UNITIL Corporation

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2025 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 11 on your telephone. You will then hear 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, Chris Golding, Vice President of Finance and Regulatory. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us to discuss Unito Corporation's third quarter 2025 financial results. Speaking on the call today will be Tom Eisner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Herstock, 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 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 Eisner. Thank you, Chris.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm going to begin on slide three, where today we announced adjusted net income excluding transaction-related costs of $0.4 million and adjusted earnings of $0.03 per share for the third quarter of 2025. This represents an increase of $0.01 per share compared to the third quarter of 2024. Through the first nine months of the year, adjusted net income was $33.5 million, or $2.03 per share, an increase of $1.4 million, or 3 cents per share, compared to the same period of the prior year. During this call, we'll cover several business updates, including the successful integration of Bangor Natural Gas into our utility operations, the recent closing of our main natural gas acquisition, the status of the Aquarian water transaction, and our ongoing rate case in New Hampshire. In addition, in connection with our recent acquisitions, we recently completed a $72 million equity offering, which strengthened our balance sheet and improved our credit metrics. As of September 30th, our ratio of funds from operations to debt was approximately 17%. Looking ahead, we see continued strong execution of our plan and reaffirm our guidance for earnings growth, dividend growth, and rate-based growth. Turning now to the three acquisitions on slide four, we're pleased to have acquired two highly complementary natural gas companies in Maine and have now fully integrated Bangor Natural Gas into our existing operations. I'm extremely proud of our employees throughout the company, including our colleagues in Bangor, whose focus and dedication led to this successful outcome. With the integration now complete, we expect to file our first distribution rate case in early 2027. As noted earlier, we closed our acquisition of Maine Natural Gas on October 31st. Having successfully integrated Bangor Natural Gas, we're confident the integration of Maine Natural Gas will also be completed efficiently and effectively. With that in mind, we currently plan to file a base rate case for Maine Natural Gas in mid-2027, somewhat after the Bangor Natural Gas filing. With regard to the Aquarian transaction, the regulatory approval processes are progressing as planned. The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission approved the acquisition on October 7th, and we expect orders in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine during the fourth quarter of this year. As I've said before, with their geographic fit, potential for synergies, and strong growth profiles, These companies are ideal additions to our utility operations. We look forward to providing the excellent service that our customers throughout Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire have come to expect. Turning to slide five, as mentioned on our previous call, we expect the acquisitions to accelerate rate-based growth to approximately 10 percent annually through 2029, supporting earnings growth in the upper half of our guidance range. Collectively, we expect the transactions to be earnings accretive once new distribution rates take effect. Turning now to slide six, next I'd like to provide updates on two significant electric investments, our utility-scale solar project in Kingston, New Hampshire, and our advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, project. The solar facility, which won project of the year at the New Hampshire Energy Week, is fully operational and is producing energy consistent with or above our modeled expectations. This is a first of its kind project in the state of New Hampshire and is capable of powering roughly 2,000 homes, reducing the amount of energy we would otherwise import from the regional grid. We are currently seeking recovery of this investment in our New Hampshire rate case. Moving to our advanced metering upgrade, The project is progressing as planned, and the replacement in Massachusetts will be completed by year end, with our work in New Hampshire beginning next year. These meters increase the flow of actionable data to empower our customers and enable improved decision-making in grid optimization. The meter upgrades in Massachusetts and New Hampshire will require approximately $40 million of capital investment. In Massachusetts, a portion of this investment is eligible for accelerated cost recovery. Moving on to slide seven, we recently released our 2025 corporate sustainability report and remain on track to reduce company-wide direct greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and to be net zero by 2050. This pledge underscores our continued commitment to environmental stewardship, sustainability, and corporate responsibility. Our safety metrics are excellent, our customers are highly satisfied with our service, and our employees are proud to work for Unitil. One example of an operational initiative we undertook to improve efficiency and reduce emissions is leveraging fleet data using telematics to support effective and sustainable decision-making. This initiative collects and analyzes performance data including driver behavior and fuel consumption to optimize fleet performance. We have been working diligently to improve fleet performance over the years and believe this will enable us to make beneficial changes that will improve efficiency, lower costs, and support our greenhouse gas reduction goals. With that, I'll now pass it over to Dan, who will take us through greater detail on our third quarter financial results.