Home / Transcripts / Howard Hughes Holdings Inc. (HHH) · November 6, 2026

Howard Hughes Holdings Inc. (HHH) Earnings Call Transcript

November 6, 2026

NYSE US Real Estate Real Estate Management and Development earnings 53 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator operator
#1

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Howard Hughes Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Joe Valane, General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Joseph Valane executive
#2

Good morning, and welcome to the Howard Hughes Holdings Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. With me today are Bill Ackman, Executive Chairman; Ryan Israel, Chief Investment Officer; David O'Reilly, Chief Executive Officer; Carlos Olea, Chief Financial Officer; and Marc Grandisson, Vantage Executive Chair and Howard Hughes Holdings Director. Before we begin, I would like to direct you to our website, www.howardhughes.com, where you can download both our third quarter earnings press release and our supplemental package. The earnings release and supplemental package include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures that will be discussed today in relation to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Certain statements made today that are not in the present tense or that discuss the company's expectations are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that these expectations will be achieved. Please see the forward-looking statement disclaimer in our third quarter earnings press release and the risk factors in our SEC filings for factors that could cause material differences between forward-looking statements and actual results. We are not under any duty to update forward-looking statements unless required by law. I will now turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Bill Ackman.

William Ackman executive
#3

Thank you, Joe. Just going to highlight a few significant developments during the quarter, then turn it over to Marc, who is going to walk through the insurance portfolio. Ryan will speak to the investment assets and David will update more detail on the real estate progress. With respect to Vantage, $76.6 million of net tax profit for insurance and reinsurance, including gains from the investment portfolio. Economically, $103 million operating profit, we're adding back purchase accounting adjustments relating to the purchase of Vantage at a premium to book value, that amortization, we believe is a noneconomic expense. In terms of Vantage progress, the most significant during the quarter was Mark taking on the Executive Chair role are recruiting David Gansberg, as the CEO elect to join no later than June when his noncompete expires. And Marc continues to build out the senior leadership team, really taking advantage of his long-time relationships and network in the industry, and we'll update you over time as we make more progress there. Real estate operations generated strong performance. Operating assets, same-store NOI growth of 9%. That's probably a industry-wide to the top number. On the land sale side, also very strong numbers. We lapped a significant $100 million plus bulk lot sale. But in terms of -- without the bulk lot sales year-on-year, we showed good progress. Importantly, what we focus on is really a couple of metrics. One is what's the pace of home sales. Someone was up 11% year-on-year. Woodland Hills up 5% year-on-year, Bridgeland down 9% year-on-year, but up 7% over last year, lot sales are lumpy, depends on our sort of auction process, et cetera, but we feel very good about that sort of leading indicator. And importantly, the land sales price per acre. One of our important metrics when we look at is what's the value -- how much land do we sell over the last year? And what's the value of our -- the land that we have remaining based on current prices. We sold 398 acres over the last 12 months, generated $435 million of proceeds. Meanwhile, our residual value of land based on the current market value went up from $5.623 billion to $5.701 billion. So in effect, we generated $435 million of proceeds plus an increase in our land values. The maintenance free cash flow was up slightly with very significant same NOI growth. I will go into more detail there. We had a modest amount of condominium sales generating -- or $0.8 million of -- excuse me, of profit and we did 2 municipality district receivable sales and I'm going to explain what this is. Basically, as we build out the infrastructure for our MPCs, we recover the cost of that infrastructure in the form of what's called a municipal utility district receivable, which is paid down from tax revenues. We get that -- receivable sits on the balance sheet that's face value, it gets paid out over 3, 4, 5, 6 years, depending upon the pace of development and the generation of taxable income. What we've been doing in effect, think about as a 0 coupon instrument, and we basically have sold that and received the present value of those receivables at about 6%. Discount rate that causes us to generate a GAAP loss of $5 million during the quarter. But what we're really doing is taking this 0 coupon, which is which we're not going to collect or an instrument we're not going to collect for 4 or 5 years, much as 6 years and taking the cash today at a discount rate that we find attractive. The other significant development with respect to real estate during the quarter was our announcement in September at the Annual Meeting have a plan to go to an asset-light model. We've made good progress in terms of recruiting the advisers and actually have already done discussions and received a number of significant offers for assets of the company. We'll report our progress over time, but we are strongly of the view that we're going to achieve our objectives in terms of generating material amounts of cash that we believe to be very attractive valuations. Comment on the other metric to pay attention to, of course, is G&A. This is the first quarter that we're fully including the results of Vantage our year-on-year increase from $34 million of G&A to $51.6 million. The components there basically are $13 million of incremental interest expense and about $4 million to $5 million of G&A from Vantage that is now in our results. Okay. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Marc Grandisson.

