Essential Utilities, Inc.

star one again it is my pleasure to turn the call over to mr bryan bring your dissin you may begin thank you good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2025 earnings call if you did not receive a copy of the press release you can find it on our investor relations website the slides will also be found there as will be a webcast of the event 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 10Q, 10K, and other SEC filings for a description of such risk and uncertainties. During the course of this call, reference may be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of any non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is posted on the website. We will begin the call with Chris Franklin, our chairman and CEO, who will provide an update on the company. Then Mike Hewer, the president of our gas business, will provide an update on the gas business. And then Dan Shuler, our chief financial officer, will provide an overview of the financial results before Chris closes the call and opens it up for questions. With that, I will turn it over to Chris Franklin.

Hey, thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today, and let's begin on slide five with some highlights. First, we posted strong results this quarter, $3 gap earnings per share, a 6% increase over last year's quarter results. Both our water and gas businesses performed well, as expected. You'll hear more about our gas business from Mike Huer in just a few moments, as Brian mentioned. With those first quarter results, we are reaffirming our 2025 earnings per share guidance range of $2.07 to $2.11. versus last year's earnings of $1.97 per share on an on-gap basis. Dan will provide a quarter-by-quarter view of our 2025 earnings expectations in just a few moments. We are also reaffirming our plans to invest between $1.4 and $1.5 billion in infrastructure investments in 2025. Through March 31st, we've already invested $270.5 million in infrastructure improvements across our footprint. Now, we previously announced to support our growth and meet our credit metrics, we have began to raise equity through our ATM program. So far this year, we've issued approximately $210 million. Throughout the year, we'll look at the market conditions and our share price for opportunities to continue using our ATM. It's always important to mention that our achievements go far beyond the financial results. Some of the things of which we are most proud are our operational achievements. Our water quality compliance results continue to be industry leading at a 99.8% compliance rate, meeting state and federal regulations over the last 12 months. Our PFAS work continues to be on time and on budget. we will be fully compliant with the four parts per trillion MCL by 2028, and we remain on target to meet the $450 million in capital spend rate to achieve that compliance. Now, importantly for our customers, we expect to receive approximately $100 million in proceeds from the settlements from the polluters, and for Aqua Pennsylvania, we've already received approximately $10 million in low-interest loans and grants from the government and are also on track in Pennsylvania to receive approximately $59 million in grants or loans after all the applications have been approved. We also continue to see strong operating results in the natural gas company, and Mike will fill us in in a few moments on that work. Environmental stewardship is a key element of our work. And it's why we were so proud to learn that for the third year in a row, we were named to USA Today's list of climate leaders. A great honor for us and a nice recognition of our continued commitment to protecting and providing essential resources for life. Now, as we think about our successes, I have to mention that our work in the Texas legislature to pass future test year legislation is showing positive signs. And just last week, the Texas House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the future test year bill, and now it's off to the Senate for consideration in that chamber. We'll keep you posted as developments occur. And you may recall that our rate cases in Ohio have been taking an extended period of time over the last few cycles at the PUCO. In the last couple of weeks, though, legislation was passed by both the House and Senate in Ohio that sets deadlines for rate cases. After the governor signs the legislation, there will be new statutory timelines associated with rate cases in Ohio. We see this as a really positive development. Also in Virginia, legislation was passed to expand the water and wastewater infrastructure surcharge. We are really proud of our work with both regulators and legislators to find opportunities to make vital and sizable capital investments and quickly and efficiently recover that capital so we can put it back to work again. Now, slide six, hopefully you recognize our consistent year after year growth in earnings and dividends. 2025 is shaping up to be another strong year in this string of success. For many years now, our team has been able to consistently deliver on the guidance that we provided you our earnings per share is consistently within a five to seven percent annual growth rate and since we started providing annual guidance back in 2016 we have consistently met or exceeded market expectations that consistent earnings growth has allowed us to continue to build on our over 30-year history of growing our dividend that dividend growth has averaged about seven percent since I became CEO in 2015. Lastly, our financial results are made possible by the excellent execution of our operating team and their commitment to the community where we serve. Since 2015, we've invested nearly $8 billion in capital improvements and have grown rate base at a 15% compounded annual growth rate if you include the purchase of peoples. I continue to be impressed by what the team has achieved. And our team is incredibly honored to be the current stewards of this great company with its 140-year history. Many of you have told me you enjoy hearing from our segment president. So today, our gas segment president, Mike Huer, is joining us. Mike's going to talk a little bit about some of our achievements and some of our ongoing initiatives. And he'll touch a little bit on the data center activity happening in the region where we serve. Mike?

