American Water Works Company, Inc.

Mr. Musgrave, you may begin.

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. At the end of our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Let me first go over some safe harbor language. Today, we will be making forward-looking statements that represent our expectations regarding our future performance or other future events. These statements are predictions based on 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 first quarter earnings release and in our March 31st Form 10-Q, each filed yesterday with the SEC. And finally, all statements during this presentation related to earnings and earnings per share refer to diluted earnings and diluted earnings per share. Susan Hardwick, our President and CEO, will share highlights of results, 2023 EPS guidance and longer-term targets, and the proposed PFAS rule recently announced by the US EPA. John Griffith, our Executive Vice President and CFO, will cover our first quarter financial results in more detail, discuss our successful equity issuance, and we'll close with an update on sizable acquisitions announced so far this year. Cheryl Norton, our Executive Vice President and COO, will then discuss our capital investment plan and active general rate cases and conclude with a few regulatory updates, including details of the EPA's proposed PFAS rule. We'll then close by answering your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to American Water's President and CEO, Susan Hardwick.

Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. As we announced yesterday, we're off to a good start in 2023 with strong financial results. As shown on slide five, earnings were 91 cents per share for the quarter compared to 87 cents per share last year. The increased results were as expected and put us on track to achieve our full year earnings guidance, which we're pleased to affirm. Here you can also see a recap of some of our other key accomplishments so far in 2023. And John and Cheryl will add to these in their remarks. As we announced in March, we completed a very successful upsized equity issuance of $1.7 billion of American water common stock. This delivered on the highest priority in our 2023 financing plan. We also invested well over $500 million of capital in infrastructure in the quarter. In addition, we secured two large acquisitions so far this year, which puts us at over $550 million of acquisitions under agreement. We did all of this while keeping customer bills affordable and staying true to our high value of quality service. The other significant news in the first quarter for us and the water industry as a whole came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency when they released proposed national standards for PFAS. We support the EPA's efforts to protect drinking water quality. These contaminants are among the multiple challenges the water industry faces regarding water quality, quantity and reliability. We remain steadfast in our commitment to be a leader in the U.S. water and wastewater industry and a provider of solutions to these challenges. Providing safe, clean, reliable and affordable water and wastewater service to customers has been American Water's mission for over 130 years. We will continue to work cooperatively with the EPA and with Congress, regulators, and policymakers in support of water quality standards that protect customers and communities, balanced with affordability. Cheryl will elaborate further on the PFAS proposal and our response to it, but I want to assure our customers, regulators, investors, and other stakeholders that American Water has the expertise and the will to tackle this issue head on. and to advocate for reasonable policies and outcomes related to this very important topic. Turning to slide six, as I mentioned, we are affirming our 2023 EPS guidance range of $4.72 to $4.82 per share, as well as our long-term targets. We believe our strong regulatory and operational execution is a positive differentiator from our peers. As we've done in the past, we expect to consistently deliver on our annual and long-term plans, growing earnings and dividends at a top-tier pace over the next five years and beyond. Moving on to slide seven, as we announced yesterday, our board of directors increased the company's quarterly cash dividend from 65.5 cents per share to 70.75 cents per share, an 8% increase. We have grown our dividend at a compounded annual growth rate of 9.7% over the last five years, significantly outpacing most of our utility peers. Looking ahead, we continue to expect to grow our dividend at 7 to 9% per year on average, which is in line with our compelling 7 to 9% EPS growth target. Our board and management team understand and appreciate how important the dividend component of our total shareholder return is to many of our investors. With that, let me turn it over to John to cover some first quarter highlights and financial results in more detail. John?