Marc Grandisson executive
#4

Thank you, Bill. Good morning, everyone. As Bill noted, this is our first full quarter as part of how we use, and I'm pleased to report that Advantage delivered solid quarter with earnings, underwriting income and returns, all generally moving in the right direction. A quick reminder, Bill alluded to it already, we like to presentation. How would use consolidated results include is accounting adjustments, largely the amortization of the VOBA. On that basis, Vantage is third quarter combined ratio was 101.8% and the pretax income was $77 million. As in the second quarter, everything is today and the Vantage supplemental is on a historical GAAP basis, excluding purchase accounting adjustments, which gives a clearer picture of how the business is actually performing consistent with historical reporting. On that basis, third quarter net income was approximately $80 million, up 22% from the prior year quarter, and pretax income of $103 million was more than double last year. Year-to-date, net income is $166 million, up 51%. In the quarter, the combined ratio was 94.9%, in line with 95% a year ago and 95.4% year-to-date versus 96% last year. Underwriting income grew 19% in the quarter to $16 million and 38% year-to-date to $41 million. Gross written premiums grew 4% to $386 million and net earned premium grew 17% to $316 million. Year-to-date, gross written premium is $1.4 billion, up 11%. Insurance-related gross written premiums grew 8%, led by construction, casualty and financial lines. Reinsurance-related gross written premiums were down 9% as we deliberately wrote less property in specialty, where pricing no longer meets our return hurdles that is cycle management and practice. We grow where the margin of safety is there, and we step back where it is not. The G&A expense ratio improved to 13.9% from 15.8% a year ago and to 14.3% from 16.9% year-to-date as net earned premiums continue to outpace expense growth. As was mentioned at HHS' Annual General Meeting, we expect to invest more over the next several quarters, and we expect the G&A ratio to be a little bit more volatile. Let me spend a moment on underwriting quality. The accident year combined ratio, excluding catastrophes, was 96.2% versus 96.8% last year and 92.5% year-to-date versus 94.8%. I do want to be transparent that the quarter is above the 91.4% we reported the second quarter. The difference is a single large energy loss in our reinsurance specialty book. There were no significant catastrophe losses in the third quarter. Reinsurance also absorbed about 4 points of adverse prior development which we have addressed conservatively. Excluding those items, reinsurance remains profitable with a 92.2% accident year ratio ex cat in the quarter and 84.4% combined ratio year-to-date. Large losses are part of a specialty underwriter. And as I said last quarter, we expect some fluctuation from quarter-to-quarter. Insurance made real progress. Its combined ratio improved to 96% from 102.6% and underwriting income was $7 million versus a loss of $4 million a year ago with favorable prior year development of 3 points. This is the trend we want to see, and we expect it to continue as the book scales. Net fee income was $13 million in the quarter, up from $9 million and is $47 million year-to-date versus a loss last year. This comes from our advantaged ALS structure and reflects strong outcomes on recent property cat business we wrote for third-party partners. Turning to investments. The transition of the portfolio is now largely complete. We hold $1.3 billion of common equities, $2.4 billion of cash and short-term treasuries and only $11 million of fixed income securities. Net investment results were $77 million for the quarter, driven by $55 million of unrealized gain on equities, a reversal to the second quarter's mark-to-market loss. Net investment income was $23 million versus $30 million last year, reflecting the move out of fixed income. Equity markets will move in both directions, so please judge this portfolio over years, not quarters. We are investing for long-term compounding with expert management by Pershing Square. That brings me to returns and capital. Trailing 12 months after-tax return on equity was 16% compared to 15.9% for 2025 and 9.2% for 2024. And that is consistent with our goal to deploy capital at a target return on equity at or above mid-teens over the cycle. GAAP equity rose to $1.9 billion, up 44% year-over-year, including the $300 million contribution from how we use, combined with earned profits. Our capital remains strong and AM Best continues to rate us A- with a positive outlook. On the market, our review is unchanged from last quarter. We remain primarily in Stage 3 of the cycle, Property rates, particularly in the United States, continue to soften and a few short tail lines are moving towards Stage 4. Casualty remains more constructive. There are uncertainty around development of earlier years and loss trend require a thoughtful approach. Broadly, competition has increased, but pockets of attractive returns remain in a diversified platform lets us move quickly to them. Our priorities are the same, underwriting profit over volume, conservative reserving, and margin of safety and pricing, disciplined management of aggregations, conservative prudential capital management, and investment in data and talent. In closing, we are still in the very early chapters of a multiyear story. The permanent capital is in place, the portfolio transition is behind us, and the underlying trend in underwriting expenses and returns is positive. I look forward to updating you on our progress in the future. With that, I will turn the call over to Ryan.

