined ratio of 102.6 from elevated losses on their auto book and dealing with the higher costs of reinsurance. Bryte Insurance are taking the necessary underwriting actions to get back to profitability. While not benefiting from the hard market experience in North America, our international companies continue to perform very well while growing profitably. For the quarter, our insurance and reinsurance companies recorded favorable reserve development of $30 million, or the benefit of 0.6 points on our combined ratio. This compared to $22 million, or the benefit of half a point in 2022. The prior year reserve movements tend to be much less in the first quarter given the extensive actuarial reserve reviews performed in the fourth quarter of 2022. Our expense ratio continues to benefit with our earned premium volume outpacing expenses. Our overall underwriting expense ratio is 20 basis points lower year-over-year, with the underwriting expense ratio decreasing at essentially all our insurance and reinsurance operations. We had a great start to the year on all fronts and expect that to continue throughout 2023. Our insurance and reinsurance operations have never been stronger, led by very strong management teams. The companies are very well positioned to capitalize on their opportunities in their respective markets. I will now pass the call to Jen Allen, our Chief Financial Officer, to comment on our non-insurance company performance, overall financial position, and recent transactions. Thank you, Peter. I'll begin my remarks with a few comments on the company's adoption of the new accounting standard for insurance contracts, IFRS 17. First, I would also like to express my gratitude to the teams involved at each of our global insurance and reinsurance operating companies, where accounting, tax, actuarial, internal audit, and IT teams collaborated to ensure this project was a success. Additionally, our auditors, PwC, external consultants, and a particular special thank you to our small head office team who ensured this significant implementation was a resounding success. You should all be extremely proud of your accomplishment. Again, a huge thank you. This is the first time we are reporting our financial results under the new IFRS 17 insurance contract standard, and accordingly, our comparative periods had to be restated and presented under IFRS 17. Our Q1 2023 interim report therefore includes restated comparable reporting periods for our Q1 2022 consolidated statement of earnings, comprehensive income, cash flows, and change in equity, and the consolidated balance sheets as of December 31st, 2022, and January 1st, 2022. All of the periods presented are on the same measurement basis now under IFRS 17. We've included a reconciliation of the restated Q1 2022 comparative period consolidated statement of earnings and the restated consolidated balance sheets within those previously issued under IFRS 4, starting on page 58 of our MD&A. I would like to provide a few comments on the benefit that the transition had on the company's common shareholder equity and book value per share at December 31st, 2022, which was disclosed on page 36 and 59 of our interim report. Looking at the cumulative benefit at December 31st, 2022 for adopting IFRS 17, we reported an increase in our common shareholder equity of $2.4 billion, which was an increase in book value per share of approximately $105 to $762 a share. The $2.4 billion adjustment was principally comprised of the introduction of discounting net claim reserves that reflects your time value of money for a benefit of $4.7 billion. That was partially offset by a risk adjustment of $1.6 billion for the uncertainty related to the timing and the amount of cash flows that corresponded into a consolidated confidence level at December 31st, 2022 of 84%. A tax effect on those measurement changes and other adjustments like NCI for an aggregate of $0.7 billion. I would like to refer you to note four in the interim report for additional details on the primary yield curves that were used to discount the cash flows and more commentary on the risk adjustment. Now turning to the first quarter of 2023. In our press release on page two and our MD&A on page 38, we've disclosed in a table the insurance service results under IFRS 17 for property and casualty insurance and reinsurance operations, where it's reconciled to underwriting profit. As Prem said, a key performance measure that will continue to be used by the company and more broadly in the property and casualty industry in which we operate to evaluate and manage the business. The primary reconciling adjustments presented in those tables are, first, we adjust to include the other insurance expenses presented on the consolidated statement of earnings outside of insurance service results. Second, we adjust for the effects of discounting and risk adjustment, which are presented in the insurance service expense and recoveries of insurance service expense lines in the consolidated statement of earnings. Our traditional measures of underwriting profit and combined ratios were on an undiscounted basis as discussed by Peter. So let me comment on the impact of IFRS 17 on the quarter results. The total effect of discounting and risk adjustment, or an aggregate benefit of $310 million, that was recognized in the consolidated statement of earnings in the first quarter of 2023 within two financial statement lines. First was the benefit of discounting the loss and ceded loss on claims and change in risk adjustment that was recorded in the period for $473 million. That's included in your insurance service results in our consolidated statement of earnings. That was partially offset by the second component that's presented in a separate line in the consolidated statement of earnings in net finance expense for $163 