Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good morning, and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners Second Quarter Earnings 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 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.

Thanks, Rocco. Good morning, everyone. Let me start with the safe harbor language. 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 conditions 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 behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by such cautionary statements. Joining me this morning is Mike Stavala, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Hoogland, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer, and Steve Boyd, our Chief Operating Officer. This morning we will review our second 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 25th, 2021, and Form 10-Q for the period ended March 26th, 2022, which will be filed by the end of business today, contain additional disclosure regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. Copies may be obtained by contacting the partnership or the SEC. Our 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 FCC this morning. Form 8-K 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, Devin. Good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. The second fiscal quarter was another outstanding quarter for suburban propane on a number of fronts. We delivered solid operating results. We made further progress on the execution of our long-term strategic initiatives toward the build-out of a renewable energy platform, and we continued to drive improvements in our key financial metrics. Despite a challenging operating environment resulting from an erratic weather pattern, historically high commodity prices, and inflationary factors impacting expenses, we were able to expand our customer base and effectively manage margins and expenses to deliver an improvement in adjusted EBITDA compared to the prior year's second quarter. And when you combine that with the improvement from our first quarter, we have now reported a $7 million or nearly 3% increase in adjusted EBITDA through the first six months of the fiscal year. On the strategic front, we made a number of moves during the quarter. First, in March, we acquired a 25 percent equity stake in Independence Hydrogen, which is a veteran-owned and operated startup company focused on developing a hydrogen ecosystem from production to distribution, which will deliver locally sourced clean hydrogen to local markets with an initial focus on the material handling and backup power applications. This is a real strategic investment for us. We believe in the role that hydrogen will play in the coming years as society moves toward decarbonization across many sectors of the economy. That may prove difficult to address with alternative renewable energy sources. Second, we committed additional capital to support our investment in Oberon Fuels as we collectively get closer to commercialization of our new product offering called Propane Plus RDME. This blended product combines the versatile, clean, and portable benefits of propane with the low carbon attributes of renewable dimethyl ether to reduce the carbon intensity of propane in order to create a pathway for meeting aggressive carbon reduction standards. We also deployed capital to complete the construction of the world's first commercial propane plus RDME blending facility in our Placentia, California location. And just last week, we celebrated the first commercial launch of propane plus RDME with a ribbon cutting ceremony at that location. And we are now selling this lower carbon alternative to our customers in Southern California. And third, we formed a new subsidiary branded Suburban Renewables. which will serve as the platform for these and other investments in renewable energy businesses and assets. You can learn more about these investments by visiting our website. We funded these investments with excess cash flow from operations, while also allocating approximately $42 million to reduce debt during the quarter. So it's a very balanced approach to making strategic investments and continuing to pay down debt to strengthen our balance sheet which are all very long-term focused and in line with our stated strategic goals. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks and provide added color on our strategic initiatives. However, at this point, let me turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss the second quarter results in more detail. Mike?