American Water Works Company, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to American Water's third quarter 2026 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. The audio webcast archive will be available for one year on American Water's investor relations website. I would now like to introduce your host for today's call, Aaron Musgrave, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Musgrave, you may begin.

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'll 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're 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 third quarter earnings release and Form 10-Q, each filed yesterday with the SEC. This call will include a discussion of non-GAAP financial information. A reconciliation of our historical adjusted earnings per share to GAAP earnings per share and other disclosures related to our non-GAAP financial information can be found in the appendix of the slides for this call, which are available on our investor relations website. and finally, all statements during this presentation related to earnings and earnings per share refer to diluted adjusted earnings and earnings per share. With that, I'll turn the call over to American Water's President and CEO, John Griffith.

Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide five, I wanted to start today by saying again how excited we are about our proposed merger with Essential Utilities, which we announced one year ago this week. We are combining two top notch teams who share similar values and a deep commitment to our customers, shareholders and communities. I also continue to believe this combination creates a value proposition that is uniquely compelling in the utility sector. We expect to capitalize on the strategic rationale and financial benefits of the merger to drive growth and value creation, which ultimately will benefit all of our stakeholders. We greatly appreciate the support we've received over the last 12 months as we have moved through the approval process. On that front, I'm pleased to share that we have continued to achieve great progress in the third quarter related to the merger. You may recall, as part of the update we provided with Q2 earnings, we achieved our first three state approvals during the first half of the year in Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia. Since midyear, We've also now reached constructive settlements in three states, Pennsylvania, Texas, and North Carolina. These are key milestones as they demonstrate a collaborative process in each state where many stakeholders have come together and supported the value our merger will bring to the communities we serve. It's also worth noting that settlement discussions are ongoing in New Jersey, and we expect an order in Illinois soon following the ALJ's favorable recommendation in September. Finally, the federal Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period expired in mid-August, satisfying that closing condition of the merger. Given these positive developments, we continue to expect the merger to close by the end of the first quarter of 2027. So, with that update, and as we turn to slide six, the rest of our remarks today will pertain to our standalone results, plan, and outlook. Today's financial plan update that we'll share is in largely the same format as usual for us, with minor differences around the edges. While we realize the shelf life of this standalone content likely won't be long, we want to share this update to illustrate that our standalone business plan remains strong and, as I said earlier, represents a uniquely compelling investment thesis in the industry. Moving to slide six, I'll start by covering some highlights of the third quarter and first nine months of the year. As we announced yesterday, we delivered solid financial results in the third quarter that were in line with our expectations, adding to an already successful 2026. Adjusted earnings were $2 per share for the third quarter, compared to $1.89 per share for the same period last year. In the first nine months of 2026, adjusted earnings were $4.63 per share, compared to $4.40 per share in the same period of 2025. Our results reflect the strong execution of our plan in 2026, which David and Cheryl will discuss further in their remarks. With these results combined with our outlook for the rest of the year, we now expect to achieve the top half of our initial EPS guidance range for 2026, which we've narrowed to $6.07 to $6.12 per share. Moving on to some of our other key accomplishments so far in 2026, We've continued our track record of regulatory execution this year with new rates reflecting investments in infrastructure for the benefit of customers. We've also invested $2.8 billion in capital projects and acquisitions year-to-date, again reflecting great work by our teams to complete work that will enable us to better serve our customers and to grow the business. As we've said, growing to scale in our states benefits our operating efficiency and long-term customer affordability. And as Cheryl will review, we continue to build momentum with our business development platform with nearly 81,000 customer connections added through September across 10 states. Overall, we're well on our way to executing our capital plan for 2026 and have already achieved our target of 2% customer growth. These efforts align squarely with our mission to provide safe, clean, reliable, and affordable service to our customers. Slide 7 highlights that we are initiating our standalone adjusted earnings guidance for 2027 of $6.53 to $6.63 per share, reflecting 8% standalone EPS growth over 2026. David will cover guidance in further detail. Turning to slide 8, and as we update our existing five-year plan today, we are again affirming our long-term targets, including 7% to 9% EPS and dividend per share growth. I want to emphasize that we expect to achieve consistent EPS growth through 2031 and beyond. As a regulated water and wastewater utility, rate-based growth, regulatory and capital execution, expense management, and operational excellence are the key drivers of growth for our company. We also continue to value very highly our military services group. The work that our MSG team performs to serve the military on our 19 installations is highly rewarding and continues to bring organic revenue growth opportunities. We and our MSG leadership team are looking forward to submitting a bid in the coming months to serve another U.S. Army base that is expected to seek utility privatization proposals. The capital investment needs in our systems and for the broader water and wastewater industry are vast. Our commitment to solving problems for our current and future customers is unwavering. including addressing PFAS, lead and copper, and aging infrastructure, among other challenges. These catalysts are embedded in the foundation of our growth strategy and strongly position us to achieve consistent earnings growth for many years to come. With that, I'll hand it over to David to cover our financial and regulatory update in further detail. David.