Star Group L.P.

Good day and welcome to the STAR Group Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Results Conference Call and Webcast. Today, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance during today's call, please signal for 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. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Witte, Investor Relations Advisor. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning. With me on the call today are Jeff Woosnam, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Rich Amberry, 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 30th, 2023, 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 it is 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 Woosman. Please go ahead, Jeff.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. The beginning of fiscal 2024 has provided both challenges and opportunities, which we believe we have navigated well. While product costs declined, providing relief to customers, warmer temperatures resulted in lower demand and therefore reduced overall volumes. However, due to cost discipline, a weather hedge benefit, and higher per gallon margins, adjusted EBITDA was nearly equivalent to the prior year period. New customer additions were down from the extraordinary levels we experienced in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. This was due in part to the mild weather, but also reflected much different market conditions, resulting in lower lead activity. Customer losses, however, remained in check for the quarter, And more recently, we were encouraged by improved net customer attrition results in January versus the same period a year ago. We'll have to see how the remainder of the heating season progresses, but we remain 100% dedicated to providing the best customer service and responsiveness possible. We're pleased to see continued improvement in our internal customer satisfaction indicators, most notably our net promoter scores, a well-known metric that measures customer loyalty and specifically the willingness to recommend our brands. As previously reported, we completed two small heating oil acquisitions during the quarter in November, and I'm pleased to announce that we closed two more businesses just this week. One is a heating oil provider and another a propane dealer. Both are located on Long Island and serve to further strengthen our presence in that market. Our acquisition program continues to be an important part of our growth strategy, and we have been very busy of late working on a few other attractive opportunities that we feel would be great additions to the organization. While it's too early to say how fiscal 2024 will play out, we remain focused on operational efficiency, controlling expenses, and solid margin management, and believe we are well-positioned to address whatever challenges or opportunity might present themselves going forward. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rich to provide additional comments on the quarter's financial results. Rich?