Okay, Ryan, do you want to test your microphone? Okay, what about Howard Hughes? Howard Hughes is on. There you go. Hi, David. How are you doing? Very good, thank you. Okay, we're still working on Ryan, so we'll get him. Give him a minute. Ryan, if you could just request the opportunity to be a co-host. All right, why don't we get started? Oh, here he goes. Let's try Ryan again. Okay. There we go. Great. Okay, perfect. Okay, why don't we just open it up for questions? We'll take the first one and why don't you go ahead, Dimitri? We're trying to get you logged in here. If you can unmute, this is Dimitrios Pavlou. Unmute and feel free to ask your question. Sometimes people struggle to unmute. Okay, we're going to go to Brian Krassenstein and then Dimitrios, you'll be next if you can unmute. Go ahead, Brian. Brian, you there? Or you can try Dimitrios. I think you've unmuted. Why don't you go next? Ryan, we're hearing some feedback from your line for some reason. Okay, come on, X. Let's get the technology working. Brian, can you ask a question? Would you like to ask a question? Dimitrios? Okay, we'll try Margin of Danger. That sounds like an interesting one. Go ahead, Margin of Danger. Unmute, please. Hi, can you. Yes, I can hear you. I have two questions. First question is, what's the earnings multiple that you're paying for, for Vantage? And then the second question is, can you, talk through the conflicts in this transaction and how they were managed? Thank you. Sure. I—we don't think the right way to think about Vantage is an earnings multiple. You know, this is a business that was, is sort of in the process of getting to scale. This really is its first profitable year. You know, most people think about insurance companies like this, they value them on the sort of a multiple book value based on what people perceive their sustainable, kind of earnings growth is going to be, or profitability over time, so we think the kind of easiest metric to think about the business is the kind of headline purchase price is one and a half times book value. By the time we close, that should be brought down to about 1.4x book value. And, you know, we think this asset will become a lot more valuable over time as we, you know, improve its profitability, both on the asset and the liability side of the balance sheet. In terms of conflicts, you know, the good news here is there's a lot of alignment. You know, Pershing Square owns 47% of the company. And, you know, obviously highly, you know, our incentives are entirely based on, you know, the stock price performance of Howard Hughes over time. That's how, you know, we make money here by virtue of being a major shareholder. And we have, Pershing Square has an arrangement where we get paid a management fee that relates to the market cap of the company. By the way, I apologize, Ryan. I'm getting real feedback from your, I hear the microphone against your shirt or something. I don't know. If you can figure out a way to change that, that'd be great, you know, with respect to the only real conflict here was that the company were, you know, Howard Hughes required more capital in order to enter into this transaction. We stepped in to commit capital on, I would say, terms that are not terms that could be obtained by a third party, i.e., you know, we committed billion of capital without a commitment fee, and we did so on terms that allow Howard Hughes to buy our interest back over time. Because we were effectively on, you know, the Pershing Square funds was on the opposite side from Howard Hughes, the Howard Hughes board set up a sort of separate committee comprised of, I think, four directors unaffiliated with Pershing Square. You know, they hired an advisor, they hired counsel, they represented Howard Hughes. And actually, on the Pershing Square Holdings side, which, from their perspective, also, it was sort of an affiliate transaction. They also hired a banker, and counsel, to review the transaction. And we sort of found ourselves in the middle. And so the terms, proposed terms that we thought, were kind of fair, to Howard Hughes. And actually, they were off market in some sense, but the Pershing Square board and its advisors got comfortable, by virtue of the fact that Pershing Square Holdings is the largest shareholder of Howard Hughes, that the overall transaction, was, you know, fair to the Pershing Square shareholders. And from the Howard Hughes side, you know, that special committee just, you know, came to the same conclusion. But maybe, David, do you have anything you want to add to that? No, I think you had summarized really well. Look, this is one of the best financings, if you will, that I think Howard Hughes has ever entered into. And to have the ability to access up to $1 billion of what is effectively bridge equity and to be able to repay that without a change in multiple of book value compared to what we're buying the business at is exceptional. And it's one of the reasons why we're incredibly excited for this transaction. And by the way, if Howard Hughes were to find someone else who's prepared to provide the capital, you know, the transaction's not going to close for six months. Or, you know, it's going to close in, let's say, hopefully it closes before six months. But, you know, by the second quarter of next year, if the company can find better financing, it's free to take the financing and tear up the commitment from Pershing Square, and there's no cost. Yeah, the financing seems good. Just going back to the earnings point, I understand that the earnings, or the LTM earnings, or maybe even the NTM earnings, doesn't look good, or it's not in that phase, you're in the growth phase. Can you just give us a sense for, you know, what you think the earnings power of this is, and when you start to see that in the, when you will see that in the results? And thank you. Maybe if I could jump in here, to give us a little bit more context. I think what Bill was saying is it's actually not about where Vantage is necessarily in its life cycle as to why we look at a book value multiple versus an earnings multiple, but it actually goes a little deeper than that, which is fundamentally, we believe when you look at an insurance company, the right way to look at this is on a book value multiple. So if you look at our presentation on page eight, we actually show that the pre-tax income of the business is $150 million as the LTM period. And to be clear, that is growing at a very healthy rate. Now, one way to think about that is you could argue that is 14 times the $2.1 billion purchase price. But the reason that we don't actually think about it as an earnings multiple, is that when you look at the decomposition of that, 70% of the pre-tax earnings today are coming from the investment income, which is that $2.8 billion of the invested assets. Ultimately, that's about a fixed income portfolio that's probably earning about a 4% rate. And so because so much of the income, that you would be using in an earnings multiple is actually coming from the fixed income yield, we think it is a little, strange to try to put an earnings multiple on that. It's not as if most of the earnings are coming from cash flow that you would think about constantly capitalizing if you were thinking about the typical Pershing Square asset-light compounding royalty-based business model. And so we think, particularly as we look to shift that invested asset portfolio to common stocks, and Warren Buffett has written a lot about sort of the look-through earnings and thinking about the differences in accounting between a dividend yield, an investment income yield, and ultimately the growth in common stocks. But ultimately, we think the right way to look at it is if you're going to have a portfolio that's shifting to common stocks in particular, ultimately you want to be looking to the return on equity and the growth in book value in order to make a determination as to how the business is doing. And therefore, the right way to look at it is to really look at it on a book value multiple. So I think in answer to your question, we believe mathematically we're buying at 14 times earnings, although we don't think that's the right way to look at it because so much of that is driven by a yield on a fixed income portfolio