Ryan Israel executive
#5

Thanks, Marc. I thought this quarter, what we could do is talk a little bit more about the investment portfolio and Pershing Square's overall philosophy on the management of that portfolio. And for those of you following along the slides, I'll kind of be referencing Page 23 as we go along. So to start with, our total invested assets grew to about $3.7 billion this quarter. And as we've talked about before, we really employ a barbell strategy. So just over 65% of those invested assets will ultimately be in cash or short-term U.S. treasuries were taking no credit risk, no duration risk. And then we will be investing the bulk of the excess beyond what we would be generating through float over time in our common equities. Today, we actually have a lot more of a cushion relative to the flow that we've invested in short-term treasuries over time, we probably will have a little bit more matching between the short-term investments and our float, and therefore, the percentage of our invested assets that would be in common equities with gold. So when we sort of think about that 65% of the portfolio today that invested in short-term treasuries at current interest rates, that should be yielding around 4% based on the market rates for a 30-day U.S. Treasury to the extent that interest rates stay the same for the roughly 35% of our portfolio that's invested in stocks, what we wanted to provide today was really the investments that we make. And at Pershing Square and for those of you who follow us, we've and they have the competitive moats, the great decisions management is making in their capital allocation strategies, they can really be generating returns from these investments that would be at least 20% a year over kind of a 3- to 5-year type holding period. And when we think about the way in which we're achieving or hope to achieve that 20-plus percent return, it's really buying businesses that can grow their earnings. I would say it's sort of a high teens to roughly 20% rate collectively. And where we try to purchase these businesses at attractive multiples such that over time, our investment return will be a little bit better than the underlying earnings growth of those businesses because investors will ultimately assign a higher multiple of earnings to these companies than what we've paid for them. And so when we kind of take that framework overall, what we're looking for, and we see that's represented very well in the portfolio we have to investments in Vantage that really do represent these durable growth companies, some of the world's great businesses that are generally growing their earnings between 15% and 25% a year over time in our estimation and where we think there's upside from the multiples. Collectively, this portfolio, roughly the way we think about it as it is today, we expect it should be growing its earnings about 20% a year over the next 3 to 5 years based upon our best estimates. And what that sort of means is every quarter, if the multiples stay the same that investors assign to these companies, we would generally get about 1/4 of that 20% growth or about 5% each quarter. And you can actually see this quarter in aggregate, that's exactly what happened. We had a 4.7% return on our common equities, just under that 5% threshold...

Unknown Executive executive
#6

You may want to point to the page you're referring to.

Ryan Israel executive
#7

Yes, Page 23, exactly for those were falling along. And the way we sort of think about that is that's at the portfolio in aggregate. But when you look at the specific holdings, Obviously, there's a lot more volatility. So to point out a couple of the companies that drove our results this quarter were really our investments in Microsoft and Meta, which were our largest investments. And those collectively returned about 38% for Microsoft, 29% for Amazon. And while the earnings grow on year end, so of that kind of 20% to 25% level, these businesses also had a lot of multiple expansion this quarter as people became more excited about their prospects. And the rest of the portfolio, I would say there was a little bit a different result where some of them had their earnings growth and their share price in line. And some of them actually, for example, a company like Brookfield or Uber actually had a share price declines, even though they had very healthy earnings growth as investors assigned a lower multiple to those businesses. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of insight as to how we're thinking about the stock portfolio that we have. And going forward, our goal is to continue to provide some insights each quarter on how we think about the overall investment portfolio. With that, I'll turn it over to David to talk about the real estate results.

