Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good day and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners LP Fiscal 2021 Full Year and 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 touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note this event 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 and financial condition and results of operation. 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. I would now like to turn the conference over to Devin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 full-year earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavall, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coughlin, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer, and Steve Boyd, our Chief Operating Officer. This morning, we will review our fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 full year 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 25th, 2021, which contains additional disclosure regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors, will be filed on or about November 24th. Once filed, copies may be obtained on the investor overview page of the partnership's website at suburbanpropane.com, or by visiting the partnership's filings with 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 8-K, which was furnished to the SEC last night. Form 8-K is available on the Investor Relations section of our website. At this point, I will turn the call over to Mike Stavala for some opening remarks. Mike?

Thanks, Davin. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. First, on this Veterans Day, let me start by wishing all military veterans and, of course, their families for their service and sacrifices to protect our freedoms. At Suburban Propane, through our Suburban Cares corporate pillar, we have a deep commitment to our military veterans community and are committed to hiring our great American heroes through our Heroes Hired Here program. Let me jump into some thoughts on the fiscal year we just ended and conclude at the end of our call on some reflection as we enter a new fiscal year. The fiscal year 2021 was another outstanding year for suburban propane. Customer demand was strong throughout much of the year from a combination of solid heat-related demand during the second quarter, normalizing demand in the commercial industrial customer sectors, from the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and increased economic activity and positive momentum in our customer-based growth and retention initiatives, generating incremental new customer activity. The increased demand drove propane volumes higher by more than 4%. Our operating personnel did an exceptional job meeting and exceeding the needs of our customers while continuing to adhere to our enhanced COVID-19 health and safety protocols maintaining their focus on the highest standards for safety in all of their daily activities, and managing margins in a volatile commodity price environment. All of these positive factors contributed to a $22 million or nearly 9% improvement in adjusted EBITDA from $253.7 million last year to $275.7 million in fiscal 2021. In addition to the strong earnings, Let me also take a moment to highlight a number of other significant accomplishments for Suburban Propane during fiscal 2021. First, we utilized excess cash flows to reduce debt by nearly $88 million, bringing our total leverage metric below four times to 3.96 times at the end of fiscal 2021, and that compares to 4.64 times at the end of the prior year. We opportunistically refinanced a portion of our senior debt, taking advantage of historically low interest rates to lower annual interest requirements by $7 million and extending weighted average maturities by more than three and a half years. With the improvement in earnings, coupled with lower interest expense and disciplined management of capital expenditures, we reported an increase in distributable cash flow by more than $26 million, or 16%, and ended fiscal 2021 with a very strong distribution coverage ratio of 2.55 times on a maintenance CapEx basis. On the strength of our earnings and cash flows, we were also pleased to improve the returns for our valued unit holders by delivering an 8.3 percent increase in our annualized distribution rate at the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2021. On the strategic front, We completed an acquisition of a well-run propane business in the North Carolina market, and we continued to make investments in our minority-owned subsidiary, Oberon Fuels, to support our collective efforts to commercialize low-carbon, renewable dimethyl ether, which, when used as a blend with propane, will significantly reduce the carbon intensity of already clean-burning propane and allow us to put propane on a pathway to net-zero carbon emissions. We are also working closely with the Oberon team to unleash the power of renewable DME, a strong hydrogen carrier, to be able to convert renewable DME to green hydrogen. This effort is being supported by a grant through a public-private partnership with Los Alamos National Labs from the U.S. Department of Energy under their Energy Earthshot Initiative. And finally, we continue to advance our suburban cares corporate pillar with a specific focus this year on partnering with organizations that provide much needed assistance to women and children in underserved communities through our operating footprint with food, shelter, educational supplies, and many other essential items. During our fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, we also proudly entered into a partnership agreement with the United States Army's Partnership for Youth Success program. which is a strategic collaboration between the U.S. Army and a cross-section of companies and public sector agencies that guarantees soldiers an interview and possible employment opportunity with Suburban Propane upon completion of their service. And this year, our Suburban CARES activities were recognized by New Jersey Biz as a finalist in their Corporate Citizen of the Year category, an honor that we are extremely proud of. Despite the challenging operating environment over the course of the past 18 months resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have maintained our focus on delivering outstanding service to our customers and local communities, executing on our customer-based growth and retention initiatives, accelerating our debt reduction efforts, and making strategic investments in line with our goal of building out a renewable energy platform and delivering solutions to help our customers meet their sustainability goals and support our efforts to contribute to our country's ongoing energy transition. And a little later, I will come back with some closing remarks, but now I'll turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss our full year and fourth quarter results in more detail. Mike? Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone.