NewJersey Resources Corporation

Hello, my name is Ellie and I will be your operator for today. I would like to welcome everyone to New Jersey Resources fiscal 2024 third quarter conference call. For those of you listening on the live call, all participants will be on listen mode only. After today's participation and presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask for questions. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press star one. Thank you. I'd now like to hand over to Adam Pryor, Head of Investor Relations. You may now be.

Thank you. Welcome to New Jersey Resources Fiscal 2024 Third Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. I'm joined here today by Steve Westhoven, our President and CEO, Roberta Bell, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of our Senior Management Team. Certain statements in today's call contain estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We wish to caution listeners of this call that the current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs forming the basis of our forward-looking statements include many factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to materially differ from our expectations as found on slide one. These items can also be found in the forward-looking statement section of today's earnings release furnished on form 8K and in our most recent forms 10K and 10Q as filed with the SEC. We do not, by including this statement, assume any obligation to review or revise any particular forward-looking statement referenced herein in light of future events. We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as net financial earnings or NFE. We believe that NFE, net financial loss, utility gross margin, financial margin, adjusted funds from operations, and adjusted debt provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance. However, these non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. Our non-GAAP financial measures are discussed more fully in item 7 of our 10-K. The slides accompanying today's presentation are available on our website and were furnished on our form 8-K filed this morning. Our agenda for today is filed on slide 4. Steve will begin with this year's highlights, followed by Roberto, who will review our financial results. Then we will open up for your questions. With that said, I will turn the call over to our president and CEO, Steve Westhoven. Please go ahead, Steve.

Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everyone. We had a solid quarter at NJR as our complimentary portfolio of businesses performed in line with our expectations, and we remain on track to achieve our fiscal 2024 NFEPS guidance of $285 to $3 per share. I'll take you through the highlights as shown on slide five. At New Jersey Natural Gas, our rate case is proceeding as expected and we anticipate a resolution before the end of 2024. Clean Energy Ventures reported a solid year-over-year revenue growth while continuing to expand our robust project pipeline. This provides a long runway of investment options that deliver a minimum of high single-digit unlevered returns for each project, along with upside potential from increases in power demand. This quarter, we also saw solid contributions from S&T and performance from Energy Services that was in line with expectations. Moving to slide six, in November, we provided an initial NFVPS guidance range of $2.70 to $2.85 per share. In February, due to our outperformance at Energy Services, we increased this guidance by $0.15 per share to $2.85 to $3 per share. As discussed in prior calls, we expect our fiscal 2024 to exceed our long-term growth rate of 79%. Slide 7 outlines the expected NFVPS percentage contribution by business segment for fiscal 2024 and beyond. This year, energy services will represent a higher percentage than prior years due to the AMAs and recent outperformance. However, in future years, we expect to return to a more normalized segment breakout, with over 60% of our NFVPS coming from our utility business. Now let's discuss our business units, starting with New Jersey Natural Gas on slide 8. We have invested $345 million year-to-date at New Jersey Natural Gas in fiscal 2024, with 43% of that capex providing near real-time returns. This includes the Save Green program, which helps customers lower their energy usage. In June, Save Green reached a milestone, serving our 100,000th customer since its inception in 2009. Over the lifetime of this program, participating customers have significantly cut their energy bills and reduced their carbon emissions by over 312 million towns, equal to the energy use of over 18,000 homes. Congrats to the entire Save Green team on this accomplishment. Customer growth has remained steady all year, driven by a combination of both new construction and conversions. drive growth well into the future, such as the redevelopment project in Monmouth County to transform a mall into multifamily units, along with retail, commercial, and medical spaces. Turning to slide nine, our base rate case is progressing as planned. In May, we adjusted our filing to include nine months of actual results and aim to reach a resolution that balances our customers' and companies' interests by the end of 2024. Moving to slide 10, Clean Energy Ventures continue to add new solar capacity during this fiscal year. We're also growing our solar pipeline, which now includes over 870 megawatts of potential investment options, with an additional 51 megawatts under construction. Finally, on slide 11, our S&T business met expectations this period. Last quarter, we announced the start of a capital investment project at Leaf River to expand working capacity within our caverns. We completed an open season and contracted a portion of that capacity in terms that will pay back the full cost of that investment in less than four years. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Roberto to review our financial results.