David O'Reilly executive
#8

Thank you, Ryan. Against the backdrop of real headwinds, higher mortgage rates and affordability challenges, our real estate business is performing exceptionally well. Over the past 12 months, our annual residential land pricing in our commercial communities increased 18%. Operating assets NOI grew 8% this quarter, and our condominium pipeline now represents more than $5 billion in expected future revenue. Let's start with our MPCs. Land pricing, home sales and the value of our remaining land are the indicators I focus on when evaluating the strength of this business. So let's put the reported numbers in context. We reported $89.5 million of MPC EBT during the quarter, compared to $205 million a year ago. Two items drove that comparison. First, last year's quarter included a 231-acre bulk land sale in Summerlin for more than $100 million. Those transactions are strategic, but they don't occur every quarter. Second, we recorded a $19.4 million remeasurement loss related to the consolidation of Floreo and Arizona. This is a noncash accounting adjustment from taking control of the venture, not a change in what we expect the project to be worth. Adjusting for the bulk sale and the noncash loss, MPC EBT would have been higher this quarter compared to last year. Demand and pricing in our communities are stronger than they were 12 months ago, not weaker. Our average residential land price was approximately $1.3 million per acre this quarter, an 18% increase over the trailing 12 months mentioned during the quarter that net new home sales increased in Summerlin and Woodland Hills, Bridgeland was down in the quarter but still up 7% for the year. What differentiates our communities isn't that we own a large amount of land, it's what we've built on that land over decades. We're not developing residential neighborhoods. We're creating complete communities that attract employers, businesses, retailers and residents. We've proven that strategy in the Woodlands, and we're following that same playbook in Bridgeland with projects like the Houston Texas anchored Toro District. As these communities mature, the jobs, amenities and commercial development create additional demand for housing. That demand, combined with our finite land supply supports pricing and increases the value of our remaining land over time. which is exactly what you see in our land bank. Updated pricing assumptions added approximately $79 million of estimated value this quarter, replacing most of the value -- the 100 acres we sold. Our estimated margin adjusted residual value for wholly owned land is within 1% of where the quarter ago with fewer acres in it. That is long-term value creation that doesn't always show up in quarterly earnings. We also completed the sale of 2 mud district reimbursements in Texas. Bill walked through the details of that. But at the end of the day, we generated more than $177 million in net cash proceeds but also generated $105.4 million GAAP loss. The implied discount rate that we sold those receivables at on a blended basis is just over 6%, accepting a discount today on cash that would otherwise have been collected for years. We expect to redeploy those proceeds at returns well above that rate, which is exactly why we did it. Turning to the operating assets. NOI increased 8% to $73 million with same-store NOI growing at 9%. This growth is primarily resulting from the leasing efforts across our office portfolio which has increased NOI 15% compared to last year on a same-store basis. Adjusted maintenance free cash flow increased 10% over the trailing 12 months to $96.6 million again, boosted by leasing of both the office and multifamily portfolios as we've reached stabilization across the majority of our assets. These results reflect years of investment in commercial multifamily developments throughout our communities. Those assets provide growing recurring cash flow and add value to the residential land around them. Our condominium business is another important source of future cash flow. We contracted 82 units during the quarter, including 66 at Mahana, our newest Ward Village tower in predevelopment. As of September 30, Mahana was 15% presold after only about a month of sales. We've continued to see sales activity since quarter end despite a challenging market. Located at the base of Victoria Ward Park, Mahana offers a distinct opportunity within Ward Village, and we're encouraged by the pricing and buyer interest we've seen. Sales remained in line with our expectations. Across the pipeline, we have 1,743 units under construction or in predevelopment with 62% pre-sold or under contract. That's more than $5 billion in expected future revenue, including approximately $3.6 billion already under contract. What makes this business especially attractive is its capital structure. Buyer deposits and nonrecourse construction financing fund the majority of those development costs, allowing us to deliver these projects with a relatively limited corporate equity, which brings me to something fundamental about Howard use. The cash flow we generate isn't the end of our value creation. It's what funds the next generation of it. We reinvest a portion of that cash into projects like Melia and ‘Ilima in Ward Village and 1 Riva Row Row in the Woodlands and transformational developments like Toro District in Bridgeland. Those investments drive shareholder returns make our communities more attractive, increase long-term net asset value and create the next round of cash flow and the cycle repeats, which brings me to the evolving asset management strategy. As discussed at the shareholder meeting in September, we're increasingly looking to bring third-party capital into our real estate platform through joint ventures and other structures. We don't need to own 100% of every office building, apartment community or commercial development to create value from those assets. By partnering with outside investors, we can unlock equity, grow our development and asset management fee business and keep overseeing the communities we've spent the last 16 years building. We're in active discussions on our first joint venture and expect to make more in the coming quarters. The capital we free up gives us real flexibility. It can be used to redeem the preferred shares, invest [indiscernible] or fund our current growth opportunities in Howard Hughes communities. Our master planned communities remain the foundation of the real estate business and long-term control over their development remains central to the strategy. So when I look at the quarter, I see a real estate business performing exceptionally well in a challenging market. We're maintaining strong land pricing, growing recurring cash flow and building a substantial pipeline of future condominium revenue. And as we evolve our capital structure, we have the opportunity to keep creating that value with significantly less capital tied up in individual assets. I am proud -- I couldn't be more proud of what our team has accomplished this quarter in a challenging environment and confident in the long-term outlook for our communities. So with that, I'll turn it over to Bill for closing remarks.

William Ackman executive
#9

My only remarks are that the real estate team did a great job, really great quarter. With that, operator, let's open it for questions.

