Canadian Utilities Limited

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the third 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 one 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, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased you could join us for Canadian Utilities' third quarter 2020-25 conference call. On the line today, we have Bob Miles, Chief Executive Officer of Canadian Utilities Limited. I'm Katie Patrick, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial and Investment Officer. Before we move into today's remarks, 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 Atco Park head office in Calgary, which is located in the Treaty 7 region. This is the ancestral territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy, comprised of the Sissica, the Kainai, the Pagani Nations, the Tsutina Nation, and the Stony Nakota Nations, which include the Chinniki, 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, Districts 5 and 6. During the quarter, employees across Canada recognized the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, by walking together to honour Indigenous communities and their experiences. May we continue to reflect, learn and respect the diverse history, languages, ceremonies and cultures of Indigenous peoples as we move forward towards understanding, healing and reconciliation. 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 Securities Regulators. During today's presentation, we may refer to certain non-GAAP and other financial measures, including adjusted earnings, adjusted earnings per share, and capital investment. 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 Miles for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone. I want to begin by highlighting three key pillars of our long-term strategy. Growth and prosperity. This includes our robust project pipeline and our policy and regulatory partnerships. Operational excellence, which includes modernizing our operating model with safety and reliability at the forefront. and financial leadership, which touches on our funding strategy and financial performance. Moving to our first pillar, growth and prosperity. Foundational to our growth at Canadian Utilities are the economic drivers we are seeing in the province of Alberta. Alberta continues to lead population growth in Canada, and in Q3 2025, Alberta's population reached 5 million people, up 2.5% year over year. Canadian utilities plays an essential role in enabling this population growth. In 2025, we are on track to connect over 19,000 customers in Atgo Energy Systems, particularly in our Alberta gas business, in line with the strong growth we delivered in 2024, which saw our highest number of customer connections in almost a decade. When we look at the projects driving our growth and prosperity pillar, I want to begin with our Central East Transfer Out project, or SEED Out. At a high level, this $280 million project, assigned by the Alberta Electric System Operator, upgrades and strengthens the transmission system in Central East Alberta. Alberta's electric transmission system has experienced ongoing congestion challenges, affecting the reliability of the grid, the market efficiency, and the integration of new energy sources. In response, CETO was developed to directly address these constraints. CETO is a critical energy infrastructure investment, representing meaningful progress for Alberta's electric system. By enhancing the efficiency of how power flows across the electric grid, CETO makes it easier to deliver energy to where it is needed most, like major demand centers in Calgary, Edmonton, and northern regions. CETO is deep into construction and remains on track to be completed in the first half of next year. The project will have a significant benefit to our customers across the province, modernizing and enhancing the reliability of the transmission system. Beyond CETO, we believe further opportunities exist to improve congestion. An example is the McNeil Converter Station. currently the only intertie point between Alberta and Saskatchewan as shown on this slide. The MacMill station recently underwent repairs and is being evaluated for a capacity upgrade. Once complete, this upgrade will enable more generation to flow between Alberta and Saskatchewan, representing the next step in addressing regional congestion. Moving to natural gas, Our assets are strategically positioned in areas that allow us to capitalize on the spectrum of energy opportunities being delivered. On the map, you can see our three gas storage assets are well positioned near natural gas production zones, major project infrastructure, as well as locations associated with the planned data center developments and links to LNG development. Our Yellowhead Pipeline project that I have discussed previously is a required addition to the natural gas network in Alberta, and it will be a key conduit to connecting supply to demand growth. Yellowhead creates a new direct corridor from the northwest Alberta supply region to the greater Edmonton area, de-bottlenecking constrained segments and reducing reliance on longer, more complex flow paths. This released pressure on the entire Alberta integrated system, improves delivery reliability for all types of customers across the province and frees up capacity for not only residential demand, but industrial power generation and commercial growth, making it a foundational investment in Alberta's energy future. Overall, it is evident that natural gas is needed more than ever in Alberta, and we remain in a very strong position to capitalize on the growth opportunities