Global Water Resources, Inc.

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Global Water Resources, Inc. 2022 third quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. If anyone has difficulties hearing the conference, please press star zero for operator assistance at any time. I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded on November 10, 2022, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joanne Ellsworth, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs. Please go ahead.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Yesterday, we issued our 2022 third quarter financial results by press release. a copy of which is available on our website at www.gwresources.com. Speaking today is Ron Fleming, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Liebman, Chief Financial Officer, and Chris Krieger, Chief Strategy Officer. Mr. Fleming will summarize the key operational events of the quarter, Mr. Liebman will review the financial results for the third quarter, and Mr. Krieger will review strategic initiatives and business development. Mr. Fleming, Mr. Liebman, and Mr. Krieger will be available for questions at the end of the call. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that certain information presented today may include forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions regarding future events. These forward-looking statements involve a number of assumptions, risks, uncertainties, estimates, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Accordingly, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements which reflect management's views as of the date hereof and are not guarantees of future performance. For additional information regarding factors that may affect future results, please read the sections Risk Factors and Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations included within our latest Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. Those filings are available at www.sec.gov. Certain non-GAAP measures may be included within today's call. For a reconciliation of these measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures, please see the tables included in yesterday's earnings release, which is, again, available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Ron.

Thank you, Joanne. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are very pleased to report the results for the third quarter of 2022, as there are many highlights worth mentioning. At Global Water, we continue to advance our mission of growing and aggregating water and wastewater utilities so that our customers can realize the benefits of consolidation, regionalization, and environmental stewardship in the face of water scarcity, challenging regulations, and aging infrastructure. So in the quarter, our company completed a public offering of common stock, totaling net proceeds of $14.9 million and an increase to our unused revolving line of credit from $10 million to $15 million, ensuring we have the capital necessary to fund acquisitions, infrastructure investments, and for general corporate purposes. We also announced the completion of our company-wide rate case, which includes new rates for 96% of our customers, including numerous notable policy decisions. On October 3rd, we filed an application at the ACC for approval to acquire Farmers Water Company and its roughly 3,300 customers in the town of Sabarita. Chris will discuss the farmer's acquisition and the rate case further. Subsequent to quarter close, we completed the upgrade of La Quinta Serena's customer connections from manually read meters to smart meters. The smart meters support greater operational efficiency as well as real-time automated notifications. As a reminder, Las Quintas Serenas is a utility we acquired in 2021, also in the town of Sahuarita. We intend to do the same meter upgrade project in Farmer's Water Company once that acquisition closes. I now want to highlight customer growth. Total active connections grew 8% as compared to the end of Q3 2021, bringing total connections to 56,134. Despite the national slowdown, development and housing activity continues in Metro Phoenix and our service areas. Thus far, Metro Phoenix has only experienced a 14% reduction in single-family home permits in 2022 over the same period in 2021. In Maricopa, our largest utilities, we're also seeing a slowdown, but the city has still issued over 1,000 single-family housing permits year-to-date. However, large-scale commercial and industrial growth continues to accelerate at a pace never seen before in Metro Phoenix, and this continues to push out to our areas, either in our planned service territories or in communities immediately adjacent. Because of this, we continue to make excellent progress on the engineering, permitting, and construction of new service areas, including for the Nikola Motor Corp. manufacturing facility and the surrounding inland port, Arizona, amongst other areas within our large service territories. We believe that soon and in the years to come, we will continue to see large-scale commercial and industrial growth in addition to our strong organic housing growth. Putting all these elements together, Global Water is well positioned from an operational safety compliance and financial perspective with notable growth in the years to come. I'd now like to turn the call over to Mike for financial highlights.