Operator operator
#10

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Anthony Paolone of JPMorgan.

Anthony Paolone analyst
#11

My first question relates to just the planned either joint venture or sales of some of the real estate. Can you maybe give us a sense as to any particular areas you want to sell? And maybe sizing of like how much you expect to receive in proceeds over -- I think, Bill, maybe on a prior call you mentioned being done by the end of '27.

Unknown Executive executive
#12

Yes. I would say we're not going to be likely done by the end of '27. I think we're going to make very significant progress by the end of '27. The goal is to -- we think there is value -- our whole strategy about MPCs is about control. Why do we have 9% same-store NOI growth because the competitive dynamics of controlling the real estate in your communities enables you to maintain pricing and obviously, quality and this enables us to generate compound returns both in the value of commercial assets and the value of our kind of land holdings. So we want to maintain control, so we're bringing in more passive partners that like the team with -- this is a team with incredible track record, capability, resources, financial reporting, public company, the ideal partner for pension fund family office that wants exposure to some of the best housing and real estate markets in the country. We have -- I would say some assets that are kind of noncore that we might sell outright, but we've already been fielding offers on major assets that have come in the door since we announced this strategy, and I expect we'll have stuff to report on probably by the next time we have this call. So I can't tell you precisely the time frame. It's not -- we're not in a rush to do it, but we're going to -- we've hired advisers that are engaged, they're incentivized. I would say real estate transactions the earliest I would expect you to hear something would be over in a 3-month time frame. But call it, 6, 9 months from now, you should start to hear significant progress. And I said by the end of next year, the goal of something in order of potentially a couple of billion of incremental proceeds would be a reasonable way to think about it. But that's an approximation. It could be more, it could be less.

Anthony Paolone analyst
#13

Okay. And then if you think about as those proceeds come in, if we think about selling CRE, if we think about sales cap rates and so losing some percentage of those assets as income. Do you think the redeployment, should we think about that as going out at a higher return? Or how do we think about just what that trade looks like on a shorter-term basis as the money comes in and then what you do with it?

Carlos Olea executive
#14

Sure. So I think real estate investors, someone is buying an asset at a 6.5% return in a 5.5% financing market and putting up 1/3 of the equity, that's not generally a high return. It's hard to generate very high return. I think people think of real estate as a, call it, I don't know, 8% to 12% return on equity kind of business, I would say, in terms of -- for stabilized assets, maybe somewhat higher for development-type assets. We think we can generate -- Marc mentioned in excess of a 15% ROE, our ambitions are actually to generate in excess of a 20% ROE, both with a combination of strong profitability from the insurance side of the business and from strong investment results, particularly as we get the investment portfolio more invested in common equities and less on treasury. So going from a, let's call it, a 10% ROE business to a 20% ROE business, we think inherently is a good thing. Now our real estate operation, it takes place in a corporation where we have to pay corporate tax. We have some depreciation shield, interest expense, et cetera, still pay taxes. So by bringing in -- taking out, call it, 80%, let's say, of the equity we have invested in an asset and then getting paid fees from managing the assets that are paid by third parties, promotes, et cetera, we think we can take the ROE from a real estate portfolio from the maybe lower double digits to the high teens or potentially more. And so we think both the movement of the capital from real estate to insurance is a big step-up in terms of ROE for the overall business. But by doing so, by bringing in a partner and by becoming more of a asset manager than just a wholly owned real estate subsidiary operation, we -- that transaction is extremely accretive to the entity, both in real estate and insurance.

Operator operator
#15

Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb of Piper Sandler.

Alexander Goldfarb analyst
#16

Yes. And certainly, congrats on having the first full period as a combined company. So a lot of work there. First, David, I'm going to go to Hawaii in the condos you know I like to complement you guys of how successful the presales go, but this latest project, which I think was just 15 units or 15%, it seems a little slower than historic. So just maybe a little bit more color if it's project-specific or maybe just where interest rates are, it's finally countering what normally is a really strong residential sales market out in at Ward Village.

David O'Reilly executive
#17

Alex, thanks for the question. Look, I would say that over the past 5 years in Oahu and the condo market in general has been good. I wouldn't say super strong. Over the past 5 years, we built or have under construction 8 towers, the entire rest of Oahu has done 2 where 80% of the island's luxury condominium supply. And I think we've been spoiled by Bonnie Wedemeyer and her team's incredible success of delivering 60% or 70% presold in 60 days. In a more normal market environment where we are today with higher interest rates, getting 15% in 30 days is the celebration, and I tip my cap to them. They've done a great job. Obviously, the last 4 towers are a little bit different than this one. They were all in the front row and right on the beach. And this is at the head of the park set back a little bit. So it was our expectation coming out of the gate that this wouldn't have that type of sales velocity that those front row towers did. And there is a little bit more headwinds with higher interest rates. With all that said, while 15% may be behind those other towers, for us, it's still an exceptional result.