that we're changing. But over time, you know, we think that that 13% return on equity, which comes from, you know, the combination of the pre-tax income and the book value, is going to grow at a very nice rate and should be something that is closer to, you know, high teens or over 20% over time. Both the Vantage portfolio, which is producing a combined ratio of 96% this year based on their estimates, we expect that that should be going down towards the low 90s over time if they continue to do a really good job in the way that we think they will. That plus shifting the portfolio towards common stocks may be over time something closer to, you know, up to up to 50% is possible. Again, we don't know. We have to go through the regulatory process. But that balance we think is going to allow the company to achieve a high-teens return on equity to potentially 20% or greater. And that would be a very large, you know, worth of book value multiple. Another way to think about that would more than double very easily the earnings power of the business. Thanks, Ryan. That was a great explanation. Why don't we go to Symmetry, if you can unmute and go ahead. Hey, Bill. Thanks for, yeah, a great presentation. So you mentioned, regarding the income-producing assets, the reason why you invest in those because they increase the land sales. But then on the insurance side, you still, you know, want to invest in fixed income. Wouldn't it be more optimal long-term, for the insurance company to own those income-producing assets instead of the real estate company? Thanks. Sure. I would say certainly in the early, you know, there are insurance companies that do invest in, for example, mortgages on real estate as part of their portfolio, and some actually even make direct real estate investments. You know, our plans for Vantage in the, you know, pretty long term is we think a portfolio with which has a much greater degree of liquidity is kind of more appropriate for an insurance company. To the extent that, you know, we think a mix of liquid assets, where 100% of the flow is invested in short-term treasuries, and an increasing percentage of the assets that are not invested in fixed income or invested in common stocks is sort of a very good mix or balance between, you know, assets that can earn high returns while also maintaining a high degree of liquidity, and insurance operations. We really do think of these as separate businesses, but it is possible that, you know, we can envision a world in which at some point it might make sense for, you know, some portion of the fixed income portfolio to be perhaps in a real estate, you know, more likely mortgage-related security. And you know, but Howard Hughes has real estate competencies, as you, I'm sure, understand. You know, so that's that is within the realm of possibilities for, I guess, a portion of the portfolio. So that's a very interesting and good question. Okay, why don't we go to Tassos? And if you could unmute. Go ahead, Tassos. Hello. I just have a quick question of how the allocation of the $2.1 billion in capital to the Vantage acquisition impacts Howard Hughes' ability to execute on its already existing real estate developments and if that's going to affect pipeline for the rest of the deals? It really has no impact, you know. We have the capital for this transaction coming from Howard Hughes is a billion two. $900 million is coming from the capital we put into the company and when we bought stock from the company in May. $300 million is coming from sort of excess cash at the real estate subsidiary. And even after the $300 million from the real estate sub, we expect to have substantial cash and liquidity and access to capital in the sub, you know, more than sufficient to continue to operate that business. So it really has no impact. But why don't we go to someone I actually know, Bill Gurley. If he's still there, I tried to invite him to speak. Okay, looks like we lost Bill Gurley. But opening the line for questions. Okay, we've got Nico. Feel free to ask a question. Please unmute. Nico, you're requested to speak. There you go. Go ahead. Thanks, Bill. Good morning. Hey, just a quick question. Great job on HHH. Super job. I've been with you since GGP a long time ago. Anyways, just a quick off-topic question if you're here to comment on it. And if not, that's fine too. Just wondering if you foresee, just quickly on Fannie and Freddie, if you don't mind, if you foresee a FinTech IPO. Yeah, Nico, I'd really rather keep this to just Howard Hughes. So. Not a problem. I really appreciate it. Thanks Bill. Okay, I want to open it to others. I'm happy to take another question from Dimitri while but don't be shy here. I see very few requests. If you want to ask a question, just request the opportunity to speak, and we will give you a chance to ask your question. Dimitri, go ahead. Hello, Bill. Thanks for hosting. So yeah, my question's pretty straightforward. I just want to know if you're wrong about this deal. What are you most likely wrong about? Okay. Look, I would say this is not a transaction that has a digital outcome. It's an acquisition of an operating insurance company with an excellent management team and a highly diversified portfolio. And the nature of insurance is not every, you know, policy you take on ends up being profitable. You know, the unexpected is guaranteed to happen in insurance. So I would say, this is, you know, I think it's impossible to predict with certainty that, you know, for example, every year the company has a profitable year in its insurance operations. I think it's the same thing with investing. It's impossible to predict that every year we're going to generate a return of XYZ, or maybe XY in our, you know, investing operations. So there's every transaction has uncertainty. I would say the probability about our being wrong and the overall transaction, I would say is very close to zero. You know, we're buying a relatively young company, whose kind of risks are highly diversified and individually these are capped, sort of relatively small exposures relative to the overall capital, of the company. We've got an excellent management team that's selected those opportunities, if you will. The asset side of the balance sheet is invested in, you know, high-grade, government and fixed income, you know, investment-grade corporates, et cetera. So there's very, at this stage, not a no risk of any consequence in the asset side of the balance sheet. There's the typical insurance risk, the liability side of the balance sheets, but none of the kind of Super Cat type stuff of any consequence that, you know, where you have a catastrophic type loss. So I think it's a relatively low-risk acquisition for the company. And how good a transaction is for the company will be determined over many years as opposed to months. That's really my best way to describe it. So why don't we go to Marcelo Lima, please? Yes. Good to see you. Hi, Bill. Yes. Good to see you. Sorry if you already covered this. I joined late. My understanding is that regulators grandfathered Buffett's ability to invest so much of its insurance float in equities. I'm sure that's too simplistic. But secondly, as you know, many fund managers have tried to create insurance holding companies with Buffett-like management of the equity portfolio, and it really hasn't worked out. And I'm sure you've thought deeply about both of these problems. Could you share your thoughts with us for why this time is different? First of all, it's an excellent question. I appreciate you're asking it. So let me compare what we're doing to what some hedge fund managers have done with insurance companies. The typical, I mean, every other transaction of which I'm aware in which a hedge fund manager has, you know, taken control of an insurance company, and there are, I think numerous examples, were really efforts on the part of the hedge fund to get permanent capital and to get, you know, a large amount of money invested in their fund in which they can earn high rates of, you know, fees, and the problem with that approach is the focus was on, I would say, growing AUM, collecting fees, and not on what's in the best interests of an insurance company. What we're doing that's very different here, number one, with respect to