Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc.

Welcome to the Southwest Gas Holdings Investor Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal conference specialists by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Thomas Moran, Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary for Southwest Gas Holdings. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Southwest Gas Holdings fourth quarter and year-end 2022 earnings call. Throughout the call, we will be referencing presentation slides, which we have posted to our investor relations website. I am joined on today's call by Karen Haller, President and CEO of Southwest Gas Holdings, Rob Stefani, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Justin Brown, President of Southwest Gas Corporation, and Paul Daley, President and CEO of Century Group. Please note that on today's call, the company will address certain factors that may impact this year's earnings and provide some longer-term guidance. Some of the information that will be discussed today contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's assumptions, which may or may not come true And you should refer to the language on pages two and three of the presentation and the press release, as well as our SEC filings, for a description of the factors that may cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update any such statements.

I will now turn the call over to Karen. Thanks, Tom. I'm pleased you're joining us today to discuss the Southwest Gas Holdings fourth quarter and year-end results. Turning to slide five, I'd like to start the presentation with some strategic updates over the last few months. In December, we announced that we were moving forward with two transactions, the sale of Mountain West and the spin of Century. We announced the close of the Mountain West sale to Williams on February 14, 2023. with the $1.1 billion in net proceeds going toward debt reduction at Southwest Gas Holdings, creating more flexibility with our balance sheet and financing needs. I'm pleased to report the century spend is well underway. We are preparing to file an IRS private letter ruling this quarter to confirm the tax-free nature of the spend, and we're drafting regulatory approval filings for Arizona Corporation Commission approval of the transaction. We have a full project management office, and the Form 10 and audit planning has begun as well. We expect to complete the spend during the fourth quarter of 2023 or first quarter of 2024. As you can see on slide six, the spend of century enhances stockholder alignment and value creation as the two separate independent companies will have differentiated value propositions in the market. As we announced in December, we reviewed plans to engage the rating agencies through the RAS-RES process, and we have arrived at the 2023 financing plan, which Rob will go through later on the call. We plan to issue $250 million of equity in 2023 and anticipate equity needs of less than $100 million in total in the period between 2024 through 2025. Our capital markets plan will strengthen our position in maintaining and improving the credit profile for Southwest Gas Holdings and Southwest Gas Corporation. Closing out our strategic updates, we had two favorable rate case outcomes in Arizona and Nevada, which Justin will discuss further. We are pleased to see these positive regulatory developments as Southwest Gas Holdings moves to its next chapter. Turning to the next slide, we're excited for Southwest Gas Holdings' future as a fully regulated natural gas utility business. Moving to a pure play utility model enhances visibility and alignment with our investors. Resetting the business mix also creates a clear strategic focus on utility optimization and stable recurring cash flow generation that will drive value for our stockholders. As we look to our future as a pure play, Southwest Gas Corporation has a strong performance track record with a diversified, fully regulated business mix and growing customer base. Today, we serve more than 2 million customers across Arizona, California, and Nevada. And in 2022, we installed more than 41,000 first-time meter sets, exceeding our expectations for the year. Southwest Gas Corporation also has a constructive regulatory backdrop that will help to propel future growth. Our rate base is fully decoupled in our service territories, and as of this past February, our allowed rate base increased from $4.2 billion to $4.9 billion. As Justin will discuss shortly, we have favorable demand dynamics across our footprint, and we continue to work constructively with our regulators to enhance our rate base, including an upcoming filing in Nevada, which we expect in the third quarter of 2023. In short, we are well positioned to achieve our goals of reaching 5% to 7% rate base growth over the next three years, while also maintaining a strong investment-grade balance sheet and delivering a competitive dividend to our stockholders. As we show on slide 9, Sentry has a strong profile with a long tenured blue chip utility customer base across the United States and Canada. As a standalone company, Sentry is positioned for continued growth with a diversified platform and comprehensive capabilities across the entire utility value chain. Sentry is expected to benefit from strong tailwinds to support long-term growth as they continue to expand into new markets and support the energy transition, which Paul will discuss further. With a committed, experienced leadership team, we're confident in Sentry's path forward as a standalone utility infrastructure services leader. Moving on to slide 10, I would like to provide some highlights from the past year across all of our operating companies and discuss how our continued progress underscores our excitement about the future of Southwest Gas Holdings. Starting with Holdings, we reported adjusted EPS this year of $3 per share. We were able to negotiate our Southwest Gas Holdings revolver this past December, providing us more financial flexibility going forward. We also published our 2022 sustainability report, highlighting both Southwest Gas Holdings' role in the energy transition and the positive impact we have in the communities we serve. At Southwest Gas Corporation, we continued our industry-leading operational performance. We delivered another year of award-winning customer satisfaction and outstanding damage prevention while continuing to deliver reliable and safe energy to our customers. Century delivered record revenues of $2.8 billion this year, marking the 13th consecutive year of revenue increases. And although Mountain West is no longer under Southwest Gas Holdings' umbrella, the company contributed $80 million in adjusted net income. Those are just a few highlights from the year. Our CFO, Rob Stefani, and our OpCo presidents, Justin Barone from Southwest Gas Corporation, and Paul Daly from Sentry, will go into more detail shortly. With that, I'd like to hand over the call to Rob, who will be reviewing our financial performance of the year. Thanks, Karen.