H2O America

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the SJW Group's second quarter 2020 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jim Lynch. Chief Financial Officer, thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to the second quarter 2020 Financial Results Conference call for SJW Group. I will be presenting today with Eric Thornburg, Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer. For those who would like to follow along, slides accompanying our remarks are available on our website at www.sjwgroup.com. Before we begin today's presentation, I would like to remind you that this presentation and related materials posted on our website may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the company in light of its experience, historical trends, current conditions, and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the company believes are appropriate under the circumstances. Many factors could cause the company's actual results and performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors that could cause actual results to be different from statements in this presentation, we refer you to the financial results press release and to our most recent forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be obtained on our website. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and SJW Group disclaims any duty to update or revise such statements. You will have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. As a reminder, this webcast is being recorded, and an archive of the webcast will be available until October 26, 2020. You can access the press release and the webcast at our corporate website. I will now turn the call over to Eric.

Thank you, Jim. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am Eric Thornburg, and it is my honor to serve as Chairman, President, and CEO of SJW Group. The importance of delivering clean, safe, and reliable drinking water has never been more evident than now, when something as basic as hand washing has become such a critical activity in protecting public health and preventing the further spread of COVID-19. As I was preparing my remarks this week, our New England operations, especially Connecticut, was hit with Tropical Storm Isaias. Despite widespread power outages across our service towns, we continue to provide uninterrupted water service to all of our customers, which remains essential during the pandemic. This is a testament to our highly effective planning and capital investment strategy and our dedicated teams. who served our customers well throughout the event. We also thank the commissioners of the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority and leadership of the Connecticut Department of Public Health for their support and assistance to prioritize power restoration to our essential facilities during the event. Our 700 plus employees nationwide deliver a mission critical service to the customers and communities that we are privileged to serve. That has not changed because of the pandemic. There's no replacement for clean, safe tap water. What has changed is how we do our work. In the early days of the pandemic, we temporarily paused all non-essential field work to assess the risks associated with meter reading, construction, and other field operations. Our mission was simple, protect our people so that they could continue to deliver on our public service mission of delivering life-sustaining water service, protect our customers from the further spread of COVID-19, and protect the company so that we could continue to deliver on our critical public health mission. The vast majority of our office employees continue to work remotely, and we anticipate this to continue through at least the third quarter. Our critical field employees return to work After a thorough review of each task was conducted by our environmental health and safety and operations teams, extra safety precautions and the use of appropriate PPE were implemented. And we continue to follow the guidance of federal and state officials and public health agencies. The leadership team is incredibly proud of our people and the way they've responded to the unique challenges during this pandemic. finding new ways to work effectively and safely while serving our customers and communities. We've seen tremendous innovation as our teams effectively and efficiently work remotely. We have launched an internal initiative to capture those ideas and processes, and we will build on them as we move forward. As an example, our successful work from home program, which launched when we wanted to get our people out of the office because of COVID-19, has enabled us to sign on to the Cut the Commute Pledge spearheaded by Santa Clara County in California. For our California employees whose work can be conducted remotely, we've targeted a goal of working online out of the office for 25% of the work week for about five days a month when normal operations resume. This pledge brings several benefits, including greater work-life balance for our employees, continued delivery of exceptional service to our customers, and enhanced protection for the environment. There have also been some surprising benefits. COVID-19 has given SJW Group and its subsidiaries an opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder, virtually, of course, with a common purpose, protecting our employees and public health during the pandemic. Our teams in California, Texas, Connecticut, and Maine seized that opportunity, and forged a bond to serve customers, communities, and each other now and into the future. This has highlighted the strengths of our new team and shown how the skills in the respective states complement each other for the benefit of the combined organization. It has accelerated our integration work and built a web of teamwork, knowledge, and resource sharing all across our operations. We've also launched our first nationwide customer satisfaction survey that will allow us to benchmark each of our operations and provide a platform to share successes that will further enhance customer satisfaction across our organization. Regulators in all four of our states where we operate have initiated proceedings or adopted mechanisms that allow us to track and record COVID-19 related expenses and lost revenue for consideration at a future date. Through the second quarter, we have seen no measurable impact on total revenues due to the pandemic. Account collections, while slowing, continue to be strong, and we are closely monitoring this now that the federal pandemic unemployment compensation benefit has expired. On the expense side, we're seeing some areas of savings, such as travel, as well as areas of incremental costs. We also remain focused on closely tracking our operating results and working with our peers and local and national industry associations to raise attention to the industry impacts of the pandemic and advocate for further regulatory relief. As we are now part of a larger combined organization, we have the added benefit of weather, economic, and regulatory diversity that comes from operating in four states to help mitigate some of the risks. Our response throughout this event has been and will be guided by this fundamental principle. protect our people, protect public health, and exemplify our core values, integrity, respect, service, compassion, trust, transparency, and teamwork. It has served us well, and we will continue to rely on that approach as we move forward. As such, we reaffirm our earlier guidance of $1.95 to $2.05 per share in 2020. I will now turn the call over to Jim who will review our Q2 financial results. And after Jim's remarks, I will address other regulatory and business matters.