the management of the assets of the company, is none of the assets of Vantage are leaving Vantage and going into the Pershing Square Hedge Fund. We're going to be taking over the management of the assets of the company, and we're doing so for no consideration, no fee. So clearly our objectives here are only to do what's in the best interest of Vantage as opposed to, you know, this is not a, a play for growing the AUM, if you will, of, of Pershing Square. I think number one, the incentives are completely different. Also the, the opportunity is much greater. You know, hedge funds themselves generally use a fair amount of leverage, in order to generate returns. That's not been the case for Pershing Square. So, you know, that's why our strategy, you know, just buying a mix of common stocks and U.S. Treasuries can yield a, you know, a very good outcome for Vantage. And the fact that we're not charging any fees makes this the lowest cost investment operation for really any insurance company in the world. So that's a, you know, the benefit of best in class, you know, long-term record. And the fact that we're not charging fees, and we have the right incentives here, I think are really important. There's sort of a myth about Buffett being quote-unquote grandfathered. You know, I really encourage you to read Adam Mead's book, I think, The Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway. Actually, it's coming out in the second edition. You can kind of really follow what Buffett, you know, did over a very long period of time. The reason why Buffett's been able to invest a larger proportion of his insurance company portfolios in common stocks is because of how he's run a very low-risk insurance operation. Most insurance companies are driven by, you know, with a focus on, you know, sort of writing as much premium as they can relative to capital. That number is typically something in order of 100% of premium written each year relative to the capital of the enterprise. Buffett would operate at, you know, historically something like 20%-40% of capital in terms of written premium in any one year. So, by doing so, he put very little pressure on the credit or the ratings of the insurer. And two, the typical insurer typically invests, you know, three, you know, three times its equity in assets, but they invest in what are perceived to be very low-risk assets, you know, generally high-grade, investment-grade bonds, but with a fair amount of leverage. But what Buffett did is he invested, you know, typically, you know, something less than, you know, more like two times equity, in the, the assets in which he invests. And then with respect to the, the float, he took 100% of float and, and invested in U.S. Treasuries. So inherently, from the very beginning of time, you know, Berkshire ran a very low-risk insurance operation and a very low leverage, you know, balance sheet. And I think the combination, you know, if you think about it just, you know, from the perspective of a policyholder, you know, if you can run a profitable insurance company, you're, you know, short-term U.S. Treasuries, you take all of your, you know, float invest in Treasuries, that means your claims are covered just on the with U.S. Treasuries. So that's, you know, a comfortable notion. And then on top of that, if the balance of the portfolio is invested in common stocks, you've got a very, very big cushion to meet claims over time if you manage the business in the manner that Buffett has over time. And I think that and plus track record is what enabled Buffett to operate that way over its, Berkshire has operated that way over its history. So what are we doing here? What we're doing here is we're buying a very well-managed insurance company. And we're combining it with an investment manager with an excellent long-term track record. And we're doing so for at zero cost. And by the way, Buffett managed the insurance company portfolios, you know, for effectively at zero cost. And so that's really what enabled Berkshire to do what it did. So it's a very different, you know, kind of story. Now, all that being said, we have not yet sat down with the relevant regulators. Our approach here is going to be not an overnight approach. It's going to be a gradual one. We're going to build, you know, a track record and the confidence of regulators. But I think that, you know, we have the benefit of starting with a long-term successful track record and an investment strategy, which is not, you know, complicated or, you know, it's something that, you know, regulators are actually quite, you know, sort of familiar with. You know, these are, you know, common stocks and Treasuries are things that people are kind of easy to understand versus, you know, some of these hedge fund strategies are high, not only highly levered, but, you know, illiquid and complicated. So I think those are among the significant and important differences. But maybe Ryan, anything further to add there? Yeah, I agree with exactly what you said. I would just add, Marcelo, a couple of interesting data points. I think Bill gave a great why explanation that it really is a myth as to why Berkshire has been able to do what it's done. But I would look at the public markets. There are a handful of companies that actually do seek to have a similar investment strategy. A lot of them people are familiar with, such as Markel, Fairfax. But actually, there's another company, Cincinnati Financial, that we showed in a presentation for the Howard Hughes shareholder meeting back in September, actually has just under 40% of its overall assets invested in common stocks. And therefore, I think this is a really kind of simple way just to highlight it was not just Berkshire who did this. We actually think a lot of insurance companies don't seek to do this, because they don't actually have access to the investment talent that you would want in order to do this. And fundamentally, they just think about the model very differently, which is they're very focused on having a more levered model with a lower return asset class and fixed income. We have sort of flipped that model on its head and taken a page from Berkshire. But there are other companies in the public markets who do this. And I think Cincinnati Financial is probably the easiest one to understand as it has the highest allocation of stocks relative to its total invested assets. Okay, great. Thank you. Excellent question, Marcelo. Let's go to Lumie Casanova. Oh, hi Bill. Thank you for having me up. On the investment side of this, which we were just talking about, that Warren Buffett kind of approach, would it be, it would be an assumption to assume most of the research you've done at Pershing Square and most of the investments you've made might mirror some of these investments because, I mean, you've made great returns in some of your other investments and your research has been very, you know, very on point. So would, would that be a good assumption to make? Just wondering. Yes, I think it's a good assumption to make that the Vantage portfolio will look not dissimilar from a typical Pershing Square portfolio. We'll certainly follow the same investment principles in terms of the kind of companies we'd like to invest in, you know, just again, referring to the common stock portion of the transaction. We sort of, we love these sort of large cap, and even mega cap, durable, growth businesses, businesses where we think it's very hard to disrupt, businesses that, you know, companies that dominate their respective industries that have excellent management teams. You know, that's really been our strategy. The good news from a kind of a regulator point of view or a rating agency point of view, these are businesses that are also, you know, very robust, generally have very strong investment-grade credit ratings and generally don't need to use meaningful leverage in their business model. So they work very well from a ratings and regulatory point of view, and they work, of course, very well and they have for us in terms of long-term returns. But thank you for your question. Why don't we go to Equity Alpha, and that's a good name. I like that. Thanks, Bill. My question is, did you guys take a look at any other companies outside of Vantage, and outside of financial