Canadian Utilities Limited

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the first quarter 2025 results conference call and webcast for Canadian Utilities Limited. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Colin Jackson, Senior Vice President, Financial Operations. Please go ahead, Mr. Jackson.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased you could join us for Canadian Utilities' first quarter 2025 conference call. On the line today, we have Bob Miles, President and Chief Operating Officer of Canadian Utilities Limited, and Katie Patrick, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial and Investment Officer. Before we move into today's marks, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the numerous traditional territories and homelands on which our global facilities are located. Today, I am speaking to you from our Aquapark head office in Calgary, which is located in the Treaty 7 region. This is the ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprised of the Siksika, the Kainai, and the Pekani Nations, and the Tsutina Nation, and the Stony Dakota Nations, which include the Chintiki, Bears Paw, and Good Stony First Nations. I also want to recognize that the city of Calgary is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, District 5 and 6. We honor and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies, and the culture of the Indigenous people who call these areas home. Today, you'll hear from Bob, who will deliver opening comments along with key developments within our ACCO Energy Systems and ACCO Empower businesses. And then you'll hear from Katie, who will discuss ACCO Australia and our Q1 financial results. Following today's remarks, the Canadian Utilities team will take questions from the investment community. Please note that a replay of the conference call, a copy of the presentation, and today's transcript will be available on our website at CanadianUtilities.com following the call. The materials can be found in the Investor section under Events and Presentations. Today's remarks will include forward-looking statements that are subject to important risks and uncertainties. For more information on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the Canadian security regulators. During today's presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, including adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share, and adjusted EBITDA. These measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS, and as a result, they may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. Please refer to our filings with the Canadian security regulators for further information. And now, I'll turn the call over to Bob for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Colin, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I want to begin by outlining the trends we continue to see in our core market of Alberta. We do see positive momentum in Alberta with significant opportunities for growth tied to the Canadian utilities portfolio. Looking ahead, we see significant population and related housing growth. We see increased industrial investment across our service areas and an overall supportive regulatory environment. These factors combined put Canadian utilities in a favorable position. Today, I'll share our plans to capitalize on these opportunities as well as our priorities and growth plans. There continues to be a number of opportunities ahead for Canadian utilities as we focus on driving growth across our businesses. Beginning with our largest asset, our Alberta utilities. Looking at our capital program over the next three years, we expect to invest $5.8 billion into our regulated utilities in Canada. You can see our largest investment will be in our natural gas transmission business and tied to our Yellowhead Pipeline project, which will be our largest infrastructure project to date. This year alone, we plan to invest $1.5 billion in our utilities within Atco Energy Systems. This aligns with the trends we are seeing in Alberta, and our continued investment drives our average annual rate-based growth of 5.4%, while ensuring we continue to deliver quality earnings. As I mentioned, our largest investment during our three-year capital plan is our Yellowhead Pipeline project, a natural gas transmission pipeline within the province of Alberta. Today we are pleased to announce the preliminary preferred route has been chosen for this 230-kilometer project. Situated in the Heartland region east of Edmonton, this project is expected to deliver 1.1 billion cubic feet per day of additional natural gas to Albertans and Alberta businesses. I want to touch on the announcement from two weeks ago where Dow shared they are delaying construction at their Path to Zero project in Fort Saskatchewan. I want to be clear that this will not impact us continuing to progress the Yellowhead project. As we have shared previously, the demand for safe and reliable supply of gas from our Yellowhead project is required by a variety of customers, many of whom have contracted for service starting in Q4 of 2027. As we look at our timeline, our needs application was filed in September of last year with the Alberta Utilities Commission. We expect to receive approval of this first application in the second quarter of this year. Once this approval is received, we will be in a better position to make commitments on long leave material orders. Next in the regulatory process is the facility application, which we expect to file in Q4 of this year and obtain approvals that enable construction to commence in mid-2026 to deliver an in-service date in Q4, 2027. We continue to advance our Central East Transfer Out project, which remains on time and on budget. This is an approximately $280 million project assigned by the Alberta Electric System Operator, the ISO, in our electric transmission business. This new 85-kilometre electric transmission line will help bring additional renewable energy from the eastern part of Alberta to the load centres while strengthening the reliability of the provincial electric grid. The project is expected to be in service in mid-2026. We look forward to continuing to work with the ISO, the government and other industry participants to identify develop and build the crucial investments needed to ensure a reliable and resilient energy system in Alberta. Looking at our ATCO NPower business, our portfolio of operating assets positions us to meet the evolving energy needs of Albertans and Canadians. ATCO NPower focuses on delivering reliable, affordable and cleaner energy infrastructure that supports our customers' decarbonization objectives and leverages our core competencies and assets. We are actively participating in the energy transition, which will help us pursue our three pillar growth strategy through our natural gas and natural gas liquid storage, generation and cleaner fuel businesses. We believe that hydrogen will play a critical role for sectors across the globe in meeting their decarbonization goals. The ATCO Heartland Hydrogen Hub is the development of a large-scale hydrogen facility adjacent to Alberta Heartland Energy Centre in Fort, Saskatchewan, Alberta. We continue to progress discussions with both federal and provincial governments to establish policy and frameworks that facilitate investment in the Canadian hydrogen economy for both export and domestic opportunities. We look forward to working with the newly elected federal government to gain greater certainty on the hydrogen policy and framework, the risk sharing mechanisms, and the funding for the next stage of development. Clarity on these areas will allow us to move into front-end engineering design stage and to ultimately make a final investment decision on this project. Offtake and the build-out of the value chain continues to remain a crucial part of de-risking the project, and our ultimate goal would be to have a 20% to 25% ownership of the project. We will continue to share updates as we progress towards a final investment decision. Our ATCO NPower business has established assets and a robust development pipeline diversified across the energy transition value chain. While we remain committed to advancing cleaner fuels, including our hydrogen developments, today's energy market landscape is evolving, and we require further clarity on a number of items before proceeding. That said, this is not stopping us from progressing the project forward. As previously discussed, we have secured strategic partners, we've completed pre-front-end engineering design work, and we'll continue to move the project forward at a prudent pace. Within generation, due to the continued regulatory uncertainty around Alberta's restructured energy market and the transmission regulations, our customers are reluctant to invest and make commitments in the Alberta market. As a result of this, our future development opportunities within generation have been paused until policy certainty exists for market participants. While this uncertainty is impacting our ability to develop assets in the short term, our renewable development pipeline in Alberta remains a long-term strategic asset. While there are near-term challenges in the Alberta market and timing uncertainty on when energy transition-related projects may proceed, the suite of assets held by ATCO NPower provides us the optionality to advance the investments that provide us the most certainty. With the strength we are seeing in our natural gas and natural gas liquid storage assets, we look to continue to advance these opportunities with further investments in this business segment across Alberta. We will do this by leveraging our strong existing asset base that provides a low risk path for expansion, our strategic locations and pipeline connectivity that offer market flexibility and are favorable market conditions for storage operators, supporting long-term revenue growth. Due to these drivers, we believe ATCO NPower holds a competitive advantage within our natural gas and liquid storage business. This will position us efficiently to execute on a growth and expand our operations and presence across the value chain through our disciplined, self-funded strategy. With that, I'll pass to Katie to discuss our operational results.