American Water Works Company, Inc.

Good morning, and welcome to American Water's second quarter 2020 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 August 13th, 2020. U.S. callers may access the audio archive toll-free by dialing 1-877-7000. 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 877-344-7529 I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Ed Vallejo, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Vallejo, you may begin.

Thank you, Gary, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. At the end of our prepared remarks, we will, of course, open the call for any of your questions. During 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 factors, as well as a more detailed analysis of our financials and other important information, is provided in the earnings release and in our June 30, 2020, Form 10-Q, each as filed with the SEC. Reconciliations for non-GAAP financial information related to adjusted return on equity and our adjusted regulated O&M efficiency ratio 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. I should note that consistent with our efforts to ensure the safety and health of our team, we're again conducting this call while practicing social distancing and from remote locations. As an example, Walter and Susan remain in separate locations. If for any reason technical issues do arise, Walter will take over and lead us through the full presentation. And with that, I will turn the call over to American Water's president and CEO, Walter Lynch.

Thanks, Ed. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. We have a lot to cover today, and we thought it might be helpful to first address the impacts of COVID-19 on our operations and our estimates of the financial impact so far. As we've done since the onset of this health emergency, American Water continues to provide essential water and wastewater services to our customers, and we know the critical role we play in helping our customers and communities through this pandemic. As we relate on our first quarter call, we remain focused in three areas. The first is the care and safety of our employees and their families. The second is the safety of our customers and the communities we serve. And the third is the execution of our preparedness plans so we can continue to provide essential services and help our communities get through the pandemic. With recent surges of COVID-19 cases in many parts of our country, the measures we took early on remain in place while adding additional measures. These include employee health screenings prior to coming to work, social distancing, suspension of all non-emergency in-home appointments, limiting the amount and nature of contact with customers during field appointments, and a required work-from-home policy for nonessential employees where possible. Because the number of cases varies across our footprint, we're taking into account CDC and local and state guidance as we work on plans to return to a more normal state of operation when possible with safety as the primary driver. As you know, we were among the first utilities to suspend shutoffs and late fees prior to any orders being issued by states. We continue to work with customers who are experiencing financial hardships by offering customer assistance programs and access to low-income programs. Susan will cover this in greater detail, but we're working constructively with public service commissions as they look to address utility response measures, customer protections, and cost recovery for regulated utilities in their jurisdictions. Additionally, our liquidity and access to capital remains strong, and we continue our disciplined approach to execute on our core strategies, such as making needed capital investments. Finally, American Water and the American Water Charitable Foundation continue to help the communities we serve, giving more than $400,000 in charitable contributions over the past three months to help mitigate impacts of COVID-19 in the communities we serve. Before I ask Susan to discuss the financial impacts of COVID-19 so far, I want to thank our employees, not only for their tremendous effort throughout the pandemic, but also for what they've done all year to stay safe, and provide essential service to the communities we serve. Now let me turn the call over to Susan.