considerations? Why did you end up going with Vantage as the acquisition target? Sure. So there were probably a dozen companies we sort of took a peek at. We kind of narrowed the field to you know about a few. And Vantage was our number our first choice and we focused on that. And the reason why is all the things we've been talking about. So number one is the right size. You know there's some other interesting things. We're sort of too big you know you know Howard Hughes would not have the resources to do so even with support. Pershing Square was important to us to have a business that Howard Hughes would be able to buy control of you know plus or minus we thought $2 billion was the right number. So that was you know one helpful. Two we really wanted a diversified you know kind of platform. Number three we wanted an experienced really experienced management team. Number four, we wanted to be able to buy it at a price that made sense and we were able to do so because Vantage is sort of in the ramp-up stage. You know, if it were a few years from now and the business was earning, you know, high teens returns on equity, you know, the purchase price would have been something north of two times book value and it would have been, you know, a more difficult proposition for us to earn an attractive return. But, you know, Vantage offered all of the attributes that we thought were important for a transaction and we were fortunate in a counterparty that was open to a sale. We had a very good experience transacting with the Carlyle and the H&F teams. This thing came together, you know, relatively efficiently. You know, I feel really good about the transaction and the counterparties. Why don't we go to Mars Centurion, to the moon, as they say, or to Mars, even better, if you can unmute. Yes. Oh, great. Thanks. I just wanted to say first, as a retail investor, thank you very much for your public commentary and kind of letting us follow along with you. Really been, you know, I'm a very small investor here and really appreciate, that, your input and your, and your public comments. It's, it's much appreciated. On Howard Hughes, just a question. Do you see any, given that this is a P&C insurer, do you see any synergies with your, like real estate customer base, as far as selling any P&C, P&C products to the Howard Hughes, real estate, customers? I would say realistically today, no. You know, Vantage becomes a very large enterprise and, you know, perhaps someday, the vast majority of the business today comes through brokers. You know, those are the underlying clients here and then one of Howard Hughes's buildings maybe someday could happen. But it wouldn't ultimately reflect. There's no, it's not a direct to a consumer type franchise, if you will, where that might be relevant in some sense. But it's sort of a B2B, kind of company where the business is generally not transacted directly with an underlying client. Maybe, as this company gets to scale, we could get to a phase where people pick up the phone and call Vantage directly and but I would say unlikely. We didn't do this transaction because of synergies with Howard Hughes as kind of core business. But there are ways that I think Vantage can be helpful to Howard Hughes because it buys a lot of insurance, and there are. Howard Hughes also knows a lot about the property business, which, you know, advice that could be very helpful, so I would say the synergies are more intellectual than customer-based, so let's go to Compound 248. If you could unmute. There you go. Hey, thanks. Two quick questions. One, could you sort of talk about, maybe the, the bread and butter lines for Vantage and, and the nature of the float, kind of how sticky it is? And then two, I'm not sure if you talked about this, but is the thought also, obviously Pershing Square has done so much on the public side, is the thought also to do control and full company transactions? Sure. So let me address the latter question and Ryan can give you some more detail about the various lines of business. So, with respect to Howard Hughes itself, we do expect over time Howard Hughes to do other control type transactions where we buy other companies. As I mentioned, you know, in our presentation, our first priority; this is a, you know, big transaction for Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes is unable to finance it entirely on its own. So Pershing Square is providing some, you know, if you will, bridge equity. The first priority is to, you know, pay off that equity. So Howard Hughes not only has 100% legal ownership, but has 100% economic ownership. You know, compounding is a powerful thing. As Howard Hughes grows to become a more interesting company, starts generating more and more cash from its real estate subsidiary that it, it can't reinvest in its real estate sub, then we'll have more capital to do more, interesting kind of control type, transactions. So why don't we go to Luis? Do you want me to? Oh, sorry. Sorry, Ryan. Yeah, cover the other. Please. Sure. So, so Vantage overall is very highly diversified. It operates probably a little over two dozen different business lines. In the presentation that we posted on the Howard Hughes website on page six, we can sort of show maybe the top, you know, dozen kind of larger ones. There's really no individual line of business that dominates, and we actually really like that. One, one of our theses on the insurance industry is, you know, a lot of people would say there isn't necessarily good or bad insurance risk. It's all relative to the price, and I think the key in that is not all pricing is good at the right time. And so by having a really diversified line rather than having one dominant line that you have to lean into, it really allows you to pull back from areas when there aren't good pricing on the risk, and it allows you to lean in when there is good pricing on the risk. Now, one thing I would point out is Vantage is a specialty insurer. And why we like that and what that really means is you have two types of insurers. You have admitted insurers, which would be, you know, think about your standard insurers that might be doing auto or homeowners policies or things like that, where it's very much, there's a box that the regulators say you can write business, you kind of just check that box. What's nice about a non-admitted or a specialty insurer is there's a lot more customization. One of the things that we think as to why specialty insurers have generally operated on a more profitable basis is they have the ability to customize that risk. They can pick and choose where they want to play based on pricing, but they can also see things in their data in order to help better customize and make sure that some of the riskiest parts, if they're sophisticated, maybe are not things that they're insuring. That kind of double benefit of diversified business lines and also being a specialty insurer where you have a little bit more ability to customize the risk that you're taking on, we think really inures to the company's benefit on the insurance underwriting side. In terms of duration, again, very well diversified, about a quarter of their business is kind of short duration, think kind of a year or two. Another roughly quarter is kind of medium, you know, two to four years, and then long tail might be kind of four-ish years, roughly speaking, which is about half. We like that benefit. Obviously the shorter lines of business don't produce as much float, if you will, for investment purposes, but they do allow you to more quickly recognize, if you've made any mistakes to be able to fix them without enduring any problems, and kind of the inverse on the longer tail lines, it provides more time for investment income to be generated, which is valuable. That said, you know, a longer tail line of business, it takes a little longer to recognize if you made a mistake. And so having that balance across the portfolio for reserves as well as lines of business, we think is an incredibly attractive feature. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Let's go to Edmundo Yepez, please. