Spire Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the SPIRE, Inc. 2022 year-end 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 1 on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Dudley. Please go ahead.

Scott Dudley Good morning and welcome to our fiscal 22 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. Our earnings released this morning and you may access it on our website at spireenergy.com under newsroom. There's also a slide presentation that accompanies our webcast and you may download that either from the webcast site or from our website, which will be found under Investors and then Events and Presentations. 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 be different than those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in our quarterly and annual filings with the SEC. In our comments, we'll be discussing economic earnings, which is a non-GAAP measure used by management when evaluating our performance and results of operations. An explanation and reconciliation of this measure to its GAAP counterpart is contained in both our news release and slide presentation. On our call today is Suzanne Southerwood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Also in the room with us today is Scott Carter, President of Spire Missouri, and Adam Woodard, Vice President and Treasurer and CFO of our gas utilities. With that, I will turn the call over to Suzanne.

Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It is our pleasure to speak with you today about SPIRE's performance for the fiscal year just completed, to update you on recent developments and to share our outlook to the future. Last year, we remained squarely focused on our long-term strategic priorities and commitments, while being mindful of the vital role of our natural gas businesses play in ensuring a sustainable energy future. Fiscal 2022 was a year of challenges and opportunities. We collectively tackled both with equal energy, And as we closed the year, we delivered for our customers while achieving strong operating performance. We reported earnings for the year of $3.86 per share, reflecting the strong performance in our midstream and marketing businesses and at our gas utility. We met the headwinds of weather and a lower rate of return in Missouri, with a path for improvement in fiscal 2023. We continue the robust investment in our gas utilities to upgrade infrastructure, drive new businesses, and advance our technology. This has led to further gains in safety, system integrity, environmental performance, and overall service experience for the 1.7 million homes and businesses we proudly serve. We successfully met important challenges head on, including working to settle the contested issues in our Missouri rate review. We, along with other parties, the following proposed agreement. This settlement is subject to Missouri Commission review and approval, but we are pleased by the prospect for a timely resolution to the case. At the same time, we dealt with the challenges of higher natural gas costs and inflationary pressures. We continue to work hard to manage all of our costs and minimize their impact on our customer bills. In fact, part of the Missouri rate case settlement includes a commitment to enhance programs that provide support and financial assistance to customers. While it is our job to manage the challenges for our customers, I want to thank our 3,600 employees for stepping up this year and remaining focused on ensuring people have safe and reliable natural gas delivered with great service every day while supporting our communities. In fiscal 22, we also had success in advancing our midstream businesses. We remain focused on securing a permanent FERC operating certificate for Spire STL pipeline and we began the expansion project, Aspire Storage. These are both great natural gas businesses that serve their customers and regions. As we step forward into fiscal 2023, we are further increasing our capital investment plan and expanding our time horizon to 10 years. This long-term commitment to capital deployment ensures our continued growth while delivering innovation and safe, reliable, sustainable energy for decades to come. Recognizing our performance in 2022, as well as confidence in our long-term growth prospects, our Board of Directors recently increased FHIR's common dividend by 5.1% to an annualized rate of $2.88 per share. This is the 20th consecutive year of dividend increases, which we have continuously paid since 1946. Now, I'll pass the call to Steve Lindsey.