Alexander Goldfarb analyst
#18

Okay. And then, Ryan, a question on the securities portfolio. And obviously, we left there in the supplemental. The market has been crazy. We had the midterm, had serious durations this week. As you guys think about your securities holdings and as we think about you're seeking to outperform the market, should we expect your book to change meaningfully quarter-to-quarter? Or in general, when you guys make an investment you're making it -- you look through like the type of gyrations that we've had recently, the sort of anti-AI, anti-data center pushback? Like just trying to understand when we look at your cost versus how it's going to look over time as you guys try to outperform to drive earnings to the bottom line or is .

Ryan Israel executive
#19

Yes, sure, Alex. And thanks for the question. The way that we think about it is there are really only a few hundred businesses in the world that we think are of the quality that we would want to own them for the long term. And so when we buy those businesses, we really are thinking with a multiyear sometimes multi-decade perspective on where those businesses will develop. And so the opportunities to buy them to have these businesses that grow at such a rapid rate and then to buy them at purchase prices where we can make a return that meets our thresholds, which we talked about as being at least 20%. Those aren't things that come up every day. So my expectation would be in our historical results at Pershing Square, have suggested that we have multiyear holding periods 4-plus years kind of on average, even though some stocks we've held for decades at Pershing Square. And I think that's likely going to continue. The one thing that's quite interesting about investments in an insurance company versus if you think about investments in your sort of typical manner outside of insurance is that the insurance business is cash generative. And if cash generative in 2 ways one, every time we have a combined ratio below 90%, we're going to have profits we have profits from the investment income we generate, whether it's off the cash portfolio or the common equities, those are all things that are going to be allocated every quarter, we have more cash coming in to be invested. And we get to decide how much of those investments will go to equities, how much are going to go into cash. And so what's nice about market volatility, particularly inside of an insurance company like Vantage is can be leaning in and taking more advantage when we get more cash in to be buying additional securities and volatile market times. And so I think that, that is something that's going to allow us to hold our positions for a long period of time while also being able to buy at moments when there's a lot of market volatility. I don't know, Bill, if you want to add in.

William Ackman executive
#20

Just adding to what Brian is saying, the big dynamic in markets that's sort of taken place over the last decade is increased sort of passive ownership of stock. So index funds are now an increasing percentage, maybe 25%, 30% of almost every public company. That has the effect as these are effectively permanent holders, at least for now, of Ruby flow from the market. And then much bigger amounts of capital controlled by kind of the shorter-term quantitatively driven investment firms that use a large amount of financial leverage, 8x, 10x, 12x type leverage and the huge moves you're seeing, midterms going up, whatever, and then going big down day yesterday, today, who knows -- if you don't look in the last hour, you have no idea which direction the market is going. We are not trying to make money by figuring out which stock is going to go up tomorrow or which stock is going to go up in the next 3 months. What we're doing is we're finding businesses that we are very happy to own for years that earn very high returns on capital. They grow their earnings and revenues at very nice rates over time and that we purchased at prices that we expect we'll generate our ambitions or 20-plus percent rates of return on that portfolio. And the portfolio that we've constructed and then Ryan walked through here is one that we think will achieve that objective and we don't expect to make material changes to it. Absent a massive move in the stock price upward that would get to a place where we think the go-forward return is sort of less attractive plus or minus, as the businesses progress, we expect the stock to progress and absent our change in our view of the business' long-term potential, we're likely to own it. So think of it as a long-dated portfolio that public comp sounds at a 20%-plus rate and we'll only make changes if we think on an after-tax basis, it makes sense to sell, realize a gain, redeploy the capital in a new investment on an attractive basis.

Alexander Goldfarb analyst
#21

Okay. And then just finally, a question for Marc. Marc, as you've gotten under the hood and looked at the business advantage. Just sort of curious what your take is so far areas that you like areas that you think could use some improvement and maybe areas that you think should be exited. Just curious what your initial impressions are and how the business may evolve, especially between the insurance and the reinsurance.