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Yeah. So I have two questions, Bill. I don't know if you have addressed them already. Sorry, I was a little bit late, but the first one is on the timeline on when do you expect the earnings to normalize? I think this was the first year they were profitable. And I also listened that you were starting or you were going to allocate the capital to common stocks, but on the underwriting front do you have any low hanging fruit that you are going to address quickly or promptly? So that's the first one. And the second one is just from a Howard Hughes shareholder standpoint how are you perceiving this is a complex vehicle for the market I believe. So how are you perceiving the interest and how is the market understanding what you are trying to do? So, I guess, I guess those are the two. Thank you. Ryan, why don't you cover the first and I will cover the second. Yeah. So, so in terms of the timeline, the way that I would think about it overall, as we've said that we think that, you know, roughly six months, so call it the end of the second quarter will be when we can actually take ownership and close the transaction. I think Vantage in terms of the underwriting side and the insurance operation, we'll continue to do everything between now and close and then ultimately longer term, very similar to the plan that they've implemented. We think that that plan is a good one. And as the company scales, it will become a lot more profitable, resulting in an insurer that should be able to generate better returns just through the natural ability to leverage the investments they've already made. When it comes to the insurance, I'm sorry, the investment side, we believe that over time, we have the ability to significantly increase the amount of its investable assets into common stocks. We always want to maintain a very safe amount of capital invested in short-term treasuries that will basically back a lot of the reserves, which are ultimately, you know, the amount of funds they expect they will be paying out to their policyholders over time so that there's really no risk, that those funds aren't available immediately to be paid, and that will have like no investment risk, no credit risk, things like that. We do believe that the vast majority of the rest of the capital, which could be as much as up to half of it, could be available for common stocks. Now, we think the way this will work, and it's still early. We need to talk to the regulators, rating agencies, but we think over time we'll be able to allocate a very large portion of that towards investments. And as we talked about earlier, we think a lot of potential investments would be things that we like in the Pershing Square portfolio, durable compounding companies, asset-light, really great businesses with a high degree of predictability. And we expect that we would, you know, be cautiously moving towards, you know, that portfolio. So that might take a handful of years until we get to the ultimate allocation. But we think the returns on the investment side of the portfolio should improve from the current level, even as we move along the way to ultimately getting into that transaction. The good news about all of this is we think everything we're doing from allowing Vantage's business to continue operating the way it is now to helping improve the returns on the investment side of the business should allow the returns on equity from that 13% level, you know, that we talked about, in our presentation today. That should just continue to drift upward over time. Again, no, we can't promise any individual results every specific year, but the general trend on that should be a positive one as we look to march towards that high teens to 20% return. Oh, and then with respect to the business itself, how do we expect the market to react? I guess it's maybe too early to say. I'm not in front of a screen as we speak, and obviously it's an important transformative transaction. We'll take some time for people to appreciate. But I think beginning in May, when we announced our kind of business plan for the company, we kind of laid out what we intended to do, which is we said, look, we intend to either build or buy an insurance company and over time, transform Howard Hughes into a diversified holding company. We have, you know, within a relatively reasonable period of time, we've announced a, you know, I think a transformative transaction. The company fits very, very neatly with what we're trying to accomplish. We really think Vantage is an ideal base from which to build, you know, the business that we intend to build over time, so I would say, you know, especially insurance is something pretty well understood, and I think real estate, income-producing real estate and land lot sales are things sort of individually understood, but I don't think people are going to, over time, value this company based on, you know, whether this quarter or next we sell a certain number of lots, whether this quarter or next, you know, we have, you know, whatever our particular combined ratio is in the quarter. I think there aren't many. There's one very famous one, but you know, the aspirations here, as I've said from the beginning, is to build the modern-day Berkshire Hathaway. We're starting with a much better base of assets, you know, in our core real estate business, and we're starting at a time when that real estate business has reached a degree of maturity that it's going to generate cash that it won't be able to use in its core real estate business. That, you know, was the sort of fulcrum moment that we thought would really set up this opportunity to build this into, you know, a substantial, profitable business, and to do so on a per-share basis. You know, that's a kind of an important point. We could grow Howard Hughes much more quickly by issuing common stock and buying things, but that's a much less attractive way to build per-share value. You can, you can, if your goal was to build something really big, you know, the beauty of the capital markets is you just issue stocks, some combination of equity and debt, and you can, you know, you can build to the moon. You know, one of the things that Buffett has done extraordinarily well is not only earn attractive return on his assets, but he's done so issuing very little common stock. You know, when he took control of Berkshire, there was something like 950,000 shares. I think today that number is like, you know, effectively like 1.5 million. I, I haven't checked in a while. But, you know, that, that would, I would say at least as important, in driving the, the ultimate value of the company was that he built all of that value. He did so kind of pretty patiently over a very long period of time. He did it without diluting his interest in the company and ultimately shareholders' interest in the company. I think really until his acquisition of Gen Re, which in some ways was a defensive transaction because I think he was concerned about equity values at the time he did the transaction was the, you know, the only time he's issued a material amount of common stock. So our business plan for Howard Hughes is to materially grow the intrinsic value of the company on a per-share basis. And the way you get there, we think, is by keeping the shares outstanding from growing, or if only issuing shares if you're getting a lot more value in return relative to the shares that you're delivering. You know, why is insurance a really interesting business? It's a business that on its own generates large amounts of cash, over time, that can be reinvested, in assets. So if we don't invest another dollar, in Vantage, you know, we can take the existing, you know, capital base of the business and compound it at a very nice rate over time. We achieve our objectives of high teens or more, growth in book value. We're going to double the book value every, you know, four years and, and maybe, you know, and if you do the math on that over a long period of time, and if, by the way, if we can achieve 20-plus% rates of return, you know, that, you know, it starts to become three, three and a half years. You double the value of the, you know, double the book value of the business. And we're going to be doing that at a time where the book value, the, the value of this insurance operation, if we do a good job, will become worth a lot more than the multiple, the going in multiple we're paying for it. So that's