AltaGas Ltd.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AltaGas second quarter 2024 financial results conference call. My name is Chris and I'll be your operator for today's call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you have any difficulties hearing the conference, please press star then zero for operator assistance at any time. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being broadcast live on the internet and recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Aaron Swanson, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Swanson.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Elta Gas's second quarter 2024 results conference call. Speaking this morning will be Vern Yu, President and Chief Executive Officer, and James Harbilis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We're also joined here this morning by Randy Toon, President of our midstream business, Blue Jenkins, President of our Utilities Business, and John Morrison, Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. This call is being webcast and we encourage those listening to follow along with the supporting slides that can be found on our website. I'll remind everyone that we will refer to forward-looking information on today's call. This information is subject to certain risks and uncertainties as outlined in the forward-looking information disclosure on slide two in the presentation. As always, prepared remarks will be followed by an analyst question and answer period. With that, I'll turn the call over to Vern.

Thanks, Erin. Good morning, and thanks everyone for joining us today. It's great to be here today to share our strong Q2 results. I'll start with some highlights from the quarter, provide an update on our major projects, then I'll turn it over to James. Let's move to slide four. We delivered normalized EBITDA of $295 million in Q2, which was up 23% year over year. Normalized EPS was 14 cents per share, doubling what we achieved in Q2 2023. These results were modestly ahead of our internal expectations, but positioned us well to deliver on our 2024 guidance. Our midstream segment had record export volumes, more than 123,000 barrels a day. Performance across the balance of midstream was also very strong, with positive year-over-year growth in volumes across the business. Utilities were in line with our expectations and continued to deliver stable earnings growth, despite warmer-than-normal weather in D.C. and Michigan. We were able to offset this warm weather with enhanced cost management, strong retail performance, and continued rate-based investments. Diving deeper into our midstream segment, we continue to focus on de-risking our operations to generate stable and predictable results. We recently finalized long-term agreements for an additional 18% of REIF's Phase 1 export capacity. This is inclusive of our recent Birchcliff announcement. And we're in the late stages of finalizing more tolling agreements with multiple counterparties for more than 100% of reef's initial capacity. In Q2, we executed an agreement to construct a fifth VLGC time charter, which locks in marine shipping costs and further de-risks our operations. We expect this VLGC to arrive in late 2026. We're about 87% hedged for global exports, 86% hedged on frack-exposed barrels, and 100% hedged on Baltic Freight for the balance of 2024. We're also now starting to hedge for the 2025-2026 NGL calendar year as part of our systematic hedging program. Turning to our midstream growth projects on slide 5, We're making steady progress on the execution of our two major projects, Reef and Pipestone 2. On Reef, we reached a positive FID earlier in this quarter. Site clearing and geotechnical work have now been completed. We just started work on the jetty, as well as additional on-site earthworks. We've executed fixed price EPC contracts for roughly 40% of the project, with plans to award another 10% under fixed price contracts in the coming weeks. Additional fixed price DPC contracts will be awarded as we move through the construction cycle. Pipe Zone 2 construction is also on schedule and on budget. The two acid gas injection wells at the plant have now been drilled and completed. Construction on the gas gathering system has begun and is expected to be completed this fall. the project is on track for its end of 2025 in service. It's exciting to be in a period of strong midstream growth. We've been here before and slide six illustrates our track record of successful project execution. We have a strong history of delivering large midstream projects both on time and on budget. In fact, our last series of major midstream growth projects totaled to a billion and a half dollars. These projects were all delivered on time and 8% below budget. Turning to slide seven, we're also excited about the growth opportunities in our utilities, which represents around 55% of our 2024 CapEx program. Their macroeconomic fundamentals for natural gas and gas utilities are very strong. Demand has been rising steadily in the U.S. for the past decade. Natural gas is the most affordable and efficient form of space heating. In fact, the deliberate cost of electricity is more than three times greater than that of natural gas. Gas demand is expected to accelerate through 2030 due to increased energy demand coming from AI and data centers. This will compound the demand associated with coal power plant retirements. Demand for energy in our franchise area is driving growth across our utilities. The first growth levers are asset modernization programs, which total to be more than $1.5 billion of approved pipe replacement capital over the next couple of years. We recently filed for updated APR programs in Michigan and D.C., which will add to our ability to modernize more of our network. These modernization programs are critical to enhancing our overall safety and reliability while growing our rate base. The second is new customer growth. We've been averaging approximately 1% growth per year across the DMV. Demand for natural gas by our residential customers remains extremely strong, as homeowners desire natural gas for heating and cooking. We continue to add around 10,000 to 12,000 meters per year in the DMV, mostly for newly built homes in the suburban areas surrounding DC. We are expected to have one or two smaller data centers connected to WGL network before the end of the year. And we continue to have other conversations on gas supply, where we can cost-effectively provide energy to more data centers. The third is system expansion, where we see strong growth opportunities at SEMCO and WGL. An example is the Keweenaw pipeline in Michigan, which is a proposed new pipeline we're actively progressing through the regulatory process. This pipeline would improve system reliability and add gas supply for new customers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Finally, we're also investing in assets that lower the emissions of our customers. We have recently completed two RNG connections in Michigan, with one more in construction, and we have one large RNG project underway in Virginia. Overall, we're very excited about our growth prospects, both in midstream and in utilities. With that, I'm going to turn the call over to James, who's going to provide more detail on our second quarter performance, provide an update on the status of MVP, and our path forward.