million. That $163 million was comprised of your interest accretion of $254 million, which is your unwinding of the effects of discounting on your previous net claims recognized during the higher rate environment in 2022. That was partially offset by a benefit in your increase in the discount rates during the period of $90 million. That compared to an aggregate benefit of $639 million reported in the first quarter of 2022 that comprised the same components mentioned previously, which were namely the benefit of discounting recorded in the period for $220 million in your insurance service result, and net finance income of $419 million that was a benefit of an increase in discount rates in the period of $458 million as a result of the change in the interest rate environment being more pronounced in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2023. That was partially offset by your interest accretion of $39 million relating to the unwind of the discount. Please refer to note four i n our interim report for additional details on the discount rates applied in those respective periods. A few comments on our non-insurance company. The operating income of the non-insurance company reporting segment decreased to an operating loss of $0.6 million in the first quarter of 2023 compared to operating income of $27 million in the first quarter of 2022. Excluding non-cash charges and adjustments and an operating loss at Grivalia Hospitality of $74.7 million in aggregate reported in the first quarter of 2023. Operating income for the non-insurance company increased by $47 million to $74.1 million and reflected increased operating income at Fairfax India as a result of higher share of profits of associates, principally from its equity accounted investment in Bangalore Airport and interest in dividend income at Fairfax India. There was improvement in the other operating segment, where the adjusted operating income of $1.3 million compared to an operating loss of $19 million in the prior period and principally reflected higher business volumes at AGT. Looking at our investment performance from our investments in associates in the first quarter. We reported very strong profits from our investment in associates, with the share of profits of associates increasing to $334 million from $181 million in the comparative period. The increase reflected the company's increased share of profits from Eurobank, which contributed $94.6 million in the quarter, compared to $31 million. EXCO Resources contributed $69 million compared to $38 million in the prior period. Gulf Insurance was $28.7 million compared to $1.3 million in the prior year. We also reported continued strong performance by Poseidon, which was formerly known as Atlas, at $50 million, compared to an even $50 million in the prior period. Also to note there was no share of profit reported from Resolute as a result of our disposition of that investment on March 1st, 2023, whereas the 1st quarter of 2022 included $12 million share of profit. Few comments on the transactions. We didn't have any significant acquisition or divestitures that closed in the 1st quarter of 2023, but I would like to highlight the following key transactions that closed subsequent to the quarter or are anticipated to close in 2023, with the impact not yet reflected in our book value per share. First was that on May 10th, 2023, Brit completed the sale of Ambridge, its managing general underwriter operations to Amynta Group. In the second quarter of 2023, Brit will deconsolidate those asset and liabilities of Ambridge and is expected to record a pre-tax gain of approximately $255 million. That's prior to ascribing any fair value to an additional receivable. It's also anticipated in the second quarter of 2023 that Brit will pay a special dividend of approximately $275 million to the holding company as a result of the net proceeds received from the sale. The second transaction was our announcement of acquiring the additional equity interest in Gulf Insurance. On April 19th, 2023, we entered into an agreement to acquire all of the shares of Gulf Insurance under the control of KIPCO and certain of its affiliates. That represents 46.3% of the equity in Gulf Insurance. On closing of this transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of 2023, we anticipate we will consolidate the asset and liabilities in Gulf Insurance, increasing our equity interest from 43.7% to a controlling interest of 90%, and we expect to record a pre-tax gain of approximately $300 million, with changes in the company's carrying value of its equity accounted investment in Gulf Insurance up until the date of closing, potentially impacting that pre-tax gain. In aggregate, the benefit of those two transactions anticipated to be booked during 2023 of the expected pre-tax gain of $555 million translates to a pre-tax book value per share benefit of approximately $24 a share yet to be recognized. In closing, a few comments on our financial condition. The liquidity position of the company remains strong with our cash and investments at the holding company of just under $1 billion at March 31, 2023, with Brit paying a special dividend of approximately $275 million that's not reflecting in our closing position at March 31 as a transaction closed subsequent to the quarter end. Looking to our total debt and cap ratio and common shareholder equity, excluding the investments of our consolidated non-insurance companies, our total debt to total cap ratio was 22.9% at March 31, 2023, which is an improvement compared to the 23.7% at December 31, 2022, with the improvement in the ratio principally reflecting the strong net earnings reported in the quarter of $1.2 billion that included the underwriting profit on an undiscounted basis of $314 million, interest and dividend income of $382 million, and share