sort of, I think the best way to, to think about it. So why don't we take a call from Jeremy Martille. Jeremy, if you can unmute, please. Hey Bill, thanks for taking the question. Sure. Just briefly, what do you think of, or how do you think about the operating setup and governance with Vantage now and then also for future control views? It would be interesting to see the cross-reference there again to Berkshire. Thanks. Sure. So the plan here is, the current management team of Vantage is going to run the business. You know, Greg Hendrick, the CEO, is going to become part of what we're calling the Office of the Chairman, which is going to include myself, Ryan, and David O'Reilly. And you know, Ryan and I are going to focus on insurance. And David is going to principally focus on real estate. And we're going to build this sort of valuable, you know, kind of enterprise. We'll you know, control Vantage. Ultimately, the company's going to be controlled by, you know, the board of Howard Hughes, which has representatives from Pershing Square and some great existing, you know, directors have been with us for a while, some of whom have great real estate exposure and some terrific new directors that bring other great oversight to the company. But we're really going to let Greg run his business. You know, Ryan and I still have a lot to learn about insurance. So we're certainly going to be keeping track of everything the company's up to and thinking about, you know, and kind of really working together to think about what, you know. I want to learn only, you know. Ryan and I know a lot about insurance from reading annual reports and 10-Ks and conference call transcripts and maybe some other reading. But we don't know it literally on the ground as, you know, business is being written. And that's something that we certainly want to learn about. And this is a very good team, from which we can learn. But our approach at Pershing Square and the approach we've applied at Howard Hughes is David's done a tremendous job with his team in building Howard Hughes. We don't run the business on a day-to-day basis. Even as Executive Chair, I'm you know, we're you know, pretty light touch in terms of how the Howard Hughes sort of runs its business. You know, on things you know, important capital allocation decisions, important strategic decisions, you know, I'll be a little more focused, and the board will be more involved. Really I would say the same thing about Vantage. You know, management's going to run the company. You know, we're going to you know, spend time with management after we own the business, thinking about you know, what makes sense for the company kind of going forward. But we like the existing business plan. You know, there may be areas of, you know, lines of insurance that the company has not pursued because of a business plan of going public within a short period of time that we may be more open to. We also think this, you know, Ryan talked about on the presentation, this AdVantage, which, think of this as a business where a third party, an investment firm puts up capital and Vantage brings its underwriting capabilities and gets a fee and a sharing of the underwriting profit. You know, it's sort of a, it's almost like, you know, the asset management business. We have third party capital and you get a management fee and a, and a, a piece of the upside. You know, that's a very high ROE business. And that's a business that today has about $1.5 billion third party capital. You know, one of the things that we're good at is raising third party capital. So, you know, that business has been run very, very effectively by Vantage's team. And it could deploy a lot more capital. And that's one of the ways we can help make Vantage a more valuable company is by growing the third party assets in that operation. But you know, these are among the ways that we you know want to be as helpful as possible without getting in the way of the way the business is run. And that's the way we approach really every investment in our portfolio. So, why don't we go to Madhavan Bhaure? Thank you, Jeremy, for your question. Madhavan, if you could unmute, please. Unfortunately, you're warbling a bit. If you could ask again, your question. So I've looked at what you did, and I've looked at your track record. What makes you do all this great stuff? What makes you, what motivates you in general? And what advice would you want to give to a 21-year-old myself who's trying to also make it big and do great work just like you? So my advice would be to find something you were super excited about and you're passionate about and go, go really deep and just, you know, work harder than other people, learn from as many people as you can. I mean, I would say today it is easier to get access to information and learning than any time in history. You know, when I got into the investment business, I read whatever books I could find. And, you know, I had to either go to the library or the McGraw Hill bookstore on Sixth Avenue. There was no Amazon. So it was harder to find, you know, books. There wasn't really an internet where, you know, all the world's information is stored, and there wasn't generative AI. So, you know, I think what you want to do is you want to accelerate as much as possible your pace of learning and kind of become a learning machine. If you're interested in business, it actually doesn't matter so much which business you pursue. I think every business is fundamentally interesting, whether it's waste management or investment management or, you know, what, pick your favorite, you know, the hotel industry. It doesn't matter. Find one that you're excited about, learn as much as you can. The best way to learn, the most efficient way to learn, I think, is generally by reading, you know, maybe watching some less efficient, but interesting is watching podcasts or YouTube videos of, you know, people who are experts in that particular field. Then, you know, commit to make progress every day, and progress compounds like money. In a relatively short period of time, you'll find yourself in a good place. That, that would be my advice. Thank you for the question. Let's go to Prathamesh Patil. I hope I didn't get your name wrong. Did I lose him? Okay. Let's go to Will Brown. Why don't you go ahead? Hello, Bill. I wanted to ask about the way, like, I don't know if you know at all what's happening in, you know, Washington, D.C., and there's a lot of private equity and investment banks opening up here. What do you think is the reasoning for that? And is there anything that you find interesting about, like, the D.C. area? Look, I think it's an interesting question. My guess is, you know, people want to have proximity to the administration, but in that it's sort of unrelated to Howard Hughes. I'm going to, I won't, I won't, guess more. But why don't I invite, with that, okay, hold on. Thank you for answering my question. No problem. We're going to go to Manju GG. Okay. Go ahead, ask your question. Unmute, please. Okay. We're going to go to Bruno, and why don't you go ahead? Psych Profits is your handle. Go ahead. Hi Bill, it's Bruno here. I've held Howard Hughes for years now since Whitney wrote it up in Empire. Wow. And it's looking good to me. I don't have any questions about that, but I do have a question about the SPAC that the SEC gave you the kibosh on. I have a lot of that, and I'm not sure what the status is and the brokers can't tell me. So I thought you would know. Okay. I'll very quickly answer that one. We'll get back to Howard Hughes, but thank you for being a long-term Howard Hughes shareholder. Thank you. So the short answer is we have a SPAC called Pershing Square SPARC Holdings. They didn't give us the kibosh. The SEC actually approved Pershing Square SPARC Holdings. We have what you see in your brokerage account are what's called SPARs, Special Purpose Acquisition Rights. They don't trade until we identify an acquisition and announce a transaction and get the SEC to cause the sort of documents to go effective, at which point the instruments in your account become live. They become rights to invest in the transaction on the same, the same price and terms that we invest. We have been looking for a potential transaction. We've seen lots