Star Group L.P.

Good day and welcome to the STAR Group Fiscal 2020 First Quarter Results Conference Call-In Webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Witty, Investor Relations Advisor. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. With me on the call today are Jeff Woosnam, Chief Executive Officer, and Rich Ambury, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to provide a brief safe harbor statement. This conference call may include forward-looking statements that represent the company's expectations and beliefs concerning future events that involve risks and uncertainties and may cause the company's actual performance to be materially different from the performance indicated or implied by such statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this conference call are forward-looking statements. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations are disclosed in this conference call and in the company's annual report in Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2019. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements. Unless otherwise required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise after the date of this conference call. I'd now like to turn the call over to Jeff Woosnam. Jeff?

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. The first quarter of fiscal 2020 brought with it some interesting weather trends, challenges, and opportunities. While October was much warmer than normal, temperatures in November and December were cold enough by contrast to necessitate a charge against our weather hedge contract. Weather for the entire quarter was warmer than fiscal 2019 due to October, which resulted in somewhat lower demand. Against this backdrop, we continue to focus on reducing unnecessary overhead expenses, increasing operating efficiency, and improving customer retention. As you may recall, we began to see evidence of these efforts taking hold at the end of fiscal 2019, and I am pleased that they are even more prominently reflected in our first quarter 2020 results. We reduced operating expenses year over year by some $12.3 million in the base business, a significant accomplishment for the company. This, combined with our continued investment in improving the customer experience, are certainly encouraging steps towards our goal of strengthening the store's competitive position in the marketplace. While our net customer growth for the quarter was very similar to last year, we experienced approximately 9% fewer customer losses and therefore had lower churn in the business. Overall, I'm extremely proud of the many steps we have taken over the past year to improve service and reduce costs. We completed one small acquisition during the quarter, which brought with it roughly 1 million gallons of annualized volume, and we are currently evaluating several other potential attractive transactions. While January ended up considerably warmer than last year and further tested our ability to control expenses, we remain prepared for normal fluctuating weather patterns as we proceed through the rest of the heating season. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rich to provide additional comments on the quarter and full year results.