Marc Grandisson executive
#22

I think has I think at a high level, the company is extremely well positioned. The platform was purchased on that basis, and the thesis holds. You have to be present as has many different lines of businesses and including regions and insurance to be able to deploy your cycle management strategy through the cycle, and that's exactly what Vantage is all about. I would just only say that, that platform can actually grow and hire more people and get more products to the overall suite of what we provide to the marketplace to even be better. What I like about what I hear from the team is that all extremely caring individuals, very, very seasoned underwriting team knows what to do, what could get anybody in trouble and really focusing on True North, which is to provide and create something very unique with excellence in underwriting a tender of everything. So I'm really, really impressed by team. And one of the things that we've done over the last couple of months is to really transition from being the own company to know where it is now with having strong support from parent company to really build for the long-term top-notch underwriting company. And the whole team is raring to go and very happy about this. So I'm very pleased with everything I'm seeing and hearing from the team and the clients. The clients are really appreciative of what we provide to the marketplace.

Operator operator
#23

Our next question comes from the line of Elyse Greenspan of Wells Fargo.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#24

My questions are going to be directed towards Mark on the insurance side. Marc, I was just hoping going back to some of your comments, right? You were alluding to softness on the property side, right, both primary and reinsurance is really what we've heard across the board. I guess, how are you thinking about pricing trending there into '27? And do you think -- what could cause the bottoming of the property rates? Do you think it's just a matter of waiting until we see some really large cat events for the industry? Or can you envision a scenario where kind of things hit a floor absent any significant losses?

Marc Grandisson executive
#25

Thank you, Elyse. I think the answer starts with where will the capital want to be, right? And we also have opportunities in the marketplace that may change the whole thing. But frankly, people are sitting on good results for the last 2, 3 years. We haven't had a major cat for a while, and people are sort of getting ever more comfortable with it. So I would echo what the other chief executives have said on the call is that properties is lining up to be fairly competitive. Where is the bottom? I don't know. That's the one thing that is always extremely difficult to pin down. And of course, as you know, if there was a major event, a major loss, it would definitely change what the market will think about. Our positioning right now is we were not, and we're still not a big property cap specifically for that. It's focusing on that line of business. And it is not our interest or focus right now going forward because of the softening and where it is relative to where it should be, to provide decent return or acceptable returns for our shareholders. So our focus is probably more to be on the sideline right now, frankly and we don't see what happens. On the other property, the non-cat property, I mean, you saw our announcement on the facultative side, I think there's always specialties in areas where we can play in property that are largely noncat exposed, where you can still make money. And this is where we're going to be focusing our efforts going forward, so to have less volatility. And -- but still wait we still have the knowledge and the expertise and market knowledge to engage in the market if and when that happens on the property cat. So how long is a piece of string, at least, I don't know.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#26

And then my second question, right, you guys have talked -- have spoken right to wanting to grow Vantage. How does inorganic growth come into play supplement potentially what you guys are doing on the organic side?

Unknown Executive executive
#27

I think we have a lot going on right now from an organic perspective and hiring teams and different individuals with different expertise. So this is really a primary focus as we speak. I mean, of course, if things come from the outside teams or smaller outfits or different -- maybe some companies even, we're always open for business. This is how we think about the world. But whatever comes to us will have to be have to be special, right? We'll have to bring something that's specialized that's different, distinct and also help diversify further what we have in terms of our insurance liability and insurance assets. So I think we're always open to hear and so I'm talking to the broad world right now. If there are people that want to find a new home for -- with an economically rational executive team, we're always open for business. But first and foremost right now is focusing on what we have in maximizing and optimizing what we do with the current team that we have.

Operator operator
#28

Our next question comes from the line of Eric Borden of BMO Capital Markets.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#29

Marc, the construction business contributed to the insurance growth -- premium growth this quarter. I was just curious, so within that business, where are pricing in terms keeping pace? And then just any thoughts on writing premiums for data centers. Specifically, how do you think about that asset class just given the fluid environment there?

Marc Grandisson executive
#30

So our construction play is really a professional liability led, which is a little bit unusual. So we do some definite general liability attached to it. It's not a property play at all. And the pricing is great, it's fine, actually. And it's really, there's a close relationship. It's a relationship business, by and large. You really get close to the the builders and the developers and you really get to know them very intimately. So it's a little bit stickier and not as open up to the market vagaries that we see out there.

Unknown Analyst analyst
#31

Okay. And then on the real estate side, as you look to unlock some capital there as proceeds arrive, what is the packing or the current thinking on between redeeming the preferred adding capital advantage and then funding Howard Hughes developments in the condo section?

Unknown Executive executive
#32

Yes. I think the answer there is I think we're going to look at that pretty carefully each time we have capital inflows into the business. Ultimately, because Purging owns the preferred, it will be the Board's decision as to whether they want to redeem preferred or just reinvest more capital in the business. I think on the margin, I think the company would like to redeem the preferred so that it owns more of this valuable business that Marc is really building. And we're very happy in that circumstance to have our preferred redeemed. We want the company to do whatever in the best interest of company. We own 47% of the company. So our interests are very much aligned with that outcome. But yes, I think the goal is to generate enough capital that we both redeem the preferred and have excess capital for the insurance operation.