profit of associates of $334 million. The holding company has no significant holding company debt maturities until August 2024. Our common shareholder equity, it increased by $884 million in the quarter to $18.66 billion at March 31, 2023, up from the $17.78 billion reported at December 31, 2022. That reflected the net earnings of $1.25 billion that was partially offset by our common and preferred dividends of $257 million and purchases we made in the quarter out of 156.7 thousand subordinate voting shares for cancellation for tax consideration of $100 million. That concludes my remarks. I will now turn the call back over to Prem. Thank you, Jen. We now look forward to answering your questions. Please give us your name, your company name, and try to limit your questions to only one so that it's fair to all on the call. Christy, we're ready for the questions. Thank you. Again, as a reminder, please press star one on your phone keypad. One moment. Our first question comes from Tom MacKinnon of BMO Capital. Your line is open. Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Morning, Tom. quick questions here. Prem, did I hear you, when you said, correctly when you said you extended duration in your bond portfolio? I think it was pretty short before and you extended it out to about two to three years now. Is that an? Yeah. Did you mention that or was there any with respect to your bond portfolio there? About 1.6 years, I think we said to 2.5 years, Tom. Okay. Is that the entire portfolio duration has moved from 1.6- 2.5 then? Is that what happened in the quarter? Yeah, that's the bond portfolio, right, Tom? It's only the bond portfolio. Yeah. The important point there, Tom, is all on 80% of our bond portfolio is governments. Treasuries mainly, but governments wherever we operate, Canada, Canadian governments and other countries. Only 20, you know, 14% I think was, we said was corporate, something like that. That's all very short-term. That's coming due relatively soon. What we have done, Tom, is because these are coming due in the next three months, six months, we like the rates in the first quarter. We locked in 3.7%, 3.75% for U.S. government Treasuries for three years. We locked it in ahead of the maturity. You know, we are happy with 3.75. Could go to four and a quarter, four and a half, I don't know. It could go to two and a half. 3.75 was good. We locked it in, and that's ahead of the maturities in the next three months, six months. That's great. Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Dwelle of RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is open. Yeah, I have a couple of questions actually. Morning. First, you went through, within the non-insurance subsidiaries in the other segment, Jen, could you go through again that United, I guess, had a $74 million aggregate loss, and I was just. You made some mention of it in your comments. I just wanted to make sure I understood what elements were comprising that total. Mark, so in there we adjusted for things like Grivalia Hospitality that was not in the prior reporting period, so it was on a comparable basis. We had some other non-cash charges on within the other reporting segment that aggregated up to the $74 million. Okay. The second question that I had related to within the reinsurance segment, there's a small amount of adverse development, which is fairly unusual. I thought I'd ask, like, why, what gave rise to a small amount of adverse development there? Peter? Yeah, sure. Really, what that related to is, if you remember late in 2022, there was the Winter Storm Elliott, like right in the last couple of days of the year. That's where, especially on the reinsurance side, we had some development, just for late reported claims, so true IBNR. Some of that was offset by favorable development on Hurricane Ian. That's what that small amount of development related to. Okay. That's kind of what I was thinking, but I just wanted to be double sure. A lot of others have reported the same thing. One last question. Just any update related to Go Digit and where things stand there? Yeah. Go Digit, the Digit Insurance, we're looking at, you know, they've said publicly that we're looking at the potential of going public, Mark, and they're in the process of, you know, going through that. They need some approvals from the Department of Insurance and the SEC of India is called SEBI. They need all those approvals before they can look at going public. It's always subject to the market, of course. Sure. Okay, thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you very much, Mark. Next question, Christy. Thank you. Our next question is again from Tom MacKinnon. Your line is reopened, sir. Oh, great. Thanks. Yeah, Jen, I was just wondering, the things that really impact, IFRS 17, the change in the risk adjustment, the unwind of the discount, the build of the discount, and the change in the discount rate. If we kind of have a flat interest rate environment and pretty well steady state with respect to your growth, would all of this noise be pretty minimal? Like what kind of conditions would make this noise show up more to the positive or actually show up more to the negative? Yes, sure. It's a good question, Tom MacKinnon. The way I think if you're in a steady state, if your underlying net reserves from a risk profile duration does not change, then as you unwind your discounting, you won't have a change in your discount rate. It should really be offset, and really don't see a huge impact. The other side of it is your risk adjustment would be steady state. You would be releasing your risk adjustment on your old book, but you would also be setting up the same risk adjustment on your new book. It's only when your book grows. If your net reserve starts to grow, you'll start to get that net benefit through again. If