Thanks, Chris. I'm happy to be here today and appreciate the opportunity to highlight the significant and important work that the team of Peoples Gas are doing. As noted on slide 8, Peoples is the largest natural gas LDC in Pennsylvania with over 700,000 customers and over $4 billion of rate base as of the end of 2024. Additionally, our gas segment includes our operations in Kentucky, serving over 40 000 customers since the acquisition by essential the clear focus of our gas segment has been the increased safety and reliability of our 15 000 mile distribution system as we work to reduce risk and achieve constructive regulatory outcomes next on slide nine i wanted to turn to an operational highlight with the intellis meter program In Q3 of 2024, Essential implemented a pilot program with the gas division to install and assess the Intellis solid state gas meter. The Intellis meters provide added safety features and increased protection of customers in the communities we serve. The pilot concluded with the installation of over 30,000 Intellis meters in 2024. and in Q1 of this year, 2025. We've moved from the pilot stage to a full implementation plan to install these new meters in all residential and small commercial properties within our service area. The added safety measures associated with these meters include an automatic shutoff if the system were over pressurized or if there was an uncontrolled flow of natural gas. Additionally, in the event of a fire, the meter has the functionality to shut down automatically. As of now, we are assessing a comprehensive program to install the Intellis meters at nearly 700,000 customer counts in the coming years. We are extremely bullish on this effort as we work to be among the safest gas utilities in the United States. Moving along to slide 10, Let me now mention a couple updates to our gas business, starting with the weather normalization adjustment, which is a mechanism we received in our last people's rate case. As with other utilities across the nation, People's Gas also experiences volatility in weather patterns and subsequently impact distribution revenues beginning October 1, 2024. People receive authority to implement a weather normalization adjustment or WNA mechanism to combat volatility and stabilize bills for customers and the company. Since the inception of the WNA mechanism, actual weather has varied in billing months from greater than 17% colder than normal in January of 2025. to almost 30% warmer than normal in March of 2025. Given the weather volatility, this type of alternative rate making mechanism has proven to be valuable for the company and our customers. The mechanism requires the company to track weather, heating degree days, during the billing cycle of each customer when the weather is 3% colder than normal or 3% warmer than normal, an adjustment is reflected on the bill. The primary driver of the mechanism has been to moderate the financial impact of volatile weather for customers and the company. We believe the WNA mechanism is working as intended for all stakeholders. Finally, throughout the nation, there is a great deal of attention focused on the development of data centers and the associated need for electric power. We continue to field inquiries related to on-site power generation and data center development to support artificial intelligence, AI. As of today, we are in discussions with data center developers that represent up to five gigawatts of needed power generation in the Pittsburgh region. It's no secret that the vast natural gas resources within the Marcellus and Utica Shell formations presents an opportunity of robust and lower cost power generation within the people's gas footprint and across Pennsylvania. The key message is that our company will support these activities in every way possible as they present new and unique economic development opportunities. Given the projected shortfall of available power generation within PJM, our regional transmission organization, the company is working with individual customers, data center developers, energy producers, and natural gas pipelines to support these important development efforts. While it's certainly too early to predict the exact investment needed to develop these projects, there are clear benefits to the region in what has been described as a very, very fluid environment surrounding data centers and energy usage. For peoples and essential utilities, the potential increased load could increase the utilization factor of the distribution system that would help to keep natural gas service affordable for our customers. And with that, I will turn it to Dan for a review of the financials.