Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good day and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners LP third quarter 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. 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 and 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, and 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 especially qualified in their entirety by such cautionary statements. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rocco. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2021 third quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavala, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coogland, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer, and Steve Boyd, our Chief Operating Officer. This morning, we will review our third quarter financial results, along with our current outlook for the business. 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 26, 2020, and Form 10-Q for the period ended June 26, 2021, which will be filed by the end of business today, contain additional disclosures 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. 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 Stavala for some of the remarks. Mike.

Thanks, Davin. Welcome. Thank you all for joining us this morning. The third quarter of fiscal 2021 was another solid quarter for suburban propane as we continue to see demand in the commercial and industrial sectors normalized back toward pre-pandemic levels. And we were also seeing the benefits of continued favorable trends from our customer-based growth and retention efforts. As a result, propane volumes were nearly 2% ahead of the prior year third quarter, despite the unusually high residential demand last year. To put some perspective on the shifting demand patterns between residential and non-residential customers resulting from the pandemic, residential volumes typically account for approximately 35% of total third quarter volumes. Yet last year, with the combination of cooler spring temperatures at a time when stay-at-home measures were most prevalent and the dramatic reduction in commercial industrial demand due to COVID-related restrictions, residential volumes accounted for nearly 45% of total volume sold. This mixed shift contributed to unusually high blended unit margins for this counter-seasonal quarter and record overall adjusted EBITDA in the prior year third quarter. However, with normalizing demand patterns in the fiscal 2021 third quarter, Total propane volumes exceeded pre-pandemic levels from the fiscal 2019 third quarter by 4%, higher than pre-pandemic levels. Adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal 2021 third quarter of $23.3 million was $8.9 million lower than last year, yet exceeded our expectations for the quarter and was $3.2 million or 16% higher than the third quarter of fiscal 2019. In addition to our strong operating performance, we continue to stay focused on our long-term strategic goals of reducing debt, strengthening the balance sheet, and fostering the build-out of our renewable energy platform in line with our go green with suburban propane corporate pillar. Let me give you a few highlights from the quarter. We used excess cash flow to reduce debt by approximately $30 million, bringing our year-to-date debt reduction totals to $68 million and 83 million in the last 12 months. Therefore, our leverage metrics remains below four times, ending June 2021 at 3.96. In May 2021, we executed an opportunistic refinancing of an aggregate of 775 million of senior notes that had maturities in 2024 and 2025, taking advantage of the current low interest rate environment. We generated significant demand for the new year issuance of $650 million in 5% senior notes due 2031, thus extending maturities by three and a half years and lowering our annual interest requirement by about $7 million. With this refinancing, we further strengthened the balance sheet and generated incremental distributable cash flow. On the renewable energy front, we continued to work closely with the management team of our 39% minority-owned subsidiary, Oberon Fuels, to make great strides toward our collective efforts to commercialize Oberon's exciting new low carbon transportation fuel, renewable dimethyl ether, as they blend with propane to dramatically lower the carbon intensity of already clean burning propane. As a result of the achievement of certain milestones set forth in our agreement with Oberon, we made additional investments to support the business during the quarter. And Oberon itself had a number of terrific achievements just in the last few months. In June, Oberon announced the successful production of the first ever renewable dimethyl ether in the United States from their flagship facility in Brawley, California, which makes them the only producer of this molecule in the world today. And just a couple of weeks ago, Oberon, through a public-private partnership with the Los Alamos National Labs, secured funding from the US Department of Energy to develop and scale up steam reforming technology to produce green hydrogen from renewable DME under the Department of Energy's Energy Earthshot Initiative, thus investing in new technologies to unleash the power of renewable DME as a strong hydrogen carrier. We continue to view this investment as a real game changer for the propane industry. And our first step toward our commitment to invest in innovative renewable energy technologies as we build out our renewable energy platform. With the continued momentum we have in executing on our strategic goals and the confidence and the strength of our cash flow generating capacity, we are pleased to deliver a $0.10 per common unit or 8.3% increase in our annualized distribution rate from $1.20 to $1.30 per common unit. effective with the quarterly distribution in respect of the third quarter of fiscal 2021, which will be paid on August 10th to our unit holders of record as of August 3rd. Even at the increased distribution level, based on trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA of $281 million, our distribution coverage was 2.5 times. And finally, on May 18th, we held our 2021 Triennial Meeting of Unit Holders, We were very pleased by the overall response from our unit holders, as all items on the agenda received overwhelming support and approval. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks. However, at this point, I'll turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss the third quarter results in more detail. Mike?