Atmos Energy Corporation

your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dan Mazur, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Dan, you may begin.

Great. Thank you, Krista. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fiscal 2024 third quarter earnings call. With me today are Kevin Akers, President and Chief Executive Officer of and Chris Forsythe, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings release and conference call slide presentation, which we will reference in our prepared remarks, are available at atmosenergy.com under the Investor Relations tab. As we review these financial results and discuss future expectations, please keep in mind that some of our discussion might contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act. Our forward-looking statements and projections could differ materially from actual results. The factors that could cause such material differences are outlined on slide 32 and are more fully described in our SEC filings. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Forsyth, our Senior Vice President and CFO.

Chris? Thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us and your interest in Atmos Energy. Yesterday, we announced fiscal year-to-date diluted earnings per share of $6.00 compared to $5.33 per dividend share in the prior year period. Our third quarter and fiscal year-to-date results continue to be driven by two themes, regulatory outcomes reflecting increased safety and reliability spending, and customer growth. Additionally, strong through-system revenues of APT, particularly during the third fiscal quarter, contributed to our performance. Regulatory outcomes in both of our segments increased operating income by $238 million. And residential customer growth and rising industrial load in our distribution segment increased operating income by an additional $18 million. Revenues in our pipeline storage segment increased $19 million, period over period. $11 million of this amount, the Denver Ride Direct Mechanism, was realized during our third fiscal quarter. Several of the pipelines coming out of the Permian experience planned and unplanned maintenance. This reduction in takeaway capacity, coupled with robust associated natural gas production, Widest spreads between the Waha header on the western end of APT system and deliver points in the eastern and southern end zone system. We expect spreads to remain elevated through the end of our fiscal year. Excluding the $14 million one-time VAT debt adjustment we reported in Mississippi in the first quarter, consolidated O&M increased at net $16 million, or about 3%. This increase is primarily due to higher employment-related costs, insurance premiums, IT software and maintenance costs, partially offset by a $15 million decrease in O&M in our pipeline and storage segment, primarily due to the timing of in-line inspection work. As expected, O&M in the third fiscal quarter trended higher than the prior year quarter, and we anticipate O&M spending in the fourth fiscal quarter to trend higher as well, as we continue to focus our spending on compliance, maintenance, and system monitoring. We still expect fiscal 24 O&M to be in the range of $800 million to $820 million. Consolidated capital spending increased to $2.1 billion, with 80% plus dedicated to improving the safety and reliability of our system. Spending on our distribution segment has increased due to higher safety and reliability spending and higher spending to support customer growth. Spending on our pipeline and storage segment is lower than the prior year due to timing. We remain on track to spend approximately $3.1 billion this fiscal year. Since the end of our second fiscal quarter, We implemented about $213 million in annualized regulatory outcomes, including all of this year's Texas GRIP filings and our annual filings for the City of Dallas, Louisiana, and Tennessee. Year-to-date, we have completed $380 million in annualized regulatory outcomes. Currently, we have an additional $182 million in annualized outcomes in progress. Additionally, we made our first filing under APT's new System Safety an integrity mechanism seeking a $19 million increase in revenues. This new mechanism was approved in APT's last general rate case as a floating mechanism for costs incurred to address new federal and state safety-related regulations, meaning we will recognize the revenue and related O&M costs after review and approval by the Texas Federal Commission, resulting in no impact to operating income. Our financial position continues to remain strong. We finished our third fiscal quarter with an equity capitalization of 61% and approximately $4.3 billion in liquidity. This amount includes $551 million in net proceeds available under existing forward sale agreements that will fully satisfy our anticipated fiscal 24 equity needs and most of our anticipated fiscal 25 needs. In June, we completed a $325 million senior unscrewed debt offering, capping our existing 10-year 5.9% senior notes. As a result, our overall weighted average cost of debt as of June 30 stands at 4.1%, and our debt profile remains very manageable with a weighted average maturity of approximately 17 years. As we head into the fourth quarter of the fiscal year, we now believe our Fiscal 24 Earnings for Share guidance will be at the higher end of our reaffirmed Earnings for Share guidance range of $6.70 to $6.80. Our anticipated financing plan for Fiscal 24 is complete. All regulatory outcomes that can impact fiscal 24 have been implemented. As I mentioned ago, we anticipate spreads for APTs through system business will remain elevated, which will modestly contribute to our Q4 results, and we have a reasonably clear line of sight in the system compliance, maintenance, and monitoring we will be performing in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, our guidance range includes two items totaling 17 cents that we will exclude when we initiate our fiscal 25 guidance in November. The first item is the Texas property tax benefit that we've been discussing all fiscal year, which would favorably impact fiscal 24 results by $0.10. Additionally, the one-time Mississippi bad debt adjustment represented $0.07. We continue to anticipate 6% to 8% earnings for sure growth from the suggested EPS amount through fiscal 28. Thank you for your time today, and I will turn the call over to Kevin for his update and some closing remarks. Kevin?