UGI Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the UGI Corporation Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants 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 11 on your telephone. You will receive an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tameka Morris. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fiscal 2023 third quarter earnings call. With me today are Roger Perreault, President and CEO, Sean O'Brien, CFO, and Bob Beard, COO. Roger and Sean will provide an overview of our results and the entire team will then be available to answer your questions. 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 most recent annual and quarterly reports 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 that are different from expectations. We will also describe our business using certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the comparable GAAP measures are available within our presentation. Now, I'm pleased to turn the call over to Roger.

Thank you, Tameka, and good morning, everyone. On our call today, I would like to share several key highlights for the quarter, as well as some important areas of focus as we continue to execute on our strategy. Sean will provide a high-level overview of our quarterly financial performance, and then we will have ample time for your questions. Yesterday, we reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of 0 cents for the quarter and $2.81 on a year-to-date basis. We were pleased to see solid margin improvement. in aggregate for our business, as this enabled us to withstand cost and inflationary pressures during the quarter. Year-to-date EBIT from our reportable segments was relatively consistent this prior year, largely due to significant benefits from the weather normalization rider and increased gas base rates in our Pennsylvania gas utility, higher margins and the attractive fee-based contract structures in our midstream and marketing segment, and higher LPG unit margins in the global LPG businesses that partially offset the impact of lower retail volumes and increased operating and administrative expenses. With our increasing focus on improving earnings reliability and strengthening the balance sheet, we were also pleased with our disciplined execution focused on reducing debt at Amerigas by $200 million, which provides additional buffer on our debt covenant. We continue to focus on creating shareholder value, and this is demonstrated in our attractive dividend growth of 7.2%, which exceeds our long-term target of 4%. Next, given UGI's year-to-date results and our expectations for the fiscal fourth quarter, we now anticipate that adjusted diluted EPS will be at the low end of our guidance range of $2.75 to $2.90. As we close out fiscal year 2023, We are employing a strong focus on cost control, including disciplined position management and removal of discretionary spend to help offset weather impacts and volume pressure earlier in the year. Beyond our financial results, we've also made some meaningful progress since our last earnings call. We continue to deploy a significant amount of capital in our regulated utilities businesses with approximately $400 million invested year to date. primarily in infrastructure replacement and betterment. The utility segment continues to be an area of organic growth, and we are pleased with the addition of roughly 11,000 new residential heating and commercial customers year to date. Our utilities team also continues to make progress on the rate cases filed this fiscal year. First, in mid-July, we filed a joint settlement petition with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for our electric utilities rate case. The settlement reflects an $8.5 million rate increase, which is greater than 70% of the requested revenue increase, and we anticipate the Commission will rule on the settlement in early fall for implementation in Q1 of fiscal 2024. Secondly, the non-payer rate case continues to progress as expected, and I anticipate new rates will remain in the second quarter of fiscal year 2020. As a reminder, This rate case included a request for a revenue increase of approximately $20 million and a weather normalization adjustment similar to the mechanism that we have in Pennsylvania. Looking at our global LPG businesses, as we've shared over the past few months, an important area of focus has been to exit the non-core energy marketing businesses in Europe. We were pleased to make additional progress in this area by signing definitive agreements to divest of certain natural gas and power marketing portfolios in Belgium and France and the wind and solar business in the Netherlands. With those agreements in place and the continued exploration of customer contracts, we anticipate that natural gas and power marketing volumes for fiscal 2024 will decline by more than 65% and 80% respectively. Also, at UGI International, we continue to monitor energy conservation trends that began in response to energy security concerns and government mandates that were issued ahead of this past winter season. As we head into the next winter, we will continue to monitor customer behaviors so that we can react as quickly as possible. Similarly, at Amerigas, we are seeing improvement in some of our critical operating metrics, such as on-time deliveries, Zero Fills, Inefficient Fills, and Stopping Levels, and this positions us very well for the future volume growth. Lastly, I wanted to make note of the fact that last month we released our fifth annual ESG report entitled Partners for the Future. In this new report, organized to align with TCFD, we provide an update on our prior commitments and highlight progress across a number of our key ESG initiatives. I am proud of the efforts from our teams and the partnerships that we've established that better enable us to operate in a sustainably and socially responsible manner. Now, I'll turn the call over to Sean, who will comment on the financial results for the quarter.