Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good morning and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners Fiscal 2022 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 one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please also note this 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, Chad. Good morning. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavala, 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 fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year financial results, along with the current outlook for the business. Once we've concluded our prepared remarks, we will open the session to questions. Our 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. We've 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 our earnings press release, which can be viewed on our website at suburbanpropane.com. All supplement-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. Our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 24th, 2022, which contains additional disclosure regarding forward statements and risk factors, will be filed on or about November 23rd. Once filed, 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 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 this point, I will turn the call over to Mike Stavola for some opening remarks. Mike?

Thanks, Davin. Thank you all for joining us, and good morning. Fiscal 22 was another outstanding year for suburban propane. as we delivered solid operating results with an increase in adjusted EBITDA of more than $15 million or 4.5% compared to the prior year. We also made meaningful progress on the execution of our long-term strategic growth initiatives with several investments to grow our renewable energy platform, and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet and improve our key financial metrics. Despite the continued challenges in the broader economy that are affecting virtually every industry, namely high commodity prices, inflation, and labor shortages impacting recruitment efforts, our operating personnel continue to do an outstanding job managing selling prices, expenses, and manpower while delivering exceptional service to our customers and the communities we serve. With the strong earnings, we utilized excess cash flow in a balanced manner to continue investing in the build-out of our renewable energy platform, supporting the growth of our core propane operations, as well as to reduce debt by more than $42 million, bringing our total leverage metric down from 3.96 times at the end of last year. On the strategic front, we took a number of steps to advance our Go Green with Suburban Propane corporate pillar, starting with the creation of our new subsidiary, Suburban Renewable Energy. to serve as the growth platform for our investments in innovative renewable energy technologies and businesses. Specifically, during fiscal 2022, we announced the following strategic investments and collaborations. In March, we acquired a 25% equity stake in Independence Hydrogen, a veteran-owned and operating startup company developing a gaseous hydrogen ecosystem for a $30 million investment. We made additional investments in Oberon fuels to support the commercialization of renewable dimethyl ether as a blend with propane, including our construction of the world's first commercial propane plus RDME blending facility in our Placentia, California location. And in April, we celebrated the industry's first ever commercial launch of propane plus RDME in the United States, with sales to forklift customers in our Southern California markets. In June, we entered into an agreement with Adirondack Farms in upstate New York to construct, own, and operate a renewable natural gas production facility using dairy cow manure as the feedstock. And in May, we announced a collaboration agreement with Iwatani Corporation of America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Iwatani Corporation in Japan, to help accelerate the adoption of propane plus RDME products. and to explore opportunities to further advance investments in the hydrogen infrastructure in the United States. We also expanded our presence in the growing and attractive market for propane usage in northern New Mexico with the acquisition of a well-run propane business for $19.5 million during July 2022. So, this was a very successful year for Suburban Propane, and we have positioned the business both operationally and financially to navigate the challenging macroeconomic environment, while also preserving capital to be strategic in our pursuit of our long-term growth plans as a leading propane marketer and an investor in the country's ongoing energy transition to cleaner energy sources. A little later, I'll provide some closing remarks. However, at this point, I'll turn the call over to Mike Coogland, who will discuss our full year and fourth quarter results in more detail. Mike?