Equitrans Midstream Corporation Common Stock

Good morning and welcome to Equitrand Midstream Corporation's fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question, you'll need to press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Anthony DeFabio, Treasurer and Director, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to the fourth quarter 2023 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 or 647-362-9199. The conference ID is 662- 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 31, 2022, and as updated by Form 10-Qs for factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Also, the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2023 is expected to be filed with the SEC later today. 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 most comparable GAAP financial measure. On the call today are Diana Sharletta, President and CEO, Kirk Oliver, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Justin Mackin, Executive Vice President, Pipeline Operations and Project Execution, Nate Tetlow, Senior Vice President, Commercial Services, Janice Brenner, Senior Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations, and Brian Petrandrea, Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer. After the prepared remarks, We will open the call to questions. With that, I'll turn it over to Diana.

Thanks, Anthony, and good morning, everyone. As many of you know, effective January 1st, Tom Karam moved into the role of Executive Chairman. Tom has led Equitrans for the past five years, since we started as a standalone company. We want to thank him for his unwavering effort and continued support. Before we jump into the business discussion, I want to address a statement from this morning's news release. Our board has been engaged in a process with third parties that have expressed interest in strategic transactions with us. We are not surprised by this interest, given the expected near-term completion of MVP and our view of the strength of our assets. Our board has engaged outside advisors, and the process is ongoing. As you may expect, we will not be addressing questions on this matter. Moving on to the business update. Our priority remains bringing MVP into service safely. which includes a steadfast focus on the project's environmental protocols and maintaining permitting compliance. This morning, we updated our targeted completion to the second quarter of 2024 at a total estimated project cost ranging from approximately $7.57 billion to approximately $7.63 billion. Following the passing of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, we have made substantial construction progress. As we exited 2023, we continued to track to our prior guidance despite challenging construction conditions, which caused lower productivity than we forecasted. In addition to unforeseen construction issues, throughout much of January, we encountered considerably adverse weather conditions, including precipitation well above 20-year averages. While our construction plans took into account the potential effects of winter weather, these conditions were far worse and lasted much longer than anticipated, which had a significant impact on productivity, which in turn impacted our ability to reduce construction headcount. These factors resulted in our updated timing and total project cost target. More recently, the weather has been favorable and our productivity rates have shown improvement. As of February 15th, roughly 300 miles of pipe had been installed, leaving less than four miles remaining. Of the 428 water crossings that remained when construction resumed in 2023, we had 13 left to cross. We are purged and packed through the first 77 miles of the project and have hydro tested just about 180 miles, and progress continues every day. If the current weather conditions continue, by the time we exit February, we expect to have further narrowed the list of overall construction tasks, and the remaining construction is expected to be limited to three of the Project 9 working spreads, all in Virginia. The construction work in these areas will consist of finishing the remaining crossings, of which five are boards, completing the Appalachian Trail crossing, and installing pipe on some of the steepest slopes along the route. Once construction is complete, only commissioning activities will remain before we place the pipe in service, which are less impacted by weather and require far less labor. While the majority of MVP construction is complete, the remaining construction includes some of the most difficult tasks on the project and could present further challenges. We are narrowing the scope of remaining activities and our focus remains to safely bring this critical pipeline into service. I'll now turn it over to Justin for the operations update, and then Kirk will discuss the financial results. Justin.