Suburban Propane Partners, L.P.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Suburban Propane Partners Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 9, 2024. And I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer, thank you. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our fiscal 2024 second quarter earnings conference call. Joining me this morning are Mike Stavala, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Coogland, our Chief Financial 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 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, predictions, 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 by such cautionary statements. Our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023, and Form 10-Q for the period ended March 30, 2024, which will be filed at the end of business today, contain additional disclosures regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. 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 section of our website. At this point, I will turn the call over to Mike Stavala for some opening remarks.

Mike? Great. Thanks, Devin, and good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. The fiscal 2024 heating season presented widespread unseasonably warm weather across the vast majority of our operating territories, with the exception of a two-week period of extreme cold temperatures in mid-January, during which reported heating degree days were 33% colder than the prior year. For the fiscal 2024 second quarter, average temperatures were 8% warmer than normal, which followed a first quarter that was also 9% warmer than normal. While the warm weather negatively impacted customer demand for heating purposes, we were once again able to leverage our experience in managing our business through a challenging heating season, and our operating personnel did an outstanding job managing the things they can control, namely keeping safety as their highest priority, providing exceptional service to our customers, managing selling prices, and controlling expenses. In addition, The recent and continued favorable trends in our customer base helped to offset some of the shortfall in heat-related demand. As a result, volumes for the second quarter of fiscal 2024 were just 2.7% below the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $147 million, down $2 million, or 1.3%, compared to the prior year second quarter. In our renewable natural gas operations, We are continuing to install an operational excellence mindset that has made us a leader in the propane industry, including driving efficiencies, modifying our manure collection practices to increase the amount of volatile solids to be processed, and identifying additional local dairies in the Stanfield, Arizona area to increase manure intake. As a result, we are continuing to improve the amount of average daily pipeline injected RNG at the Stanfield facility with an average of 1,139 MMBTUs injected per day during the second quarter of fiscal 2024, an improvement of 8.4% compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2024. And with the continued enhancements that we are making, we have additional opportunities to increase production levels even further. We're also continuing to advance our capital improvement plans for the installation of RNG upgrade equipment at our Columbus, Ohio facility and the construction of our anaerobic digester facility at Adirondack Farms in upstate New York. We expect both facilities to be completed in the second half of calendar 2025. Finally, subsequent to the end of the second quarter, we closed on two small propane acquisitions in strategic markets in Florida and Nevada, investing a total of approximately $13 million. So while warm weather weighed on customer demand in the fiscal 2024 heating season, Our operational personnel delivered solid results, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to our long-term strategic growth objectives of fostering the growth of our core propane business while making strategic investments in lower carbon renewable energy alternatives. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks. However, at this point, I'll turn it over to Mike Coogland to discuss the second quarter in more detail. Mike?