UGI Corporation

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the UGI Corporation First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to hand the compass over to your host today, Tameka Morris, Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are John Walsh, President and CEO of UGI, Ted Yastrzemski, CFO of UGI Corporation, Bob Beard, Executive Vice President, Natural Gas, and Roger Perreault, Executive Vice President, Global LPG. Before we begin, let me remind you that our comments today include certain forward-looking statements which management believes to be reasonable as of today's date only. Actual results may differ significantly because of risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Please read our earnings release and our annual report on Form 10-K for an extensive list of factors that could affect results. We assume no duty to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances associated that are different from expectations. We'll also describe our business using certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to the comparable GAAP measures are available on slide seven of our presentation. Now, let me turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Tameka. Good morning and welcome to our call. I hope that you've all had a chance to review our press release reporting first quarter results. UGI posted a very strong Q1 as we surpassed our prior high point for Q1 adjusted EPS achieved last year. Our strong performance in the quarter is a clear demonstration of our ability to meet our financial commitments while addressing the challenges presented by warmer than normal weather and the continued impact of the pandemic on some customer segments. We benefited from the geographic and operational diversity of our businesses, our proactive response to this quarter's challenges, and a strong focus on delivering results. This was an important quarter for the company. During the last week of the quarter, we announced our agreement to acquire Mountaineer Gas Company, the largest LDC in West Virginia. We're excited about the opportunity to expand our gas utilities business and eager to welcome the Mountaineer team and their customers to the UGI family later in 2021. Earlier in the quarter, we announced our investment in a utility-scale renewable natural gas project in Idaho, which follows our acquisition of GHI, an RNG distributor, in Q4 of fiscal 20. These investments, as well as additional opportunities under development, will accelerate the strategic rebalancing of our business portfolio and enhance our ESG efforts. On today's call, I'll comment on our achievements in Q1 I'll turn it over to Ted, who'll provide you with a financial review of our Q1 performance. Bob Beard and Roger Perot will comment on critical developments across our businesses. And I'll then conclude by providing an update on our environmental, social, and governance activities, and a comment on the outlook for the balance of fiscal 21. Our Q1 gap EPS was $1.44, while our adjusted Q1 EPS was $1.18. As I noted earlier, our adjusted EPS was just above our Q1 fiscal 20 adjusted EPS of $1.17, despite weather that was warmer than prior year in all service territories except Europe. Both quarters have been adjusted for the mark-to-mark valuation of unsettled hedges and other items, which Ted will cover later. This very strong earnings performance reflected the strength of our diversified businesses. UGI International had a particularly strong quarter as we benefited from weather that was close to normal and enjoyed the benefits of our LPG transformation work. Midstream and marketing had a very solid quarter as well, despite weather that was 11% warmer than Q1 fiscal 20. Our significant foundation of fee-based margin was the key contributor. We also benefited from increased capacity management margin in the quarter. Our teams across all our business did an exceptional job executing as we addressed the weather and pandemic challenges to deliver a very strong quarter while remaining focused on safety, service levels, and sustainability. Before I turn the call over to Ted, I'd like to comment on the progress achieved in several key areas with major developments in Q1. Our eight-cylinder exchange program at Amerigas continues to see high levels of demand Thank you very much. and we expect to double the number of markets where Cinch is offered over the next 18 months. Total ACE volumes were up 25% in Q1 versus the same period last year. Our customer base at UGI Utilities continues to grow as we added more than 3,900 new heating customers. We continue to be a leader in our work with major transport companies as they strive to reduce emissions by converting fleets to compressed natural gas. We've just commenced construction on a project to deliver natural gas to UPS for a large regional fleet of CNG vehicles. This CNG facility is expected to be among the largest of its kind in North America and will help UPS achieve significant emission reductions. Utilities also remain focused on our long-term infrastructure replacement program. We exceeded our 2020 goals for infrastructure replacement despite some disruptions to our project schedules in the spring due to the pandemic and expect to establish new record levels of replacement and betterment spend in fiscal 21. Our new Bethlehem LNG storage and vaporization unit was placed into full service in December. This expansion of our LNG network adds 70,000 decatherms a day of peaking capacity at a critical delivery point that serves the Lehigh Valley. This is another important step in the ongoing development of our peaking services business. I'll return later on the call to comment on our ESG initiatives, but I'd like to turn it over to Ted at this point for the financial review. Ted? Thanks, John.