Mushroom Chip Card Display 0

Good day all,

I am trying to get a mushroom chip card to display the value 0 in the chip where I am showing the number of lights on in the house.

The number of lights on is computed in a template sensor in my configuration.yaml as follows:

template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "Number of Lights On"
        unique_id: "XYZ-103"
        state: |
          {{ states.light
                      | rejectattr('attributes.entity_id', 'defined')
                      | selectattr('state', 'eq', 'on')
                      | list | count }}

The chip card is configured as follows on my dashboard:

- type: template
                entity: sensor.number_of_lights_on
                icon: |-
                  {% if states(entity)|int > 0 %}
                  mdi:lightbulb-on
                  {% else %}
                  mdi:lightbulb-outline
                  {% endif %}
                icon_color: |-
                  {% if states(entity)|int > 0 %}
                  yellow
                  {% else %}
                  gray
                  {% endif %}
                content: |-
                  {% if states(entity)|int > 0 %}
                  {{ states(entity) }}
                  {% else %}
                  0
                  {% endif %}
            alignment: center

I am at a loss as to what to do here. Just using {{ states(enitity) }} does not show the zero. The if statement above will only show zero in the chip card if I put quotes around it and then it shows the quotes.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.