Spire Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the SPIRE second quarter earnings 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 this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Dudley, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. We issued our earnings news release this morning and you may access it on our website at spireenergy.com under newsroom. There's a slide presentation that accompanies our webcast and you may download it either from the webcast site or from our website under investors and then events and presentations. Presenting on the call today are Suzanne Sitherwood, President and CEO, Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Before we begin, let me cover our safe harbor statement and use of non-GAAP earnings measures. Today's call, including responses to questions, may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although our forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there are various uncertainties and risk factors that may cause future performance or results to be different than those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in our quarterly and annual filings with the SEC. In our comments, we will be discussing net economic earnings, contribution margin, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted long-term capitalization, which are all non-GAAP measures used by management when evaluating our performance and results of operations. Explanations and reconciliations of these measures to their GAAP counterparts are contained in our news release and the slide presentation. So with that, I will turn the call over to Suzanne.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning to everyone joining us for our second quarter update. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're all adjusting to a new normal. As we focus on staying safe and healthy during the coronavirus, we're living in a world of video calls, FaceTime, webcasts, working from home, wearing face masks, and washing our hands a lot. And we're connecting in new ways. Like you, many of us aren't in our offices and aren't able to see one another face-to-face. In fact, today is the second time in nearly two months that Steve Lindsay and I have been in the same location. Rest assured that we're distancing and disinfecting and getting the job done. It's not easy to stay connected in times like this. At SPIRE, connecting with us should feel like a handshake at the front door. But without the ability to actually shake someone's hand, we found ourselves leaning into other expressions of caring and friendship, like how we listen, how we check on our elderly neighbors, how we smile and wave hello to strangers. It's how our crews stop work, take off their hats, and put their hands over their heart when a funeral procession drives by. These moments of connection and caring inspire the good in all of us, and provide the energy it takes to walk through a time like this. A time when some communities are impacted more than others, but none go untouched. A time when we understand how essential our service is and how people count on us to deliver. A time when safety has an expanded meaning and personal protective equipment becomes an everyday necessity. But at SPIRE, it's easier for us to pivot We have a very clear mission that guides us. Answer every challenge, advance every community, and enrich every life through the strength of our energy. You see, we believe we are called to answer this and every challenge that arises. We know that people rely on our energy every day and that we are an essential service. We know that we cannot let our customers and communities down, and we know that safety is a core value. a value at the heart of every decision. It's because of this deeply held belief that we set in motion a broad range of protective steps to address the coronavirus health crisis and its economic impact on our customers while passionately protecting the health and safety of our employees and communities. We began in early March by activating our Incident Support Team, or the IST, a cross-functional team of 25 leaders from operations and all our shared services. The IST has been meeting nearly every morning to discuss challenges, solve issues, and coordinate actions, from HR policies to supply chain access to PPE, and impact to employees, customers, and operations. By the middle of March, we activated the highest level of our crisis response plan by convening our crisis management team, or CMT. I asked Steve Lindsey to lead this team as Fire Inc.'s Chief Operating Officer. Steve immediately gathered all of our chief officers and business unit presidents to quickly make executive decisions around broad ranging challenges. Steve will talk more about this in a moment. From my perspective, I'd like to say that it's been inspiring to watch the IST and CMT work. Together, we bring a collection of expertise to our conversations, from the very professional perspective of FIRE's leadership, to our external involvement with the American Gas Association, and our firsthand conversations with medical experts via the many hospital boards we serve on. Together, we are careful to balance the needs of our many stakeholders, including you. We are communicating early and often with all employees and customers. We are connecting regularly with our board and keeping our governors, legislators and regulators informed every step of the way. Most importantly, the CMT is keenly aware of the impact our decisions have on people. and everything we do, our goal is to flatten the curve and help control the spread of coronavirus while safely and reliably providing energy for our customers and communities. Thank goodness our largest operations are in Missouri and Alabama, areas of the country that have been minimally impacted by the pandemic. In fact, only 11 of our 3,500 employees have tested positive for the coronavirus and all but one person is back to work. As we work to meet the challenges created by the coronavirus, we remain focused on our strategy to deliver growth and value by growing organically, investing in infrastructure, and advancing through innovation. We continue to take steps to ensure that we remain strong, both financially and from an operations perspective. We'll hear more on that from Steve and Steve when they discuss our capital spending, including investments in new business and infrastructure upgrades as well as our updated CapEx forecast that supports our long-term growth outlook. As reported in our earnings announcement this morning, our second quarter net economic earnings per share was below last year and our FY20 plan. As Steve Rasche will discuss in more detail, the results were driven by lower margins due to warmer weather across our footprint, margins that were not fully mitigated by regulatory mechanisms. However, our results were minimally impacted by the coronavirus. And finally, we'll spend some time updating you on our process as we continue to pursue favorable regulatory outcomes across our jurisdictions with a focus on the Israel case and filings in Missouri. With that, I'll turn the call over to Steve Lindsey to discuss our results and coronavirus responses in more detail.