Star Group L.P.

Good morning, and welcome to the STAR Group Fiscal 2021 Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call. 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 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event has been recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Witty, Investor Relations Advisor. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. With me on the call today are Jeff Woosnam, President and 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 The company's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021, and the company's other filings with the SEC. 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. Thank you for joining us for our year-end conference call. It's amazing how time has passed so quickly, and here we are concluding our second full fiscal year under the leadership of the new management team. I'm pleased to report that even with slightly lower volumes and the lingering impact of COVID-19 on certain parts of our business, STAR had another strong year in terms of overall performance as we pushed forward with our strategy of continuous improvement and remained keenly focused on the fundamentals of our core business. Despite weather that was 10.7% warmer than normal and 1.1% warmer than the prior year, we reported adjusted EBITDA of $127.5 million, just 2.1% lower than fiscal 2020. It's notable that this was accomplished despite collecting $6.7 million less in proceeds from our weather hedge program due to the seasonal timing of degree days. Given these factors and those related to the pandemic, I think that in many respects fiscal 2021 represents our best operating performance in recent years. None of this would be possible without the dedication of our loyal team of employees who continue to work tirelessly, provide our customers with exceptional service at every point of contact, and do so with a level of enthusiasm that I believe sets us apart from our competitors. Reducing net customer attrition remains an area of great focus for us, and 2021 results were in line with the prior year. We are encouraged to see an improvement in customer losses and overall churn, which would appear to validate and support the investments we've made in improving the overall customer experience. We completed one small tuck-in acquisition in the fourth quarter and closed two additional deals after the end of the fiscal year during November. In total, we completed five separate acquisitions in fiscal 2021 that included approximately 17,500 customers and are expected to add nearly 13 million gallons of annual product sales to the company. We remain very committed to our acquisition program and are currently reviewing several additional opportunities. While none of these are transformational in size, the overall activity level of small to mid-sized prospects has steadily increased over the last several months. As we enter the new heating season and fiscal year, we, like many in our industry, are dealing with the effects of higher product costs some remaining pandemic-related constraints and a tight labor market. However, we continue to proactively adjust our operations to ensure we can effectively deal with these headwinds as well as any other challenges or opportunities that may present themselves in the coming year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rich to provide additional comments on the quarter and year-end results. Rich?