Essential Utilities, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Essential Utilities Inc. Q1 2022 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Brian Dingerdison. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Kyle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am Brian Dingerdison, head of investor relations. If you did not receive a copy of the press release, you can find it by visiting the investor relations section of our website at essential.co. The slides we will be referencing in the webcast of this event can also be found there. Here is our forward-looking statement. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed during this call may include forward-looking statements that involve risk, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Please refer to our most recent 10-Q, 10-K, and other SEC filings for a description of such risk and uncertainties. During this call, reference may be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is included at the end of the presentation. It's also posted on our investor relations website. Here is our agenda for today. We'll start with Chris Franklin, our chairman and CEO, who will discuss the highlights from the first quarter and provide a company update. Next, Dan Schuller, our CFO, will discuss our financial results. Chris will then conclude the presentation with an update on our growth strategy and a summary of our guidance before opening the call for questions. With that, I will turn the call over to Chris Franklin.

Hey, thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I want to start off this morning just by letting you know that we held our annual meeting of shareholders last week, and I'm pleased to report that all of the items on the ballot were voted according to management's recommendations, so a good meeting overall. So let's talk about the first quarter. We had a strong first quarter with earnings per share of 76 cents, up 5.6%. Dan's going to talk to you a lot more detail about that in just a few moments. But the first few months of the year, we invested approximately $183 million in infrastructure improvements. That's in our combined water and natural gas segments. That compares to $178 million in the same period of last year, so a little bit ahead of that schedule. we remain confident that our ability to execute the $1 billion investment is well in hand for the rest of 2022. Now, we continue to advance our municipal acquisition strategy with our previously announced closing of Lower Makefield of Pennsylvania. That transaction closed, which added about $53 million in rate base and 11,000 customers to our water footprint in Pennsylvania. and we're diligently working on the closing and integration of our seven pending acquisitions, totaling $418 million in purchase price. I'm also pleased to report that we recently co-hosted a hydrogen summit in Pittsburgh. The purpose of the event was to bring together key stakeholders in a region that we know has long been at the forefront of energy innovation. We continue to look at possibilities associated with hydrogen, and we'll continue our discussions and our research. Now, the hydrogen event, along with the changing geopolitical conditions in the world, continue to strengthen our belief that natural gas has a firm place in the short- and long-term energy mix in our country, as well as many other countries around the world. As we've seen in the macro environment over the last several months, the tone regarding natural gas and its future continues to evolve. I think the public is becoming more educated on natural gas and the importance of American energy independence. Now, like everyone else in the industry, we continue to monitor public and private valuations of natural gas utilities in the market. We also remain committed to making investments in our natural gas utility to improve safety, reliability, and the environment, all while growing rate base and earnings per share. And lastly, as we continue to recover from COVID, we're pleased to hold a large-scale employee community volunteer effort associated with Earth Day across all 10 states in our footprint. As you know, we're very proud of our industry-leading ESG work and have shared some of that work with you in previous calls. Our ESG website has also received important recognition in the market. It was in that light that we held our first ever Essential Earth Day, which involved a variety of activities and opportunities for customer education, employee volunteerism, and corporate giving. We kicked off the events on March 22nd with World Water Day and concluded the series on April 22nd, which was Earth Day. Over that course of a month, we hosted 35 events across our 10-state footprint and had nearly 500 employees volunteer almost 2,000 hours of their time. The activities ranged from forest restoration and park cleanups to assisting with water filtration. Essential also provided $580,000 in financial donations to support 28 nonprofit organizations with their environmental causes. When we work together with our customers and the communities we serve to assist and partner nonprofit organizations, we recognize we can make a significant difference in our communities. And Dan, with that, we turn the call over to you in discussion about our financial results.