American Water Works Company, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to American Water's first quarter 2019 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and is also being webcast with an accompanying slide presentation through the company's investor relations website. Following the earnings conference call, an audio archive of the call will be available through May 9, 2019. U.S. callers may access the audio archive toll-free by dialing 1- 877-344-7529. International callers may listen by dialing 1-412-317-0088. The access code for replay is 101-305-70. The online webcast will be available at American Waters Investor Relations homepage at http://www.americanwaters.com. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Ed Vallejo, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Vallejo, you may begin.

Thanks, Brendan, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. We'll keep the call to about an hour, and at the end of our prepared remarks, we will be opening the call for your questions. During the course of this conference call, both in our prepared remarks and in answers to your questions, We may make forward-looking statements that represent our expectations regarding our future performance or other future events. Now, these statements are predictions based upon our current expectations, estimates, and assumptions. However, since these statements deal with future events, they are subject to numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from the results indicated or implied by such statements. Additional information regarding these risks, uncertainties, and other factors, as well as a more detailed analysis of our financials and other important information, is provided in the earnings release and in our Form 10-Q, each as filed with the SEC. Reconciliations for all non-GAAP financial information discussed in this conference call can be found in our earnings release and in the appendix of the slide deck for this call. Also, this slide deck has been posted to our investor relations page of our website. All statements in this call related to earnings and earnings per share refer to diluted earnings and earnings per share. And with that, I will now turn the call over to American Water's President and CEO, Susan Story.

Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Before I discuss our first quarter earnings results, I'd like to talk about Linda Sullivan's retirement. While we made the announcement yesterday, she will remain as CFO until July the 1st and will stay with us until August 1st to ensure a smooth transition. This is especially bittersweet for me as Linda and I have been a team since she began her tenure as CFO in early May of 2014 when I moved from the CFO position to CEO. But her family is growing, and in addition to her two beautiful grandsons you met in her presentation at our Investor Day last December, Her son and daughter-in-law in California are expecting her first granddaughter in June. We're happy for Linda, and in a few minutes she will tell you more about her plans. Her accomplishments are too long to list, but I would highlight that from 2014 through 2018, our EPS has grown at an 8% CAGR, our annual dividends have increased at a 10.1% CAGR, and our stock price has risen from $46.22 on May 1, 2014, to $107.10 at yesterday's closing. I'm reminded of an executive team meeting in 2014 when we asked each person for his or her top aspirational goals for American Water. Literally, Linda said, quote, for our stock to go over $100 per share. Linda, we did it. Linda also oversaw the raising of $4.4 billion of financing capital over the past five years. She rebuilt our tax and risk management functions with industry-leading talent, and she's led significant improvements in our supply chain processes. She also designed and developed a financial strategy and planning organization, and she has recently set up digital finance within her organization, one of the first in the utility industry. She has also been very involved in our corporate-wide growth, customer, and people initiatives. And she helped us recruit her successor, Susan Hardwick, who she has known for several years. Many of you also know Susan, who served more than six years as CFO of Vectrin. She has 35 years of deep finance and regulated utility experience. She most recently led the execution of the $8.5 billion Vectrin sale to CenterPoint Energy. Susan is strongly committed to customers, constructive regulatory relationships, and building better communities. She prioritizes employee development and the building of collaborative and successful teams. She has a strong record of living and leading the values we have at American Water and is a tremendous fit for our company. She will join our company on June 3rd as Executive Vice President of Finance until she takes the CFO reins from Linda on July 1st. She's actually here in the room with us today. Linda, would you like to say a few words?