of things, but nothing that's kind of met our very high standards for business quality growth, et cetera. But when we do, you'll know about it and you'll hear from us. But thank you for your question. Let's go to Modern Moderate, please. The guy with the George Washington picture. Oh, good, good morning. I was on mute. I'm in the business as well. It's my opinion that your runaway differentiated skill set is your ability to hedge. I, frankly, have never seen anyone as good about it as you. Plenty of people can pick longs, but, you're just incredible at that. How do you think about actively hedging, Howard Hughes? It's one of the reasons I made a fairly large investment in it to go along with you. I, I just would love to hear where your head is at with that. Yeah, I wouldn't hedge Howard Hughes. You know, our approach to hedging historically has been to be very opportunistic, and as a result, it's very episodic, and we generally don't hedge individual securities. If we felt a need to hedge an individual security, we wouldn't own it. Right? We. Oh, I mean, I mean the business as a whole. In other words, if you saw a virus coming, you know. Yeah. So what we do is we look for, you know, Ryan, myself, other members of the team, and Ryan and Bharath and Sonal, three members of the team spend, you know, a portion of every day looking at and thinking about macroeconomic risks. This is something I, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about, you know, the world beyond just securities markets, you know, geopolitics, what's going on in the world. The team takes some of those insights they and we get from studying companies that we own, as well as the kind of typical macro and other data that, you know, comes either from the government or third-party sources. And we look for, you know, risks. And if we identify a risk that we think is significant, that we then look for, is there a way to hedge that risk that would protect us from whatever that black swan, you know, flying in, could be causing? And if we can find an instrument that offers a very large payoff relative to the premium that we're investing, now we've got an interesting hedge. So the reason why we've been good at hedging is we don't hedge every day. We're not trying to hedge short-term moves in the market. What we're trying to do is protect ourselves against, you know, the next great financial crisis, the next COVID crisis, the next, you know, massive spike in interest rates, you know, things like this. And we, but we're prepared to do nothing, if there's nothing to do. It's a bit like, you know, in some sense, the insurance business, in that we only, except we're buying insurance and we only buy insurance when it's priced really, really cheaply, and when there's a storm coming. And, you know, a lot of people do a lot of work on weather, so they're better than us at predicting when the storm coming. But we do a lot of work on, I would say, financial, you know, storms. And, we've been pretty good at identifying them as they come. And that sets us up to be a potential to hedge that risk as long as, again, we can find an instrument that offers us an appropriate return relative to the risk, from the premiums that we spend. But let's go to, thanks for your question, Tim Riley. Yeah, thanks, Bill. I sit on the brokerage side of the house in insurance, so interesting to read the news this morning. I guess, again, from our perspective on the brokerage side, given the current landscape, we tend to get increasingly kind of wary of what we might refer to as like a hybrid carrier. Are those acting more like an asset manager? And we tend to prioritize more the certainty of capacity. So thinking about the AdVantage panel, you know, doesn't that essentially make that capacity a bit flighty and totally reliant on investor appetite, which would be, I guess, a little bit kind of the opposite of kind of the Berkshire model you referred to? Sure. So, actually, Ryan, why don't you speak to AdVantage and what they do and, you know, how it's relevant versus the core Vantage operation? Yeah. So one of the things that we like about AdVantage is, as we mentioned, the core Vantage portfolio doesn't really have any exposure to natural catastrophe risk. And so, that's something that's a little bit differentiated than some other businesses in the reinsurance space. And what's interesting is AdVantage effectively is their off-balance sheet sidecar vehicle. What I mean by that is they are able, through the leadership of a really talented executive there, Chris McKeown, to be able to partner with other people who really seek to have this exposure to natural catastrophe insurance. They raise capital from them. They get a fee in order to do that. So basically, just by arranging these structures and helping provide and link up the, you know, capital provider with the insurance risk, they're able to earn a fee, which has very little risk to it, takes no capital. At the same time, they then actually have a profit participation, based upon certain metrics about how well those vehicles perform relative to whether these risks for natural catastrophes materialize or not. We think, to Bill's point, it's a really interesting growth opportunity. They've already done a phenomenal job in that. But when you think about an insurer as being very capital intensive and under, in order to write its kind of core insurance business, this is a really interesting way to leverage all of that work, those insights, candidly, you know, the leadership of a very talented executive that they have there in order to be able to grow this business in an asset-like way. And as Bill mentioned, you know, one of the things that Pershing Square can bring to the table in this transaction, in addition to, you know, the investment advice and a lot of knowledge about the industry from a very high level is, Pershing Square has been very successful in raising capital. And so I think that is an opportunity, that's very attractive for growth, you know, over time. Maybe more directly to your question, Tim, today AdVantage has a, you know, source of capital, you know, kind of a financial institution that has put up the capital. To your point, that financial institution could choose someday to not provide capital. One of the things that Pershing Square has done very well over time is one of the few firms that have set up permanent capital vehicles. You know, the beauty of permanent capital is not flighty. So one of the things we may be able to bring to Vantage, particularly in this part of its operation, is a source of capital that is very long-term in nature. But the nature of, you know, I think the nature of this business for AdVantage has been a very stable source of capital for the company. I think we can only improve upon that, but thank you for your question. Thank you. Let's go to William Selage. Go ahead, please. Looks like you're unmuted, but we can't hear you. Okay. We're going to go to Sam Tesori. Sam. Oh, sorry. Hi, Bill. You have previously stated that the strategy for Howard Hughes differs from Pershing Square in that Howard Hughes focuses on acquiring smaller companies while Pershing Square typically takes minority stakes in large cap companies. But as Howard Hughes continues to grow and scale over time, how do you view the evolution of Howard Hughes' investment strategy? If, say, Howard Hughes were to reach a size where acquiring smaller company in full becomes less feasible, could we see a shift towards investments more similar to those of Pershing Square? And in such a scenario, how would you think about capital allocation and prioritizing between Howard Hughes compared to Pershing Square? Sure. It's an excellent question. So the core business of the Pershing Square funds is, as you say, buying minority stakes in large cap and mega cap companies. Howard Hughes, as an operating company really is limited in its ability to buy minority stakes in public or private companies. You know, the Investment Company Act of 1940 is very prescriptive in that, and one of the things that public companies, typically public operating companies, never want to become subject to the Investment Company Act. And so, you know, Howard Hughes is really not going to be buying, or have any kind of material percentage