National Fuel Gas Company

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the National Fuel Gas Company third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Brian Vossler, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Apologies, we had temporary moderator challenges, so we appreciate you joining us on today's conference call for a 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 Loweth, President of Seneca Resources and National Fuel Midstream. At the end of today's prepared remarks, we'll open the discussion to questions. The third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings release and July investor presentation have been posted on our investor relations website. We may refer to these materials during today's call. We would like to remind you that today's teleconference will contain forward-looking statements. While national field expectations, beliefs, and projections are made in good faith and are believed to have a reasonable basis, actual results may differ materially. Thank you, Ryan.

Good morning, everyone. Before I get to the update on our business, I'd like to welcome Ryan Vosler to our IR team. He's part of our corporate strategy group and is pinch hitting in the investor relations role for a few quarters while Natalie is on maternity leave. And on that note, congrats to Natalie on the new addition. We wish them well. Moving to results for the quarter, last night we reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.54, which is generally in line with our expectations. Tim and Justin will have more on the quarterly results and the outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year later in the call. I'll focus on the strong long-term outlook for national fuel and the significant opportunities we see across our businesses to continue driving long-term shareholder value. At the regulated businesses, increasing demand for natural gas is driving further interest in expansions on our interstate pipeline systems. We're also nearing the finish line with respect to the closing of our acquisition of CenterPoint's Ohio gas utilities. These growth catalysts, combined with the pending rate-making activities in our various jurisdictions, make the outlook for the regulated businesses outstanding. On the integrated upstream and gathering side, the future looks equally promising. We control a significant acreage position in Tioga County, which is one of the few remaining premier natural gas resources in the country with significant undeveloped acreage. We expect the discretionary leasing program announced last night will further bolster our footprint in the area, increase development plan optionality, and add additional core locations to our nearly 20-year runway of existing low break-even inventory. This advantaged acreage position along with our history of delivering significant capital efficiency improvements across our fully integrated operations makes us excited about the future of RUG. With this strong foundation for growth across the company, we've updated our long-term outlook. Assuming the current forward curve for natural gas prices, we now expect earnings per share to grow between 7 and 10 percent per year on average through fiscal 29.