Operator operator
#33

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Eli as individual investor.

Unknown Attendee attendee
#34

Good to be here. Marc, as you mentioned before, Vantage has a minus from A.M. Best with a positive outlook. And previously, S&P downgrade advantage and then withdrawal trading at the company's request. What would it take to get upgraded by A.M. Best and then re-rated by S&P? And then Bill and Ryan, given person's investment in S&P Global, do you see any potential or perceived conflict if Vantage seeks AB rating?

Marc Grandisson executive
#35

So I'll start with the rating agency question, and we were positive outlook, A- as you noted. There's a plan to -- for an upgrade. We're working towards that. We have every confidence that it should happen over the next several quarters. We've looked at upon favorably. This is where we have positive outlook. On the S&P, listen, it's also a very different structure that they're probably used to. There's a lot of discussions, a lot of trying to understand how everything fits together. So we're just talking with them. I'm -- I've been there before. It takes a while to get people to understand exactly what we're trying to do and what we're trying to do here is a little bit unusual. But over time, I'm confident that we'll get to what we need to get to with the rating agencies. I'll turn it over to Bill.

William Ackman executive
#36

Yes. So basically, S&P downgraded Vantage because of almost a formulaic approach that they take because Howard Hughes' ratings, the S&P rating power to use at the time of the transaction was BB. And so when a BB company buys an A- company, they have a formula and on that basis, they downgraded. Now our view is that our involvement or Howard Hughes' involvement here is actually meaningfully credit positive for Vantage. And we don't approach -- we think, substantively not formulaically here. And our job is to work with the rating agencies, so they really understand the real credit story here. I think the steps that we're taking to bring in third-party capital -- bring in third-party capital, take capital out of the Howard Hughes business deployed into the Vantage operation, then it's really going to look like a Vantage insurance company that has a real estate subsidiary as opposed to a real estate company that has a Vantage subsidiary. I think as we get make progress toward that goal. I think that's going to be materially helpful in terms of improving both actual and perceived worthiness of this insurer, obviously putting more capital in, reducing our exposure to what is perceived to be a more volatile business in real estate, even though we think our real estate business is one of the lower volatility such businesses is going to be helpful to the business. I don't think there's any -- the fact that we own stock in S&P Global, they're not going to give us a better rating or worse rating, I think, on the basis of that, completely separate parts of the business. And obviously, if someone could just buy stock in S&P and get a higher rating, that would actually bad for their stock investment because the company would lose credibility in the ratings business, which is it's majority of their profits. So with that, let's take the next question.

Operator operator
#37

[Operator Instructions] As there appear to be no further questions in queue, I would now like to turn the call back over to Bill Ackman for closing remarks. Sir?

William Ackman executive
#38

I just want to make one point, which I think our stock price seems to be very much driven by the term movements in rates. I just want to make a few points there. So number one, One of the first things we did when we acquired Vantage was we sold its fixed income portfolio, it was not exposed to interest rates, we own short-term treasuries. If anything, if short-term rates were to go up, actually, it would increase the profitability of our all things else staying the same, increase the profitability of our insurance company. Howard Hughes financed itself largely with fixed rate debt, although we have some floating rate debt in the condominium construction related obligations. But even Howard Hughes -- what we've experienced is, over the long term, the pace of lot sales has been excellent, and it's driven by home sales, and we've seen pretty steady home sales. However, during periods of volatility, when rates spike up, you do see a short-term pause in home sales because people lining up to sign a contract, they're pricing a home on the basis of a monthly payment. And if rates spike up and they can't get the mortgage they want, they'll pause until rates stabilize. And we've seen a pretty consistent -- if you look over time, we've generated continued large amounts of home sales in our properties and continued demand from the homebuilders to buy our land at increasing prices per acre, and that's been the case for more than a decade. So I think I don't think of our business as particularly interest rate sensitive the stock. I noticed it's down something by 4.5% today on a move in rates. And I don't think our business value has really meaningfully changed. And as we have, again, less exposure to -- we have less equity invested in the real estate company, more fee income there, more in the insurance operation, I think people -- I think we still trade with the homebuilder kind of universe. And I think one of the other benefits of this strategy is, I think the market will look at us more in terms of the value of our insurance operations and our long-term investment results. So that was my sort of last comment. Grateful for your time, and thank you, and look forward to talking after the year results reported. Thanks so much.

Operator operator
#39

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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