National Fuel Gas Company

quarter and full year fiscal 2025 earnings call my name is harry and i'll be your operator today all lines are currently in listen mode and there will be an opportunity for q a after management's prepared remarks if you would like to enter the keys of questions please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad i would now like to hand the conference over to natalie fisher director of investor relations please go ahead thank you harry and good morning

We appreciate you joining us on today's conference call for discussion of last evening's earnings release. With us on the call from National Fuel Gas Company are Dave Bauer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tim Silverstein, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, and Justin Lois, President of Seneca Resources and National Fuel Midstream. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we will open the discussion to questions. The fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2025 earnings release and November investor presentation have been posted on our investor relations website. We may refer to these materials during today's call. We'd like to remind you that today's teleconference will contain forward-looking statements. While national fuels expectations, beliefs, and projections are made in good faith and are believed to have a reasonable basis, actual results may differ materially. These statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and you may refer to last evening's earnings release for a listing of certain specific risk factors. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave.

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone. As we reported in last night's release, National Fuel had a great fourth quarter with adjusted earnings per share of $1.22, an increase of 58% from last year. The quarter capped an excellent fiscal year where each of our segments delivered meaningful growth. On a consolidated basis, adjusted earnings per share increased 38% compared to fiscal 2024. At our integrated upstream and gathering businesses, we continued our impressive trend in capital efficiency, a trend that is unmatched by our Appalachian peers and perhaps across the industry. Since we began our EDA transition in mid-2023, we've grown production by approximately 20%, while reducing our overall capital spending by 15%. which is a testament to both the quality of our Tioga County assets and our team's dedication to operational improvement and execution. Given the productivity of our acreage and the depth of our inventory, I fully expect our capital efficiency will continue to improve in the coming years. To that end, last night we announced a significant expansion of our Tioga County inventory, adding approximately 220 prospective well locations in the Upper Utica Formation. Over the past few years, we've been testing this horizon across our Tioga acreage, and the strong performance from the four highly productive wells turned in line to date in the Upper Utica give us the confidence to increase our inventory in this area. The addition of Upper Utica locations nearly doubles our inventory in the EDA. At our current pace, we now have almost 20 years of development locations that are economic at NYMEX prices below $2 for MMBTU. As we've discussed in the past, another key driver for future growth at Seneca is additional firm transportation and firm sales to ensure we have an end market for our production. Consistent with that objective, in September we signed a proceeding agreement with a third-party pipeline that will provide us with an additional $250 million a day of takeaway capacity out of Tioga County starting in late 2028. This new capacity along with the Tioga Pathway project that should come online in late 2026, underpins the mid-single-digit production growth we've been signaling for the past year or so. Justin will have a full update on Seneca later in the call. Turning to our regulated operations, Momentum continues to build its supply corporation, which has two great growth opportunities in progress. First is the Tioga Pathway project for Seneca that I just mentioned. Development of that project remains on schedule. We received our certificate in May and are on track for a spring construction start. Second is the shipping port lateral off of our line end system in western Pennsylvania. Supply Corp made its prior notice filing in late August, and we expect to receive FERC authorization in the coming weeks. In addition, we recently ordered the key materials and awarded the construction contract for the project, keeping us on schedule for a fall 2026 in-service date. As a reminder, this $57 million data center driven project will create 205 million a day of new delivery capacity and generate $15 million in annual revenue. As I've said on prior calls, I'm optimistic that we can provide additional transportation capacity to the shipping port site as it advances its development. The potential for pipeline expansion doesn't end with shipping port. We're in dialogue with multiple parties on expansion projects across our system. Our unique portfolio of pipelines in the Appalachian producing region are well positioned to provide speed to market for potential data centers. Our interconnectivity with numerous long-haul pipelines and our significant experience in developing and constructing infrastructure in the region are competitive advantages that position us well to deliver projects on an accelerated timeframe. I'm confident we'll have additional such projects in the years to come. Switching to our utility business, as we announced a few weeks ago, we've entered into a definitive agreement with CenterPoint to acquire their Ohio Gas LDC. At closing, this highly strategic acquisition will double our utility rate base, add significant customers in the state that is supportive of natural gas, and provide us with another opportunity to recycle the substantial free cash flow from our upstream and gathering businesses into an enterprise that adds both scale and future earnings. We're excited about this transaction and the value creation potential that it offers. The assets are high quality and have a strong outlook for continued rate-based growth. Further, they're operated by a talented workforce that will be a great fit with National Fuel. We had the chance to meet most of the Ohio team last week and it was clear that they share our dedication to safe and reliable natural gas service. We look forward to working with CenterPoint to ensure a seamless integration of the Ohio assets into the National Fuel Organization. Before closing, a quick word on energy policy in New York State, where the momentum towards an all-of-the-above approach to energy continues to build. In both public statements and publications like the draft state energy plan, Elected officials and policymakers are at last beginning to acknowledge the importance of natural gas as a reliable and affordable source of energy that supports economic development in the state. They readily admit New York won't meet the Climate Act's goals on the timeframe originally required, and have even seen fit to suggest that lawmakers modify the Climate Act in the months to come. From the beginning, we've advocated an all-of-the-above approach to energy, and I'm confident that policymakers will ultimately reach that conclusion as well. In closing, fiscal 2025 was a terrific year for National Fuel. Our financial results were the best in the company's history, and perhaps more importantly, we took actions across each of our businesses that lay the foundation for long-term growth and continued operational excellence. The outlook for the company is as strong as it's ever been, and I'm excited to execute upon our strategy in the years to come. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tim.