Equitrans Midstream Corporation Common Stock

Good morning. My name is Joseph, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Equitrans Midstream Quarter 1 2022 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press the star and the number one. Thank you. Nate Petlow, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. You may now begin your conference.

Good morning and welcome to the first quarter 2022 earnings call for Equitrans Midstream Corporation. A replay of this call will be available for 14 days beginning this evening. The phone number for the replay is 800-770-2030 and the conference ID is 6625542. Today's call may contain forward-looking statements related to future events and expectations. Please refer to today's news release and risk factors in ETRN's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021 and as updated by Form 10Qs for factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Today's call may contain certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to this morning's news release and our investor presentation for important disclosures regarding such measures, including reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measure. On the call today are Tom Karam, Chairman and CEO, Diana Sharletta, President and Chief Operating Officer, Kirk Oliver, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Justin Mackin, Senior Vice President, Gas Systems Planning and Engineering, Brian Petrandrea, Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer, and Janice Brenner, Vice President and Treasurer. After the prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. With that, I will turn it over to Tom.

Thanks, Nate. Good morning, everyone. Today, we reported first quarter 2022 net income of $105 million, adjusted EBITDA of $277 million, and deferred revenue of $87 million. The base business continues to deliver solid results. Kirk will provide details on the financial results in a few minutes. Today, we also provided new guidance regarding MVP, which includes an in-service target of second half of 2023 and a total project cost of approximately $6.6 billion. After extended review of the recent court decisions and discussions with federal agencies, external counsel, and our partners, we believe the path forward is to pursue new permits from the relevant federal agencies. Along with the agencies, we recognize the scrutiny that these permits will inevitably face. However, we have confidence that the agencies can produce not only technically sound permits, as they have in the past, but also permits that connect the dots between the technical decisions and the respective federal law, effectively mitigating potential perceived ambiguities. We are focused on everything within our control, and at the end of the day, We believe we live in a country of laws and regulations and that projects like MVP that follow every required process and receive every required permit will and have to prevail. On the permitting side, we recently received some positive news as FERC unanimously approved MVP's certificate amendment relating to changing the construction method on certain water body and wetland crossings from open cut to trench holes. Lastly, as I suspect you are all aware, in recent months, Senator Manchin has been leading the charge from Washington to make the case for MVP. He and others have consistently said that MVP's role in our energy security and reliability is critical as we continue to work toward a lower carbon economy. The current geopolitical unrest driven by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has exacerbated the costs of a tight market and will continue to do so for some time. We have remained in frequent contact with Senator Manchin, Senator Capito, and others discussing the possible paths to bring MVP into service. The public statements from Senator Manchin have outlined some of them. We appreciate the public support for the project and will remain engaged on all fronts while we will not speculate further on those statements. And now I'll turn it over to Diana for the operations update And then Kirk will discuss the financial results, and I'll come back later for more questions. Diana?