Superior Plus Corp.

Good day and welcome to the Superior Plus 2022 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Rob Doran. Vice President of Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Cherie. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Superior Plus' conference call and webcast to review our 2022 second quarter results. On the call today from Superior Plus are Luc Desjardins, President and CEO, and Beth Summers, Executive VP and CFO. For this morning's call, Luc and Beth will begin with their prepared remarks and then we will open up the call for questions. Listeners are reminded that some of the comments made today may be forward-looking in nature and are based on Superior's current expectations, estimates, judgments, projections, and risks. Further, some of the information provided refers to non-GAAP measures. Please refer to Superior's continuous disclosure documents available on CDAR and Superior's website yesterday for further details. Dollar amounts discussed on today's call are expressed in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I'll now turn the call over to Liz.

Well, thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us all to discuss our second quarter results. Needless to say, we've maintained the strong momentum we generated in quarter one, 2022, and through to quarter two. It's important to note that quarter two along with quarter three are seasonally slower quarters for business due to the lower heating load and typically together amount for only approximately 10% of our annual EBITDA. And keep in mind that recently we've acquired 10s and 12s. So if you look at a full year, we get 25% of the cost of those two business for this quarter, but only 10% of the sale. So no doubt that you'll end up having a, for the timing of those acquisitions, you know, This is how it connects for Quarter 2 and 3. So, we're a full year, of course. The full results are there and the integration plans are going extremely well. So, our Quarter 2 results are a testament of our strength in our business in the face of rising costs due to inflation, volatility, commodity costs, which has driven some customer conservation. But as we look to the balance of 2022, we're comfortable in our ability to manage the impact of the inflationary pressures on our business by passing on these rising costs to our customers, which is evident in our average margin growth over the period of year to year. We saw the benefit of acquisition completed over the last year to higher volume quarter over quarter. However, we also saw higher operating expense in the quarter, Based on our strong first quarter results and second quarter results, we are confirming and are very comfortable that our adjusted dividend guidance range of $425 to $465 million is right on target. We're making great progress on a superior way forward in the dividend growth initiative through acquisition, continuous improvement, and organic growth. On June the 1st, we closed acquisition and delivered fuel business of Walls Petroleum which expanded operation in the attractive Virginia market. We're excited about adding this established retail propane distributor to our strong base in the eastern U.S. region. We also closed three smaller acquisitions in 2022, one in Ohio and two in South Carolina for a total of $12.9 million. Quite small add-on acquisition. With these four acquisitions, we're on track to achieve the lower end of our previous statement Excuse me for a minute. Acquisition target, excluding the camps acquisition of $200 million to $300 million and acquired assets in 2022. We released our second annual sustainability report in June, which contains improved disclosure from an inaugural report and demonstrates our focus on prioritizing ESG in our operation. We believe superior propane as a product will play a significant role in the transition to a lower carbon and eventual net zero emission future. We have put an energy transition team in place to identify and develop opportunities in this space, and recently hired a director of sustainability. We're working on various projects, mainly focused on lower carbon propane source, currently including renewable DME and hydrogen. Following the end of the quarter, we entered into an agreement with Initech to bring renewable DME to our customer base, providing a carbon-friendly enhanced to traditionally sourced propane. Initech Plasma Enhanced Melter, PEM, application process will divert organic waste from landfill and convert into carbon-friendly, clean-burning DME which can be effectively planned with propane and used as an alternative renewable fuel of its own. We're excited to enter this partnership where we will not only be able to provide carbon-friendly fuel to our customer, but we will also be reducing the waste that is necessarily filling our country's landfills. According to EPA, organic material continues to be a largest component of municipal solid waste and also contribute to increase greenhouse gas being released into the atmosphere. So we will now be part of the process of recycling that waste material by converting it into clean burning fuel and providing it to our customers. We are in a strong financial position from our debt and leverage perspective, following our recent common equity insurance of gross proceeds of $288 million. The additional liquidity from the equity insurance and our stable cash flow from operation is expected to provide us with capital to continue our goals to acquisition, investment and organic growth, and continuous improvement projects. Having accelerated our acquisition in 2021 and to start 2022, our focus in 2022 will be integrating and capturing the synergy from acquired businesses. I can assure you we've had a review of those two larger acquisitions this week, and everything is on plan and doing very well. We still see a strong pipeline of acquisition opportunity in the U.S. and Canada, so our confidence will continue to acquire quality retail propane assets and achieve a superior way forward target of $1.9 billion. We've passed about 40% of that target as we speak today. and the price of acquisition, the valuations are coming down somewhat, which is good for us. Before I turn the call to Beth, I would like to make a brief comment on my planned retirement. As mentioned in Quarter 2 press release, I will be formally retiring on July 31, 2023. With our seasoned executive and strong team, Superior is well positioned for the future. The Board has appointed a succession committee to find a new CEO for Superior and to address the transition. I will work with the Board to ensure a smooth transition as we continue to build on our operational momentum through the implementation of superior way forward, initiative, and drive shareholder returns. Very proud of what we've accomplished over those past 11 years and we look forward to executing our plan for the ongoing benefit of all of the stakeholders. I will now turn the call over to Deb to discuss the financial results in more detail.