SJW Group

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 2024 Second Quarter SJW Group Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Andrew Walter, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, Interim Principal Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Welcome to the second quarter 2024 Financial Results Conference Call for SJW Group. I will be presenting today with Eric Thornburg, Chair of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer. For those who would like to follow along, slides accompanying our remarks are available on our website at sjwgroup.com. Before we begin today, I would like to remind you that this presentation and related materials posted on our website may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on estimates and assumptions made by the company in light of its experience, historical trends, current conditions, and expected future results, as well as other factors that the company believes are appropriate under the circumstances. Many factors could cause the company's actual results and performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. For description of some of the factors that could cause actual results to be different from statements in this presentation, we refer you to the financial results press release and our most recent forms, 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be obtained on our website. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and SJW Group disclaims any duty to update or revise such statements. You will have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This webcast is being recorded and an archive of the webcast will be available until October 21st, 2024. You can access the press release and the webcast at SJW Group's website. In addition, some of the information discussed today includes the non-GAAP financial measures of adjusted net income and adjusted diluted earnings per share that have not been calculated in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States or GAAP. These non-gap financial measures should be considered as a supplement to the financial information prepared on a gap basis rather than an alternative to the respective gap financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-gap financial measures to the most directly comparable gap financial measures are presented in the table in the appendix of our presentation. I will now turn the call over to Eric.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Eric Thornburg, and it is my honor to serve as chair, president, and CEO of SJW Group. I'm pleased to share that in the second quarter of 2024, we continued to meet drinking water and environmental regulations, deliver on our public health and environmental stewardship commitments, and provide high-quality water and service to customers. Importantly, we also experienced the benefits of our focused efforts to listen to, learn from, and meaningfully respond to our stakeholders. For example, in California, we reached an agreement in principle on most issues with the Public Advocates Office and WRATES, a local water rates advocacy organization, in our 2025 through 2027 general rate case. We expect the settlement agreement will be filed on or about August the 19th. All but two policy issues have been agreed upon, and we are hopeful the CPUC will approve the settlement later this year. In Connecticut, we worked within the constraints of a formidable regulatory environment to complete our general rate case. Now, we didn't get all we expected or, frankly, all that we need. from that particular rate case, and there is a lot of room for improvement going forward, which we are already thinking about. But it was clearly a step in the right direction. Our team's responsive filing and constructive engagement with local stakeholders helped facilitate significant improvements between the proposed draft decision and the final decision. I'm proud to share that the Connecticut team's strategic approach Hard work and transparency was commended by the local regulators, parties to the rate case, and members of the financial industry alike. And we were able to serve our customers by securing additional financial assistance funds in California and expanding eligibility in Connecticut for our Water Rate Assistance Program, which is a first-of-its-kind program in that state for water utilities. Additionally, across the enterprise, we invested $158 million in water and wastewater utility infrastructure, which constitutes approximately 48% of our $332 million 2024 capital expenditure plan. And we also delivered earnings per diluted share of 64 cents. and adjusted non-GAAP earnings per diluted share of 66 cents in the second quarter. Now, you hear me say every quarter that our people make the difference at SJW Group. This is truer than ever before, and we saw that difference from California to Connecticut this quarter. And as we prepare for the future, we know that constructive relationships with our local stakeholders built on mutual trust and respect will be critical. You know, our industry has some significant challenges ahead. PFAS remediation, new lead and copper standards, and the replacement of aging infrastructure, just to name a few. And we all know this work needs to get done. There's no question about that. But how we get it done most effectively for our customers and their communities Well, that's the question we need to tackle with our regulators and legislators. And our local teams are ready and committed to investing in these relationships to ensure that we can achieve our shared mission of providing our local community members with reliable, high quality water and service. Sometimes it's easy to align with local stakeholders on the approach to achieving our common goals. And other times it's a slower process. but we are dedicated to investing the time, effort, and resources needed to advocate and collaborate in service of our customers, their communities, our employees, and shareholders. That's our culture, and it's also a competitive advantage of ours. With that, I will pass it over to Andrew to review our detailed financial results and regulatory updates in our state operations. Andrew?