Atmos Energy Corporation

Thank you for standing by. My name is Greg and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to today's Atmos Energy Corporation Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines, excuse me, 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 you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, star one. And if you'd like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Dan Mazir, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Dan.

Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Call. With me today are Kevin Akers, President and Chief Executive Officer, 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 atmasenergy.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 file. With that, I will turn the call over to Kevin Akers, our President and CEO.

Kevin. Thank you, Dan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Yesterday, we reported -to-date Fiscal 25 net income of $1 billion or $6.40 per diluted share. And we updated our Fiscal 25 earnings per share guidance to a range of $7.35 to $7.45. This performance continues to reflect the commitment, dedication, focus, and effort of all Atmos Energy employees to successfully modernize our natural gas distribution, transmission, and storage systems, while safely providing reliable natural gas service to 3.4 million customers in 1,400 communities across eight states. The Texas Workforce Commission reported in July that the seasonally adjusted number of employees reached 14.3 million. Texas again added jobs at a faster rate than a nation over the last 12 months ending June, adding over 198,000 jobs, representing a .4% annual growth rate. We also continue to see the value and vital role that natural gas plays in economic development across our service territories. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2025, we added nearly 58,000 new residential customers with almost 45,000 of those new customers located here in Texas. Commercial customer growth remains solid as well with approximately 575 new customers connecting to the system during the second quarter and over 2,500 new customers connecting to the system fiscal year to date. Industrial demand for natural gas in our service territories also remains strong. During the third quarter, we added three new industrial customers. In fiscal year to date, we've added 22 new industrial customers with an anticipated annual load of approximately 3.4 BCF once they're fully operational. On a volumetric basis, this load is comparable to adding approximately 67,000 residential customers. During the third quarter, APT entered into a contract to transport natural gas to a customer that will generate onsite power to serve a data center in the Abilene area. The data center is expected to be fully operational by end of the calendar year. And at that time, we anticipate APT will provide approximately 30 BCF of gas annually to support this data center. As a reminder, revenues earned from this contract are included in APT's writer-rev mechanism. Therefore, 75% of this revenue will benefit APT's LDC customers. Our consistent performance reflects the vital role we play in every community. That is safely delivering reliable and efficient natural gas to homes, businesses, and industries to fuel our energy needs now and in the future. During the third quarter, our customer support associates and service technicians received a 97% satisfaction rating from our customers, reflecting once again the exceptional customer service they provide each and every day. Our customer advocacy team and customer support agents continue their outreach efforts to energy assistance agencies and customers during the first nine months of the fiscal year. Through those efforts, the team helped over 48,000 customers receive nearly $17.5 million in funding assistance. Additionally, Atmos Energy has been named 2025's most trusted brands by data analytics and advisory firm Esquin. Esquin surveyed residential natural gas customers, electric and combination customers of the 148 largest US utility companies. Atmos Energy placed first among all 40 utilities in the South region and received the highest score by any utility in any region nationwide. Before turning the call over to Chris, I want to briefly comment on recent Texas legislation, House Bill 4384 that became effective on June 20th, 2025. At a high level, this legislation authorizes a gas utility to defer for future recovery as a regulatory asset, post in-service carrying costs, depreciation and ad valorem taxes associated with the unrecovered gas gross plant. For non-eligible A209 capital investments such as new customer growth and system expansion. This legislation also instructs the Railroad Commission to adopt rules to implement section 104.302 of the utilities code as added by this act no later than 270th day after the effective date of this act. Before the passage of this legislation, approximately 45% of our total capital spending qualified for rule 8.209 treatment. Applying the language of this legislation means that approximately 80% of our capital spending is eligible for Texas deferral treatment. We believe most of the new capital covered by this legislation is associated with APT. We are currently in the process of updating our fiscal 26 capital budget in a five-year plan and we will provide a full update to the five-year plan during our fourth quarter earnings call in November. As I turn the call over to Chris, I want to share that our hearts and prayers continue to be with our teammates, families and neighbors in the San Angelo, Kerrville, Ingram, Burnett and other communities that were tragically impacted by the floods. No words can fully comfort you and the community for your loss, but please know that we as your teammates, friends and neighbors stand alongside you in support and are here to lend a helping hand. Chris, over to you. Thank you, Kevin and good morning everyone.