Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good morning and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a 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 one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. 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 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 unimpressed 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 Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Davin D' Thanks, Chad. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2022 first quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavala, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coogland, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer, and Steve Boyd, our Chief Operating Officer. This morning we will review our first 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 25, 2001, and Form 10-Q for the period ended December 25, 2021, which will be filed by the end of business today. contains disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. Copies may be obtained by contacting the partnership or 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 opening remarks.

Mike? Great. Thanks, Davin. And good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. We're very pleased to deliver another solid quarter with an increase in adjusted EBITDA of more than 8% compared to the prior year first quarter. Coming into the first quarter of fiscal 2022, the propane industry was faced with highly publicized concerns over lower U.S. inventories, significantly higher base commodity prices across the entire energy slate, and an expectation that consumers could be facing much higher costs to heat their homes and businesses in the impending heating season. In fact, heading into the 2021-2022 heating season, U.S. propane inventories were reported at around 20% below the five-year average for that time of year, and spot propane prices were at their highest level for November since 2011. However, as our first quarter progressed, a combination of lower than average crop drying demand in the agricultural sector, lower export activity, and near record warm temperatures in the month of December 2021, which muted heat-related demand, all contributed to a near normalization of U.S. propane inventories and a pullback in propane prices by about 33% from their peak levels. At Suburban Propane, we were able to offset the impact of lower heat-related demand during the first quarter and certain inflationary factors driving higher operating costs with effective selling price management and a prudent hedging and risk management strategy in a very volatile commodity price environment. The improvement in earnings is also a testament to the hard work and dedication of our operations personnel in maintaining their focus on delivering outstanding service to our customers while continuing to contend with the challenges of operating the business through the COVID-19 pandemic, and also reflects the positive results from our customer-based growth and retention initiatives. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks, including our outlook for the rest of the year. However, at this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike Coogland to discuss the first quarter results in more detail. Mike?