The Southern Company

Good afternoon. My name is Sherry, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everybody to the Southern Company's second quarter 2024 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Scott Gamow, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sherry. Good afternoon and welcome to Southern Company's second quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me today are Chris Womack, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Southern Company and Dan Tucker, Chief Financial Officer. Let me remind you, we'll be making forward linking statements today in addition to providing historical information. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in our forward-looking statements, including those discussed in our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and subsequent filings. In addition, we'll present non-GAAP financial information on this call. Reconciliations to the applicable GAAP measure are included in the financial information we released this morning, as well as the slides for this conference call, which are both available on our investor relations website at investor.southerncompany.com. Now I'll turn the call over to Chris.

Thank you, Scott, and good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. As you can see from the materials we released this morning, we reported strong adjusted earnings results for the second quarter, meaningfully ahead of the estimate provided last quarter. We believe we are well positioned to achieve our financial objectives for 2024. All our businesses, electric and gas, are performing well, and we continue to see both economic resilience and economic growth, especially within our Southeast service territories. During the most recent heat wave across the Southeast, our dedicated employees, supported by our coordinated planning, ensured our electric system delivered outstanding reliability and resiliency for the customers and communities that we are privileged to serve. Last quarter represented the warmest second quarter in the last 38 years with a peak electric load of over 38,000 megawatts, the third highest June peak electric load on record for the Southern Company system. We take tremendous pride in our ability to reliably serve our customers through all operating conditions. Our performance continues to highlight the value of the integrated regulated framework in which we operate. Coordinating planning for generation and transmission, as well as our robust portfolio of natural gas transportation capacity and storage, have positioned us to effectively manage peak demand needs. This same framework, including our orderly internal and external regulatory processes for long-term demand planning and resource decisions, is what also positions us so well to reliably serve the significant electric load growth projected over the next decade, an opportunity we're excited about. Dan, I'll now turn the call over to you for a financial update.