it shrinks, it would be a negative impact to your total portfolio. On the change in the discount rate, is that just generally if we have a flat interest rate environment, then we wouldn't get that noise as well, I assume? Correct. Hey, Tom, one point that you should know is that as Jen was saying, we benefited to the tune of $2.4 billion net for the year 2022. We had a bond loss in 2022 of about $1 billion. If we were matched, we'd have a $2.4 billion loss, and you'd have had a discounting of $2.4, and it would have, we wouldn't have had any benefit. The fact that we weren't matched, the fact that we had, you know, we didn't reach for yield, was the reason why we benefited to the tune of $2.4 billion. It's a significant benefit. I just wanted to put that in perspective for you. Are you more matched now, Prem, with 80% government treasuries? Because I- Yeah. Still not, Tom, because we are around, you know, two and a half years. I think, Peter, our liability is at least four years, right? Four plus. What we're thinking, Tom, is that we've got government securities, bond guys, Ron Bradley, Clement, have locked in, you know, close to 4%, plus minus, for our bond portfolio. In treasuries, like I said, 80%, the short-term, corporates will mature. When you have, you know, when you have a recession, we don't know if there's gonna be a recession. In the next three years, if we have a recession, if the spreads, which haven't widened, and I experienced over a long period of time, is when you have a recession, the spreads widen. If when the spreads widen, we think we'll go into very high quality corporates, as I've said at the AGM, three, four, five years in term as opposed to duration, and then lock in those rates, very high quality rates. Hopefully, we'll make some money, perhaps on our U.S. Treasuries. Irrespective, we lock in those rates. That could be pretty significant, you know, when the spread widens. That's just speculating in terms of what's potentially possible. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Next question, Christine. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashvin Moorjani of Edward Jones. Your line is open. Hi, congrats on the continued strong performance. Hello Ashvin. Yeah. Thanks. Looking ahead a year or two, what would you have to see to cause you to pull back from insurance and send more to the hold co? Could this, and could this cause the additional cash that's gonna be invested at the holdco level to generate more earnings per share when the insurance cycle eventually turns? Thanks. Leo. Sure. I guess first of all, just to say that we, you know, as long as the margins are good and we're getting good rate at our insurance companies, we always wanna grow. We wanna grow into a hard market. We wanna take advantage of that. And we have for the past three years, you know, growing gross premiums by about 18% per year for the last three years. We wouldn't cut back in a market like today. Over time, you're exactly right that premiums will flatten out when rates start coming down. It's a cyclical market. When that occurs, there will be significant dividend, ability to dividend up money to the holding company. That gives us a lot of flexibility what to, what to do with that. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Ashvin. Christine, next question. Thank you. Our next question comes from Howard Flinker of Flinker & Company. Your line is open. Hi, everybody. I actually have two accounting questions. The first is, do I understand correctly that the forward purchase of your own stock is marked to market in the income statement up or down, and not just the equity account? That's correct. Yes. Okay. All right. Second, on page 184 of the annual report, you describe your increase in ownership of Allied, I think from 71%- 82% for about $775 million. You wrote down your retained earnings by, what is it, $228 million or something like that. Why would you have to write down your retained earnings when you increase your ownership? Yeah, that's just how the accounting works, Howard. Jen, would you answer that? Whenever you buy the minority interest, you know, we had, I forget now exactly, at 25%, 30% in of Allied World that was owned by 2 pension plans. We bought, maybe. What did we buy? About a third of it? Yeah, about 10%. About 10% of the 30 we bought. We retired that. The way the accounting works, the minority interest is reduced, Howard. That's just how it is. Even though we think it's, you know, the company went from $3 billion, $3.5 billion to $6 billion, we thought it was worth a lot more. Right. accounting is accounting. Desire for S seventeen is a wonder that a lot of you will spend a lot of time trying to understand it. Okay. I don't wanna add any more. We would never do something like this. Okay, thank you. I'll circle back for my next question. Okay, terrific. Christine, next question. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. Our next question comes from Giovanni DeGiglio, a private investor. Morning to you, Giovanni. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Reading the annual report, I think you stated that you should keep 1 year normalized earnings as cash. At the local level. I was wondering, given the growth, in equity and in earnings, should we expect a higher level of cash going forward? Second, if I may, how much of cash and short-term investment is available for investment in equities going forward? Thank you. Yes, thank you, Giovanni. Peter, you wanna take a crack at that? Yeah, sure. No, yeah, for the better part of 10-15 years, we've kept in excess of $1 billion in cash and market securities in the holding company, and we're constantly re-reviewing that. As we said before, that cash is there for our insurance companies. It's not for acquisitions, it's not for investments. It's really, you know, for us to ensure that our companies, insurance companies can grow when market conditions exist or if any problems exist. That's exactly what we've done over the last three years. We haven't built that up because we've been using some to support the insurance operations. I said a little earlier that I think, you know, when premiums flatten off, the companies will build excess capital, and then that dividend will flow back up to Fairfax, and we'll build that cash balance. You're exactly right. We're a bigger company now. We should... the plan would be to hold a little bit more cash at the holding company. Thank you. That was helpful. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question, Christine. Thank you. Our next question comes from Howard Flinker of Flinker & Co.. Your line is open. Hi again. This is a. Hi, Howard. A question of a bigger picture, Prem. Yeah. The bond market has been favorable or had been favorable for about 40 years, let's say 1980 to 2020 or maybe 2016. It looks like we're headed into a period when the bond market is gonna go the wrong way for a long period of time. To add to that, we've seen some banking troubles. If the environment for interest rates changes, would it be beneficial for Fairfax to begin to defease your long-term debt or pay it off so that when the opportunities arise, when some flimsily finance companies have customers or businesses up for sale, you can take advantage? It's also defensive. It's a kind of big picture question. I wanna know your thoughts, Prem. Well, first of all, you know, your comment is well taken. 40 years, the interest rates have been coming down. We're used to that. People have forgotten 40 years prior to that, rates went up. Yeah. You're exactly right, Howard. We could be. We don't know. We could be in an environment where rates, inflation's going up and interest rates could go up also. That's why we're keeping it for three years, you know, in the main. In terms of our debt, we just think our debt is, you know, very... We don't have any bank debt. We have bonds that we have issued and the bonds are, you know, our debt to our capital, debt to what the company is worth is still very small, we think. You know, I made the point that we never do this, but just because they're so decentralized, we can take one of our companies, a large company, and sell it, we'd be debt free. We don't think, we'd look at, you know, buying back our debt or doing anything like that. Peter, you want to add to that? Yeah, no, I think the way we look at our debt to total cap has been dropping nicely the last number of years and, you know, we're in the low 20s now. As our equity base expands, that ratio will come down even further. That would give us excess capacity in an environment where we were looking to raise debt. We're comfortable where we are, and I think you'll see that ratio decrease as the equity base gets bigger. And that's- Let me rephrase it. Our equity base, we're focused on our equity base going bigger. I mentioned this operating income, this $100 a share. That's like, you know, you add three years to that's pretty significant, right? Right. The focus on that becoming bigger. Let me rephrase it. You answered it in a protective sense. Let's think of the positive sense. We could probably guess reasonably that there'll be some companies either whose customers are gonna be up for grabs or whose divisions are gonna be up for grabs, as the pressures on interest rates, maybe from credit, maybe not from inflation, as the pressures from interest rates rise. Would it be advantageous to build up more cash now, so you're ready for something like that to happen? Yeah, no, that's a good point. You just saw us buy a pretty big company, and, you know, without issuing any stock. This is the one in the Middle East, GIG. We paid for 46%, we paid $860 billion. We structured it in a way that, you know, perhaps, a lot of it will come from the company itself, dividends from the company. This is what we've done in the past. You know, we've, as Peter was saying, we're focused on our financial soundness. Always the cash in the holding company, the bank lines, the things that you know. We are focused on backing our insurance companies. Once those two things are there, as we've shown even in the first quarter, we buy back our stock. We think our stock, you know, I've said that for some time, and our stock is still very cheap when you consider all the things that have happened and gone our way. You know, we won't buy our shares at the expense of our financial soundness. We won't buy our stock at the expense of not backing our insurance companies. After that, we'll be looking at buying our shares. Thanks, guys. Thank you very much, Howard. Any other questions, Christy? Thank you. Our next question comes from Jaad Doghmatrix, a private investor. Your line is open, sir. Thank you. Hi. Are there any investment themes that you find interesting right now in terms of opportunities that are equity oriented? Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Jaad. No, we look at equity. We've got a whole department, partners in the investment area that we look at. You know, Wade Burton and Lawrence Chin run our investment department, investment group. So we're looking at it all the time, and we never talk about the ones that we're gonna buy because, of course, in a marketplace, that doesn't make any sense, right? But yeah, so we keep looking at opportunities all the time. Thank you for your question, Jaad. Any more questions, Christy? Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your phone. One moment. There are no further questions, Christy. Thank you very much for all of you for joining us on this call. Thank you, Christy. Thank you. At this time, this does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you for your participation.