within the province. There have been positive developments on our Yellowhead Pipeline project during this past quarter. We are pleased to announce the approval of the needs application from the Alberta Utilities Commission, or AUC. I'm also excited to announce that we filed the facilities application with the AUC earlier this week, which will provide detailed technical, environmental and consultation data required for construction approval. The filing of the facilities application is a key milestone in the regulatory process and demonstrates that we have completed sufficient consultation with communities, environmental studies and engineering to permit the construction of the project. The Yellowhead pipeline project remains 90% contracted and will deliver long-term economic benefits while strengthening the province's natural gas network. In the third quarter, two additional service offerings to the market were undertaken. We expect that some or all of the remaining capacity provided by Yellowhead will be contracted through these offerings. While we wait on final regulatory approvals, we have successfully awarded major equipment contracts for the compressor facility. In the fourth quarter, we will place major contracts for the supply of steel pipe. Ordering these long lead materials is prudent to preserve our in-service date and avoid cost escalations and supply chain delays. As you can see on this slide, the Yellowhead pipeline runs through Treaty 6 territory in Alberta. which is why we continue to pursue partnership arrangements with Indigenous partners, First Nations and Métis. Early, meaningful and continuous economic Indigenous participation in infrastructure projects on traditional land is essential for development, reconciliation and long-term project success, including the Yellowhead Pipeline project. An integral part of our non-regulated growth at Canadian Utilities is from our natural gas storage operations. We've had a strong year in natural gas storage with increases in seasonal spreads driving strong customer demand for our facilities. We have successfully optimized our storage facilities by contracting through staggered contract maturities over the coming years. The plans I have previously discussed to expand our existing storage capacity from 117 petajoules today to 130 petajoules in late 2026 positions us for continued growth in financial performance in the years to come. As we look at the future of storage and the broader market trends, a number of fundamentals are driving the demands for gas storage. Storage capacity growth across North America has slowed to less than 1% annually since 2016, while gas demand across North America continues to increase, driven by industrial demand, LNG demand, and new power generation accelerated by the build-out of data centers. As a leader in natural gas storage, we have the technology, the infrastructure, customer base, and experience to execute and build out additional storage capacity. Beyond the brownfield expansion that we have already identified, we continue to explore strategic opportunities for additional growth and storage capacity, both within Alberta and the broader North American market. Similar to the opportunities ahead of us in Alberta, are ATCO Australia businesses, which is a provider of regulated natural gas distribution services in Western Australia, and a developer and owner of Gas Fire Generation, is also well positioned, given Australia's evolving energy landscape. The developing regulations, government emissions reduction targets, and associated investment incentives present ATCO Australia with opportunities which the business is well positioned to pursue. Our gas utility business in Australia has delivered a strong 2025, and we expect this growth to continue into the years ahead as the Australian government remains focused on enabling the development of new infrastructure to meet increasing population growth. In response to this, we continue to focus our new customer connections. Under our new access arrangement, AA6, Our five-year plan sees us growing by approximately 80,000 new connections as customer sentiment towards gas continues to be positive in Western Australia. This amounts to a 27% increase in expected customers compared to our previous access arrangement. For the five-year AA6 period, we're operating under a higher return on equity of $8.25 3%, driving consistent earnings for Canadian utilities. Our second pillar, operational excellence, is anchored on safety, reliability, and operational outperformance. Safety is a key element linked to our long-term growth. By continuing to foster a strong safety culture, we ensure that operational efficiency and reliability are achieved without compromise. Safety across Canadian utilities requires collaboration and a continued focus on our commitments. We must learn from incidents, promote safety initiatives, and champion workplace safety across the business. From an outperformance perspective, our utilities are known for their ability to drive operational efficiencies. In 2024, our Australia utility delivered over 550 basis points of outperformance above the regulated ROE, while our utilities in Canada drove almost 100 basis points of outperformance above the regulated ROE. As we move ahead, we will share our learnings across all businesses like Canadian Utilities with a focus on driving further efficiencies across IT, supply chain, and administrative costs. I look forward to sharing further updates on this over the upcoming year. Our third pillar is financial leadership. And with that, I'll pass the call to Katie to discuss this in further detail.