David Willetts: Very good. Thanks Bruce.
Operator: And it comes from the line of Andrew Berg with Post Advisory Group. Please proceed.
Andrew Berg: Thanks. And IF I can follow up a little bit on Dan’s questions to start, excuse me, with respect to the hedges, and I guess we’ll see it in the queue later, is there any reason to believe you guys would have materially changed the short view with respect to the commercial real estate or safe to assume you guys still maintain that negative position, negative view.
David Willetts: You’re referring to the CMBX position?
Andrew Berg: Correct.
David Willetts: Yes. We obviously still have a CMBX position. If you know anything about CMBX, it is a very intricate series of securities, and they don’t move in a traditional fashion. So what I would say is, yes, we’re still in it. Obviously, there’s good news and there’s bad news. It’s very specific to the particular tranche of CMBX we’re in and several anchor malls within each one. Every day is bringing grim news for some malls across the country, whereas others are able to refinance and continue on with a very happy position. So it’s a very active position that we monitor and manage, but it’s all contingent upon the health of the underlying malls and their ability to refinance.
Andrew Berg: Okay. With respect to the dividend, given that you get dividends coming up out of CVI, you get dividends coming up out of some of the other subsidiaries, it would strike me that the actual cash amount of dividends that you guys would pay on an annual basis is probably somewhere less than $100 million now. Safe to assume Carl has not changed his view on taking his dividends in stock versus cash? And if that’s correct, then the right way to think about it is maybe net $100 million or so of cash dividends going out the door versus your liquidity, which I think you said was $1.5 million of cash at the holding company, almost $1.6 million at the end of the quarter. Is that the right way…
David Willetts: Roughly $1.5 billion. I guess two answers to that question. I think the first answer is until all the shareholders elect we really never know who is taking what in cash and who’s taking what and securities. So the history would suggest some of the numbers that you’ve quoted. When we take a look at going forward, I think from this quarter, Carl has indicated, although he hasn’t made a final determination that he is likely to take some mix of cash and securities. But his final election hasn’t been determined, right? And obviously, beyond this quarter, there’s no communication as to what his indications are, right? And historically, from time to time, Carl has taken distributions. So this is also in line, I think, with past practice.
Andrew Berg: Okay. And then from an operational basis segments with respect to automotive, on the services side, revenues were basically flat. Are you able to address what the EBITDA was coming out of the services business and how that may have moved in the quarter?
David Willetts: Ted, do we just — we don’t disclose that specifically.
Ted Papapostolou: We don’t disclose that, yes. But currently, the automotive segment is pretty much — because Auto Plus was deconsolidated during Q1. So Q2 is probably the first time where you can see i.e., the majority of it is the service business in Q2.
Andrew Berg: And the…
David Willetts: Let me specifically address your question, right? Here’s how I think about the services business, right? The services business has gone through a few changes, and this will be a little wordy, but the context is important. When I take a look at 2020, 2021 and early ’22, there was a reduction in terms of the store count as loss performing stores were shut down and jettison and the footprint was reconfigured, right? So revenue coming down is not necessarily alarming in and of itself, but what we have seen is the revenue, although very slightly down this quarter for services, it’s really pricing has — pricing and margin management has been significantly up. It’s been a large driver of the year-to-date performance.
