UNITIL Corporation

Good day. Thank you for saying goodbye. Welcome to the Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings, Unitil Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would like to hand the conference over to your speaker today. Todd Diggins, Director of Finance. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's fiscal year 2021 financial results. Speaking on the call today will be Tom Meisner, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Barb Hebert, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. We will discuss financial and other information on this call. As we mentioned in the press release, announcing this call, we have posted information, including a presentation, to the investor section of our website at unitil.com. We will refer to that information during this call. Moving to slide two, the comments made today about future operating results or events are forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted. Statements made on this call should be considered together with cautionary statements and other information contained in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other documents we have filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we assume no obligation to update them. This presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. The accompanying supplemental information more fully describes these non-GAAP financial measures It includes a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP financial measures. The company believes these non-GAAP financial measures are useful in evaluating its performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chairman, President, and CEO, Tom Meisner.

Thanks, Todd, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I'm going to begin today's discussion on slide three, which provides a brief overview of Unitil's business strategy. Unitil is a pure-play distribution utility in New England that serving some of the most desirable areas along the New Hampshire and Maine Seacoast. Being a dedicated distribution utility, we do not own generation assets, nor do we have any of the large environmental obligations that often accompany them. In addition, our earnings are not impacted by commodity cost fluctuations as a result of approved recovery mechanisms. We have a diverse mix of residential, commercial, and industrial customers across the states we serve, and have about 25% more electric customers than gas. Through our regulatory strategies, we expect over 80% of our customers to be served under decoupled rate mechanisms by year-end, which minimizes revenue fluctuations due to weather, energy efficiency, or business cycles. Moving now to slide four, today we announced strong results for fiscal year 2021, with net income of $36.1 million in earnings of $2.35 per share. This represents an increase of 20 cents per share, or 9.3 percent over 2020, and reflects higher adjusted growth margins for both the electric and the gas divisions. Briefly looking ahead, I'd like to reaffirm our long-term guidance of 5 to 7 percent growth in earnings per share, with earnings growth expected to be above the high end of that range over the next two years. Touching on a few strategic updates, operationally we continue to exceed industry standards with a strong focus on continuous improvement. Customer satisfaction remains at an all-time high, and we were once again recognized with an EEI Emergency Response Award, reaffirming our best-in-class storm preparedness and restoration practices. Later on the call, Bob will provide a refresh of our investment plan, but I wanted to mention that we continue to have robust investment opportunities, and we forecast long-term rate-based growth of 6.5% to 8.5%. Finally, as noted on previous calls, we continue to embed sustainability into all aspects of our business strategy. We see this as a key underpinning to our long-term success. Our 2021 Corporate Sustainability Report can be viewed on our company website. Now, with that, I'll pass it over to Bob, who will provide further detail on our 2021 results.