UNITIL Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2024 Unitilk 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, Chris Golding, Vice President of Finance and Regulatory. Please go ahead.

All right, thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's fourth quarter 2024 financial results. Speaking on the call today will be Tom Eisner, 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 Todd Diggins, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. We will discuss financial and other information on this call. As we mentioned in the press release announcing today's 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. 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 risk 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 security 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 Meisner. Great.

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm going to begin on slide three, where yesterday we announced another strong year of results, with adjusted earnings of $47.8 million, or $297 per share, representing an increase of $0.15 per share, or 5.3% over 2021-2022. We fully earned our authorized returns with a consolidated return on equity of 9.4%, representing constructive regulatory outcomes in our focus on cost management. On January 31st, we completed our acquisition of Bangor Natural Gas. We view Bangor as highly complementary to our existing gas operations in Maine and fully expect the transaction to be earnings accretive over the long run as we move towards cost of service rates for Bangor Natural Gas customers. Operationally, we had another outstanding year with electric reliability, gas safety, and customer service metrics all comparing favorably to our utility peers. Today, we are also reaffirming our guidance for long-term earnings growth, dividend growth, and rate-based growth. We will also provide earnings guidance for 2025 later during this call. Moving on to slide four, As I just mentioned, on January 31st, we completed the acquisition of Bangor Natural Gas with a purchase price of $70.9 million plus approximately $0.3 million for working capital. The transaction was funded with short-term debt, and we intend to recapitalize Bangor Natural Gas with a combination of equity and long-term debt to achieve a capital structure similar to our other operating companies. We're excited to serve the greater Bangor area and look forward to providing our new customers with a high level of service they expect of us. The process of integrating Bangor Natural Gas into the rest of our operations is well underway. We expect the transaction to be earnings neutral on a fully diluted basis in the near term. And as I mentioned on the previous slide, we expect this transaction will be earnings accretive over the long term. after cost of service rates are put in place following a base rate case. Turning to slide five, we pride ourselves on providing exceptional service to our customers, and 2024 was no exception, as 90% of our customers reported being satisfied with the service we provide. We were the highest rated of 23 eastern utilities and garnered high marks in a number of important categories. These strong results are a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our employees. Moving now to slide six, operationally we maintained top quartile electric reliability and had the fifth lowest service interruption time in the past 20 years. Targeted investments combined with aggressive vegetation management programs have supported consistently strong electric reliability performance. Our gas emergency response also remains among the top tier of our peers, and we recently received the Northeast Gas Association's Excellence in Safety Award for the company's implementation of a pipeline safety management system. In 2024, we also completed our gas infrastructure modernization program in Maine, concluding a 14-year program that began in 2011. We've now replaced all cast iron, bare steel, and other aging infrastructure, while also increasing system operating pressures and greatly expanding system capacity. In addition to enhancing system safety, modernizing our gas system and reducing fugitive emissions is an important element of our greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. As a reminder, we completed our pipe replacement in New Hampshire in 2017, and pipe replacement efforts are ongoing in Massachusetts. Turning now to slide seven, as discussed during our previous earnings call, we are working through our advanced metering infrastructure upgrade, or AMI project, that will replace all electric meters in our service areas with new state-of-the-art meters. This is an exciting project and a significant step towards meeting the needs of the clean energy transition. The project is progressing as expected, and we have completed all IT integrations, installed new radio frequency equipment, and system testing is underway. We expect the meter replacement at our Massachusetts subsidiary to be complete this year and at our New Hampshire subsidiary by 2027. The estimated cost is approximately $40 million, and in Massachusetts, the costs associated with this project are eligible for accelerated cost recovery. With that, I will now pass it over to Dan, who will provide greater detail on our 2024 financial results.