Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good day and welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners Fiscal 2023 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 telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note today's event is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead, sir. Davin D' Great.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavall, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coogland, Chief Financial Officer, and Steve Boyd, our Chief Operating Officer. This morning, we will review our fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and 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 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 have 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 their entirety, plus such cautionary statements. Our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023, which contains additional disclosure regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors, will be filed on or about November 22nd. Once filed, copies may be obtained by contacting the partnership or 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 8K, which was furnished to the SEC this morning. Form 8K will be available through a link in the investor relations sections of our website. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Mike Stavall for some opening remarks.

Mike? Great. Thanks, Devin. And thank you all for joining us this morning. Fiscal year 2023 was another great year for suburban propane. In addition to overcoming a challenging weather pattern with some of the warmest temperatures on record during the most critical months for heat-related demand, that's namely January and February, as well as a persistent inflationary cost environment to deliver strong earnings, we succeeded in accomplishing a number of significant goals in fiscal 2023 that provide further support for our long-term strategic growth initiatives. Let me highlight a few noteworthy accomplishments for fiscal 2023. For our wholly-owned subsidiary, Suburban Renewable Energy LLC, we acquired a platform of RNG production assets from Equilibrium Capital Group, a leading sustainability-driven asset management firm. These assets included a large-scale RNG production facility in Stanfield, Arizona, that is currently operating and includes seven anaerobic digesters, manure rights from approximately 55,000 dairy cattle, and an interconnect with an interstate pipeline on premise. An operating facility in Columbus, Ohio that is currently receiving tipping fees from several large food and beverage providers for processing food waste into fertilizer and biogas. And we have an active development project to upgrade the biogas into pipeline quality rng for sales we formed a partnership with equilibrium to serve as a long-term platform for the identification development and operation of additional rng product projects and currently have a pipeline of potential rng projects to invest in that are in various stages of evaluation We have advanced the engineering and construction activities for our anaerobic digester pursuant to an agreement with Adirondack Farms, which is a family-owned dairy farm in upstate New York, to produce RNG from dairy cow manure, which we expect to be up and running in fiscal 2025. Once all three of these renewable natural gas facilities are operating at run rate capacity, we will be generating revenues from tipping fees, RNG sales for approximately 850,000 mm BTUs per year, environmental attribute credits, and fertilizer sales. We also continue to support our uncontrolled subsidiaries Oberon Fuels and Independence Hydrogen as they begin to scale their platforms for the production and sale of ultra-low carbon, renewable dimethyl ether, and clean hydrogen, respectively. During fiscal 2023, we invested additional capital into Oberon Fuels to support the commercialization of RDME as a blend with propane or as a precursor to hydrogen production. And we were the first in the world to begin delivering propane plus RDME at a 4% blend level to our forklift customers in Southern California. We've also invested in a proprietary blend facility in our Anaheim location and are actively testing different blend levels in forklift engines to expand the potential commercial applications for propane plus RDME. In our core propane business, our operating personnel did an excellent job safely delivering outstanding service to our customers and executing on our customer-based growth and retention initiatives. In fact, during fiscal 2023, we were able to deliver organic growth in our customer base even after excluding the impact of new customers that we acquired in an acquisition. This is a testament to the stability of our platform and the quality of service that our field personnel work so hard to deliver to our customers and local communities every day. We also acquired and successfully integrated a well-run propane business in a strategic market in our Upper Northwest operating territory, which provides excellent synergy potential. And we continue to foster the growth of our greenfield market expansion efforts in seven markets around the country. And from a balance sheet perspective, despite deploying nearly $230 million on investments to support our strategic growth initiatives and capital expansion in our RNG business in 2023, our total debt increased by just $123 million compared to where we ended fiscal 2022 as we were able to utilize excess cash flows to manage our overall leverage profile. Our long-term strategic growth plan is to continue to foster the growth of our core propane business while making strategic investments in the energy transition to lower carbon renewable energy alternatives. Our core propane business is the engine that helps provide the cash flow to support these strategic investments. As society transitions to these lower carbon solutions, Suburban Propane is leveraging our 95-year legacy of an unwavering commitment to safety and excellence in customer service and our reputation as a trusted distributor of energy to local communities in order to position the business for long-term growth and sustainability in a lower-carbon economy. A little later, I'll provide some closing remarks. However, let me turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss the full year and fourth quarter results in a little more detail. Mike, over to you.