of his portfolio in minority stakes in companies. So its business plan, today and going forward, will be to buy businesses like AdVantage where it's buying a controlling stake in the company, and, with an intention, you know, to own the business for the very long term. Over time, we'll buy other operating companies, you know, controlling or 100% or 80% stakes. And those businesses will, in order for them to move the needle for Howard Hughes, they'll have to be at an appropriate size relative to the then size of Howard Hughes, you know, which is something that we will, you know, take care of over time. You know, so that's really, you know, the good news is these are really completely different strategies. So there's, you know, if we're buying, you know, Google, you know, that's going to be in Pershing Square. And if we're buying a, you know, control of a $500 million private business, it's going to be in Howard Hughes. So that's how we think about it. Thank you. Okay. We have an all-employee call at Howard Hughes in about six minutes. So let's use these six minutes to address other questions. Looks like we've got a question from. I thought we had a question from Georgie, but let's see who else. How about Milan Pjulak. Excuse my pronunciation of your name for me. I don't want. I think I got it wrong. Milan, if you could unmute and ask your question. Hi, Bill. Can you hear me now? Yes. Can you talk a little bit about the future for Howard Hughes Holdings and the future operations businesses that you guys are looking at now that Vantage is behind you? I would say the AdVantage is only in front of us because number one, all we've done at this point is enter into a contract to acquire it. So we've got a lot of work to do before we actually own the company. And then, at that point, while Howard Hughes will have 100% legal ownership, it will have less than 100% economic ownership, because it's of a scale that with its existing resources, Howard Hughes can't finance on its own. So, the first priority for the cash of Howard Hughes will be as we take excess cash from the real estate subsidiary that will go to redeem this preferred so that Howard Hughes eventually owns 100% of Vantage. So that's priority one. You know, priority two is to, you know, we could choose to, with excess cash, you know, the beauty of insurance is, you know, if, you know, market conditions are favorable, you know, insurance companies can use a lot of capital. The more capital you put into an insurer, the more business they can write, and that's a, you know, could be an important priority for incremental capital beyond what's required for Howard Hughes to own 100% of the business. But the other thing that we'll do over time is we'll buy other operating businesses. You know, and, you know, our goal is to build a very valuable, you know, diversified holding company. This is a, you know, critically important event in a step in that direction. And we appreciate your support, but always hard to predict the future, but I think we've got a pretty good plan certainly for the next several years. So I invited Jay Kaplan. Feel free to ask your question. I think this is going to be the last one because of timing. Jay, if you could unmute, please. Yeah, Bill, this is totally, you know, not regarding Howard Hughes, but I actually saw you on Madison Avenue a few days ago and I'm remiss to have not said hi, but I just want to thank you and I'm so grateful for all of your propensity and support for Israel and for the Jewish people. So thank you very much. Okay. Very kind of you. We're going to go for one more Howard Hughes question. Thank you, Jay. So I've asked Josh Young. Go ahead. This will be the last question. Please on Howard Hughes, please, if we can. Yeah, perfect. No, I just wanted to ask a little more about the valuation for Vantage and how, how you think about that in terms of the price paid versus the potential value add over time. Sure. So, the best transactions are ones where you can buy a business at a fair price on the way in, and then you can help enhance the value of the business over time, and where in the meantime, the business generates, you know, a growing stream of profit. And I think that's precisely what this is. You know, we're negotiating in this transaction with a very sophisticated counterparty, you know, so we weren't going to steal the company. But we were also prepared to buy the business when it wasn't fully vacant, so to speak. You know, private equity firms generally buy an asset with a plan to sell it, or begin getting liquidity, I would say five, seven years, after they acquire it. So this was an investment, you know, kind of five years in, starting to approach the period where they start to think about a public offering, but not quite seasoned yet. And so, you know, we approached them kind of earlier than they would normally consider a sale. And we offered an all cash transaction at a, I would say a full and fair price for the business at its current stage. The nature of the transaction, as long as Vantage continues to be profitable, which we expect it to be, kind of brings down our going in price from one and a half times multiple to a one point around a 1.4x multiple. You know, as we've described, you know, our, we think this is a business that we can enhance. I think we enhance it by improving its kind of credit quality, by making it part of a, you know, diversified holding company, by being a permanent owner of the business. It's going to take a very long-term approach, by our focus on underwriting profitability over growth. We have no ambitions to, you know, write lots more premium next quarter than the previous before. Our goal is to grow the business intelligently, and very profitably. We're much more focused on profit than growth, and for Vantage. And then we're going to take over a portfolio, which is, I don't know, could be 10,000 fixed income CUSIPs of a zillion different companies designed really to deliver an average outcome, less whatever fees are charged. And replace that with, you know, a more long-term investment approach, you know, over time, you know, kind of shifting the mix from to zero risk fixed income securities for the, you know, the float that's generated from the business, i.e., U.S. Treasuries. And over time, shifting the balance of the portfolio to common stocks, you know, with a goal of approaching, you know, half of the assets invested in common stocks. And we think that the combination of a more profitable insurer with a permanent owner on the underwriting side of the business and a more profitable insurer, in terms of the way the assets are being managed, again, without any fee, we think has the potential to deliver a company that, you know, an insurer that can earn, frankly, north of a 20% return on equity over time. You should, you know, do your own math. And, you know, that, that kind of insurance, if we were, you know, if we wanted to get a mark-to-market value of it, if we achieved that objective, you know, my guess is that business would be worth something like two and a half times book value. So we expect book value to grow at a nice teens or greater rate over the next whatever number of years, and hopefully we're approaching a 20% or more return on equity. And we expect the, the multiple the market will assign to our insurance operations to over time be in excess of two times. And the combination of those two drivers leads to a very attractive return on equity. So a good question, which allows me to give an overarching view of why we think this makes sense for the company. But, last but not least, let me thank, while generally the institutional investors, the analysts typically get to ask all the questions on shareholder calls, the bulk of the stocks are on a direct or on a look-through institution basis owned by the so-called retail or individual shareholders. And that's why we like to do these spaces to hear from the people ultimately who have the economic exposure to the company. With that, maybe David, did you want to any closing remarks from the team? I may have lost him on the spaces. So anyway, wanted to close the call there. Thank everyone for joining, and we look forward to making some progress and letting you know how we do in the new year. Have a great day.