UNITIL Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q1 2023 Unitil 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 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Todd Diggins, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's first quarter 2023 financial results. Speaking on the call today will be Tom Meissner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Herstack, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Also with us today are Bob Hebert, President and Chief Administrative Officer, and Chris Goulding, Vice President, Finance and Regulatory Services. 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 and 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 and 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 and CEO Tom Meissner.

Great. Thanks, Todd, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Before I begin the presentation, I did want to highlight some recent organizational changes that you probably took note of during Todd's introduction. First, I'm pleased to announce that Bob Hebert has taken on expanded responsibilities within the company and will assume the role of President and Chief Administrative Officer. Stepping into Bob's former role as Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer is Dan Herstack, who joins us on the call today. Todd Diggins has been appointed Chief Accounting Officer and Controller, the position formerly held by Dan. These changes are all part of the company's long-term succession planning and will ensure management continuity well into the future. I'm pleased that we have this well-seasoned management team who will be guiding the company in the years ahead. Moving on to the presentation, I'm going to begin on slide four. Today we announced strong results for the first quarter of 2023 with net income of $24.1 million, or $1.51 per share, which represents an increase of 16 cents per share, or 12% over 2022. These results were achieved with higher adjusted gross margins led by customer growth, execution of our regulatory agenda, and focused cost control. As a reminder, with the completion of our New Hampshire rate cases last year, the majority of our customers are now under decoupled rates, which stabilizes our revenues and helps offset the effects of weather and changing usage patterns. Operation and maintenance expenses decreased year over year, a notable achievement considering the current inflationary environment. We anticipate that for the balance of the year, O&M will remain relatively flat to 2022 levels. Our regulatory agenda continues to be active. As we'll discuss later in the presentation, yesterday the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission found that our proposed utility scale solar project to be in the public interest, and we will now begin construction phase of the project. We're very pleased with the broad-based support the project continues to receive. Also yesterday, we filed a comprehensive base rate request in Maine, and we are planning to file both gas and electric rate cases in Massachusetts during the third quarter. Looking forward, we reaffirm our long-term guidance of 5 to 7 percent growth in earnings per share. We're confident in our investor value proposition of sustainable, competitive long-term earnings growth with managed risk. Turning to slide five, superior service has always been fundamental to our strategy, and our consistently strong customer satisfaction ratings reflect that commitment. A key pillar of our strategy is creating and providing personalized services, information, and rate options enabling our customers to more effectively manage their energy use. As part of that strategy, we have implemented a redesigned energy bill that is guided by customer feedback, provides concise information, and promotes programs and services benefiting our customers. The new format provides intuitive visual data displaying usage patterns and includes a QR code enabling convenient online payments. This initiative was a multiyear project that is an important step in ensuring our customers have ready and convenient access to relevant information and beneficial products and services. Moving on to slide six, as I mentioned last quarter, 2022 was the record year for both electric service reliability and gas emergency response. That achievement reflects our tireless commitment to safety and reliability. We aim to provide the best possible service and work hard to overcome the many challenges associated with that mission. As one example, in March of this year, a powerful nor'easter swept across New England, dumping over two feet of heavy wet snow in parts of our service territory. That storm affected roughly one-third of our electric customers, yet we were able to restore service to 99% of affected customers within 48 hours. As always, our employees rose to the occasion and met our customers' reliability expectations. Slide seven provides an overview of the key pillars of our sustainability strategy. We are committed to being stewards of the environment, to being an employer sought out by talented and diverse individuals, and to creating positive change in the communities we serve. Our overall growth strategy is well aligned with these commitments We believe our ability to make informed practical decisions will allow us to best address the opportunities and challenges ahead. We are interested in the evolving energy landscape and look forward to the changes that lie ahead. Moving now to slide eight, as I noted earlier, we received an order from the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission determining that our Kingston solar project is in the public interest. A letter of support had previously been jointly filed by the Department of Energy, Clean Energy New Hampshire, and the Council for the Office of Consumer Advocate. This project has a wide range of benefits, including avoided energy costs for customers, stimulation of the local economy, and energy generation without emissions. The company, all interveners, and the Commission agreed that this first-of-its-kind project in New Hampshire was good for customers good for the economy, and good for the environment. We are very grateful for the overwhelming support the project has received. Construction is now expected to get underway shortly, and the in-service date is slated for the second half of next year, at which point we will see cost recovery through the rate-making process. We will continue to provide additional updates as this exciting project continues to develop. With that, I'll pass it over to Dan, who will be taking us through the details of our first quarter results. Dan?