Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good day and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners third 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 1 on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please 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.

Thanks, Betsy. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2023 third quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavala, our 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 conference call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. related to the partnership's future business expectations and predictions, financial condition, and results of operation. 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 subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the partnership or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in its entirety by cautionary statements. Our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 24, 2022, and Form 10-Q for the period ended June 24, 2023, 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 SEC. So, 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 time, we'll 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 fiscal 2023 third quarter was another strong quarter for suburban propane with adjusted EBITDA of $33 million, our highest reported results for any third quarter in our history, and an improvement of nearly $4 million or 13% over the prior year third quarter. Operating results benefited from strong customer demand due to cooler spring temperatures in certain parts of our territories, which increased volumes by 3.9%. We also had continued success in our customer-based growth and retention initiatives, effective selling price management, and a great job by our operating personnel in managing expenses in a persistent inflationary environment. Additionally, the quarter included contributions from the RNG platform that we acquired at the beginning of the second quarter. Within our developing renewable natural gas or RNG platform, we completed planned upgrades to help optimize plant operations at our Stanfield, Arizona facility and are now starting to exceed our initial projections for daily production and pipeline injection at that facility. Additionally, At the Stanfield facility, we are making great progress integrating support functions, including onboarding the operating personnel who were previously employed by a third party operating and maintenance company. This will enhance our operating controls and reduce expenses. We also continue to advance the construction of the RNG production assets at Adirondack Farms in New York and the capital improvements at the Columbus, Ohio facility, which include enhancements to asset performance, and the installation of gas upgraded equipment for R&G production. These two facilities are expected to be fully constructed and beginning to reach run rate capacity in fiscal 2025. During the quarter, we used excess cash flows in a very balanced way to acquire a well-run propane business in a strategic market on the West Coast to support the growth of our core propane business. as well as to fund ongoing capital projects in our R&G operations, make additional investments in Oberon Fuels, and we also reduced debt by approximately $21 million. As I have stated on a number of occasions on previous quarterly earnings calls, we are taking a very measured approach to positioning the business for long-term growth and sustainability, leveraging the strength of our core propane business and our 95-year legacy of being a trusted provider of energy to local communities. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks and provide added color on our strategic initiatives. However, at this point, I'll turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss our third quarter results in more detail. Mike?