speaker
Eric
Conference Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Suburban Propane Partners Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the call over to Davin D'Ambrosio, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

speaker
Davin D'Ambrosio
Vice President and Treasurer

Thanks, Eric. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I'm here with Mike Stavalla, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mike Kuglin, our Chief Financial Officer, and Alex Centeno, Senior Vice President of the United States. This morning we will review our Third Quarter financial results along with our outlook for the business. Once we have 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 1934 as amended relating to the partnership's future business expectations and predictions, financial condition, and results of operations. These forward-looking statements involve certain risk 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 attributed to the partnership or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in there entirely by such cautionary statements. Our Form 10Q for the quarterly period ended June 28, 2025, which will be filed by the end of business today, contains additional disclosure regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors. Copies may be attained 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. The Form 8K will be available through a link in the Investor Relations section of our website. At this time, I will turn the call over to Mike Stavala for some opening remarks. Mike?

speaker
Mike Stavalla
President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Davin. Good morning. Thank you all for joining us today. Following a strong fiscal second quarter performance, we were very pleased to deliver another solid counter-seasonal quarter, despite unseasonably warm temperatures and volatility in the commodity price environment. Additionally, coming into the third fiscal quarter, customer tank inventories were generally on the higher end as a result of the strong weather-driven volume performance in the second quarter. Nonetheless, propane volumes for the third quarter were up slightly to the prior year. As always, our operations personnel continue to do an outstanding job, safely meeting the needs of our customers while effectively managing selling prices and expenses, as well as executing on our customer-based growth and retention initiatives. We are also seeing the benefits from the strategic propane acquisition in New Mexico that we closed during the first fiscal quarter of this year. In our renewable natural gas operations, average daily R&G injection for the third quarter declined slightly compared to the several operational improvement projects that are designed to enhance future R&G production, as well as multiple power outages in the Stanfield, Arizona area. We are continuing to implement several operational improvements at our Stanfield facility to stabilize and grow R&G production and injection, enhance safety protocols, improve feedstock intake practices, and improve overall plant efficiency to strengthen the long-term performance and returns of the facility, while also advancing the capital projects at our Columbus, Ohio and Upstate New York R&G facilities, which are expected to increase our overall R&G sales once those facilities are fully operational. While we remain focused on executing controllable operational improvements, revenues at the Stanfield facility continue to face headwinds from lower prices for environmental attributes, namely both California LCFS credits and federal D3 RINs. California LCFS credit prices remain depressed relative to historical levels, though average prices for the third quarter were flat compared to the prior year third quarter. We were encouraged, however, to see the finalization of amendments to the LCFS program implemented by CARB and made effective as of July 1, 2025, which accelerated carbon reduction targets and aims to create a better balance in the LCFS credit bank. Since the amendments were finalized in late June 2025, LCFS credit prices have increased 30%. Conversely, average federal D3 RIN prices for the third quarter were down 21% year over year. With the strong second quarter performance, cash flow generation in the fiscal third quarter was very strong as we collected on our receivables. And during the quarter, we used excess cash flows and to a lesser extent, proceeds from the issuance of common units under our ATM equity sales program to reduce outstanding debt by $69 million, helping to make incremental improvements in our overall leverage profile. In a moment, I'll come back for some closing remarks. However, at this point, let me turn it over to Mike Kuglin to discuss the third quarter results in more detail. Mike?

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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