American Water Works Company, Inc.

Good day and welcome to the American Water fourth quarter and year end 2024 conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Aaron Musgrave, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Cindy. 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 fourth quarter earnings release and in our 2024 Form 10-K, 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 CEO, will share a few opening remarks, followed by our President, John Griffith, who will share highlights of 2024 and comment on our affirmation of 2025 EPS guidance and longer-term targets. David Bowler, our Executive Vice President and CFO, will discuss our 2024 financial results, provide rate case updates, discuss our strong financial position heading into 2025, and review our EPS guidance drivers and five-year financing plan. Cheryl Norton, our Executive Vice President and COO, will then discuss our capital investment program, our acquisition outlook, and will conclude with comments on our compelling growth drivers. After our prepared remarks, we'll then close by answering your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to American Water's CEO, Susan Hardwick.

Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Let me start by making a few comments on the leadership news detailed in our earnings release last night. There we announced my retirement as of May 14th, 2025, which is the date of our annual shareholders meeting. At that same time, John will become our CEO. This is the next step in the succession plan we laid out in August of last year. The American Water Board is deeply committed to building a strong succession and development strategy at American Water as evidenced by this thoughtful plan. This transition is just a part of that intentional effort to ensure we have the best leadership foundation for the long term throughout the entire organization. John, working with Cheryl, and the rest of our talented and highly experienced leadership team will continue American Water's strong record of industry leadership and high performance. John has more than 25 years of industry knowledge and expertise and significant experience in leading high performing teams, strategy development, and execution. Most importantly, he has a deep understanding of our company's purpose and a strong commitment to our customers, employees, and shareholders. I am very proud of the leadership team that we have built at American Water, all of whom are committed to the mission of delivering safe, clean, and reliable service to those we have the privilege of serving. The success of this company reflects the cohesive leadership of this entire team. I also want to thank all of the employees of American Water. I have been in the utility business for over 40 years now, and it is an absolute privilege to work with you. I'm thankful and humbled by the opportunity to spend the last six years in the water industry with each of you. Providing water and wastewater services that improve customers' lives and make communities stronger is a true honor. But before I go, I want to reiterate my belief that American Water continues to be the leader in all aspects of the water and wastewater utility industry in the United States. If you compare our plans to our actual results, you will see that we've consistently executed exactly as we said we would, including our results in 2024 that were squarely in line with our plan. This growing record of consistency continues to solidify the earned trust in our company from investors, analysts, and other key stakeholders. And with that, let me turn it over to John to cover 2024 highlights and our affirmed outlook. John.