Essential Utilities, Inc.

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Essential Utilities Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Brian Dingerdissen Brian, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. If you did not receive a copy of the press release, you can find it on our investment relations website. The slides can also be found on the website along with a webcast. As a reminder, some of the matters discussed today 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 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. References may be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of any non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures is posted in the investor relations section of our website. We will begin with Chris Franklin, our chairman and CEO, who will provide an update on the company. Then Dan Shuler, our chief financial officer, will provide an overview of the financial results. With that, I will turn it over to Chris Franklin.

All right, thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with a few updates on slide five. First, on the merger. As you likely saw in a press release we put out two weeks ago, we accomplished our first milestone regarding regulatory approval. The Kentucky Public Service Commission officially approved our merger request. This is our first regulatory green light. and it's a big step toward bringing our two companies together. Now, this momentum follows the clear yes we received from both sets of shareholders back in February, where the transaction was approved by an overwhelming margin, 95%. Now for the quarter. We reported gap earnings per share of 79 cents, which includes about 4 cents of merger-related costs. While the quarter itself was up against a difficult comp with the previously discussed non-recurring items from the first quarter of last year and merger-related costs this year. Now, when we look at the 2026 overall, we're very confident that we will meet our 5% to 7% annual growth in earnings per share compared to the non-GAAP 2024 earnings per share of $1.97. And Dan's going to cover this in a lot more detail in a few moments. While the quarter was a bit challenging, largely due to extreme weather we faced in some parts of our service territory, we're continuing to invest capital prudently and where it matters most. This quarter, we invested $269 million in our water, wastewater, and natural gas infrastructure. These investments help us to meet federal and state regulations, things like PFAS and lead, and boost reliability and safety for our employees, and our communities. Our current trajectory indicates that we'll meet our plan this year to make $1.7 billion in critical improvements by year's end. Our customer rates remain affordable and our planned investments and associated financing are built to meet our affordability goals. I have to tell you, I'm really proud of the team in both gas and water. for maintaining service for our customers during what were pretty challenging winter weather conditions this year, especially in January and February. Lastly, in March, we closed the Greenville water acquisition. You may recall that we closed Greenville wastewater in 2025. I'll provide an update on our overall acquisition program in a few moments. If you turn to slide six, you'll see a roadmap of what's ahead for completing our merger with American Water, which by the way, is still on track to close by the end of the first quarter of 2027. Once we cross the finish line, the combined company will serve more than 4.7 million water and wastewater customers and more than 740,000 natural gas customers. It really is an exciting path forward and we're moving full steam ahead. Slide seven, shows the heavy lifting behind the scenes integration planning efforts are continuing with both essential and american water employees involved as part of the integration management office the core integration teams as well as subject matter experts the focus is simple ensuring we're ready to hit the ground running as a world-class organization the day after we close this transaction these work streams and the partnership between leaders and subject matter experts from both companies are meant to ensure that the best practices of both companies are melded together in the combined company. We'll have a lot more to say on this as we make progress. Now, let's shift to the next slide, slide eight, to provide an update on our utility operations this year. Our continued mantra internally here is to employees and everyone else, is that we will conclude our time as an independent company with the same level of operational excellence we've enjoyed for nearly a century and a half. If you reviewed our proxy statement, you've seen the strength of our operating metrics, meeting and exceeding our targets and achieving many first and second quartile rankings versus our peers. I'll mention that extreme cold causes challenges for both natural gas and water utilities. For gas utilities, it can cause increased leaks and more difficulty completing capital projects. And in the water business, it can cause treatment issues, especially in wastewater, increased main breaks. And then across the board, there's the added cost of things like snow removal. But despite all of these challenges, our year-to-date water quality, safety, gas leaks, among other metrics, are all on track for another strong year. Through the first quarter of 2026, five more PFAS projects have been completed, and another 45 PFAS projects are under construction. We're on track for 106 PFAS project completions this year. Company-wide, in our water division, the 15 operational metrics we track, which include things like construction, safety, main breaks, leaks, and average time to address unplanned disruptions, 12 have a green status and only three are in yellow the team is of course focused on moving the three that are yellow over to green on the gas side we're installing intellis gas meters which are advanced meters designed for enhanced safety last year we installed 71 000 intellis meters and this year we have a target to install at least 80 000 more our gas division is focused on metrics associated with safety, construction, responsiveness, leaks, and damages. Of the 16 metrics we focus on, all but three are green, and we'd expect them all to be green by year end. Now, despite winter weather and potential distractions associated with the merger with American Water, I remain very proud of our team's continued focus on operational excellence. And with that, Dan will now take us on a deeper dive into the results for the quarter.