Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Suburban Propane's first quarter fiscal 2020 financial results conference call. At this point, all the participant lines are in a listen-only mode. However, there will be an opportunity for your questions. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require any assistance during the call, please press star zero and operator will assist you offline. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. This conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended relating to the partnership's future business expectations and predictions in financial condition and results of operations. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties. The partnership has listed some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements, which are referred to as cautionary statements in its earnings press release, which can be viewed on the company's website. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the partnership or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by such cautionary statements. With that, I'll turn the conference now to Mr. Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2020 first quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stivala, our president and chief executive officer, Mike Kuglin, chief financial officer and chief accounting officer, and Steve Boyd, our chief operating officer. This morning, we will review our first quarter results along with our current outlook of the business As usual, once we've concluded our prepared remarks, we will open the session to questions. Our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 28, 2019, and Form 10-Q for the period ended December 28, 2019, which will be filed by the end of business today, contains additional disclosure regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. Copies may be obtained by contacting the partnership or the SEC. Certain non-GAAP measures will be discussed on this call. We have provided a description of those measures as well as a discussion of why we believe this information to be useful in our Form 8K, which was furnished to the SEC this morning. The Form 8K will be available through a link in the investor relations section of our website at suburbanpropane.com. At this point, I will turn the call over to Mike Stivala for some opening remarks.

Mike? Great, thanks, Davin, and good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. The fiscal 2020 heating season started off with favorable weather, primarily in October and the early part of November, as well as active crop drying demand in the agricultural sector. However, unseasonably warm weather dominated the month of December, which represents the most critical month for heat-related demand, resulting in lower volumes compared to the prior year first quarter. Excellent margin management by our operations personnel in a lower commodity price environment helped drive margin improvement, and from an expense perspective, the most significant impact was a $5 million charge to settle certain product liability and other legal matters during the quarter. As a result, adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal 2020 first quarter was $85.4 million, a decrease of 8.5% from the prior year. On the strategic front, we continue to execute on our four-pronged approach, organic growth through customer-based growth and retention efforts in every one of our markets, fostering our new market expansion efforts, strategic acquisitions, and positioning ourselves both financially and operationally to be prepared for more transformative opportunities. During the quarter, we closed on two well-run propane businesses, in strategic markets in California and Georgia, investing more than $23 million in those businesses. So, while warm weather weighed on customer demand, we continue to manage the things we can control and stay committed to our strategic growth objectives. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks. However, at this point, I'll turn it over to Mike Kuglin to discuss the first quarter results.