American Water Works Company, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to American Water's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and is also being webcast within company slide presentation through the company's investor relations website. The audio webcast archive will be available for one year on American Water's investor relations website. I would now like to introduce you, your host for today's call, Aaron Musgrave, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Musgrave, you may begin.

Thank you, Danielle. 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, It's provided in the first quarter earnings release and 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. John Griffith, our president, will share year-to-date highlights, our affirmation of 2025 EPS guidance and long-term targets, and our dividend increase. David Bowler, our executive vice president and CFO, will discuss our first quarter financial results provide rate case and legislative updates, and we'll review our affirmation of growth drivers and financing plans. Cheryl Norton, our Executive Vice President and COO, will then discuss our capital investment program, our acquisition outlook, and we'll conclude with comments on the state of infrastructure in the U.S. After our prepared remarks, we'll then close by answering your questions. Our CEO, Susan Hardwick, is also with us and will be available for Q&A. With that, I'll turn the call over to American Water's President, John Griffith.

Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. As we announced yesterday, we started 2025 with solid financial results. As shown on slide five, earnings were $1.05 per share for the quarter, a nearly 11% increase compared to 95 cents last year. The increased results are on track to achieve our full year earnings guidance, which we are pleased to affirm representing our expectation of 8% EPS growth in 2025 compared to our weather normalized 2024 EPS. First quarter 2025 results included 3 cents per share of additional interest income from the February 2024 amendment of the seller note related to the sale of homeowner services. Here, you can also see a recap of some of our other key accomplishments so far in 2025, and David and Cheryl will add to these in their remarks. We continued our track record of regulatory and capital plan execution in the first quarter with new rates effective in several states and investments in infrastructure progressing well. I'm proud of our team's efforts supporting two key priorities in Missouri this year. We achieved a constructive settlement in the general rate case in Missouri and are awaiting a final order. And through a collaborative effort with many stakeholders, future test year legislation was signed into law in the state. Both outcomes are supportive of important utility infrastructure investments and aligned with our focus on providing safe, clean, reliable, and affordable service to our customers. In addition, we were pleased to see S&P and Moody's again recognize our strong balance sheet and cash flows and our low risk profile as they both affirmed our strong investment grade credit ratings and stable outlook. Turning to slide six, this quarter we are again affirming our long-term targets for both earnings and dividend growth at 7% to 9%, driven by 8% to 9% rate-based growth. This affirmation is based on our clear, top-tier capital growth plan and our strong regulatory and operational execution that I believe is a positive differentiator from our peers. We expect to consistently grow earnings and dividends at an industry-leading pace over the next five years and beyond, leading to a very competitive value proposition for our shareholders. Moving on to slide seven, as we announced yesterday, our board of directors approved an increase in the company's quarterly cash dividend from 76.5 cents per share to 82.75 cents per share, an 8.2% increase. We have grown our dividend consistently over the last decade, significantly outpacing virtually all of our utility peers. Looking ahead, we continue to expect to grow our dividend at 7 to 9% per year 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 our investors. Finally, I would like to note that today is our last earnings call with Susan at the helm. As you recall, we announced in February with the Q4 release that Susan will be retiring upon our annual shareholders meeting on the 14th of this month. Susan, we will miss your presence, your leadership, and your wisdom, and are grateful for everything that you have done for American Water. You've had a long and very distinguished career in the utility sector, and we wish you much happiness and a lot of relaxation in your retirement. With that, I'll hand it over to David to cover our financial results and rate case and legislative updates in further detail. David?