Good day, and welcome to the ONE Gas 2024 Financial Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Erin Dailey. Please go ahead, Mrs. Dailey. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our 2024 financial guidance conference call. Our guidance presentation can be found on the Investor page in the Financials and Filings section at www.onegas.com. As Sid mentioned on our third quarter call, we see benefits in offering an updated financial outlook ahead of the December utility conferences in New York and our annual meetings with the credit rating agencies, prompting us to again issue guidance in November of this year. In addition, many of you expressed that it is helpful to hold guidance-related conference calls outside of market hours, which is why we are gathered together early this morning. This call is being webcast live, and a replay will be available later today. After our prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. A reminder that statements made during this call that might include ONE Gas expectations or predictions should be considered forward-looking statements and are covered by the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities Act of 1933, and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, each as amended. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. For a discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to our SEC filings. Joining us on the call this morning are Sid McAnnally, President and Chief Executive Officer, Caron Lawhorn, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Curtis Dinan, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Chris Sighinolfi, our current Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations, who will be succeeding Caron as CFO upon her retirement at year-end. Now I'll turn the call over to Sid. Thanks, Erin, and good morning, everyone. Before we detail our updated guidance, I want to briefly introduce Chris Sighinolfi, who will be taking the helm as Chief Financial Officer upon Caron's retirement. Chris has a deep understanding of the financial environment, our industry, and our company, and has played a key role in developing and executing our strategy for the past two years, including developing our 2024 guidance. We're confident in Chris's ability to continue prudent and transparent financial management as we navigate a dynamic economic landscape and maximize the growth opportunities that lie before us. Turning to the purpose of our call today, the 2024 guidance we released last evening reflects conditions similar to those we witnessed at the end of last year. We continue to see durable, organic growth within our service territories. We're operating on a strong foundation and remain focused on making the right investments to capture that growth and serve natural gas customers well into the future. Our steadfast commitment to operational excellence and the safety and reliability of our distribution systems has not changed. The financial pressures we face at the front end of our five-year guidance are more impactful than a year ago. A tight labor market has kept wage inflation elevated, while interest rates, which moved sharply higher this year, have remained higher for longer than the market was forecasting at this point a year ago. While all companies must absorb higher debt costs over time, the impact of higher interest rates in 2024 is significant for us, given the existing notes we have maturing in the first quarter. As we discussed last year, these temporary but impactful shifts in financial conditions accentuate the lag intrinsic to our 100% regulated business model. We successfully engaged in regulatory filings in every jurisdiction in 2023, and we'll be purposeful about the sequence and timing of regulatory activities in 2024 to capture new financial realities appropriately within our rates. We expect the impacts of this enhanced regulatory lag to affect the front end of our five-year forecast, though we anticipate financial pressures to diminish over time as the yield curve regains its normalized, contangoed shape and interest rates and wage inflation gradually moderate. After the first quarter of 2024, our next debt maturity is not until 2030, preserving significant financial flexibility and shielding us from any lingering refinancing headwinds during the remaining years of our financial plan. In addition, we've executed equity forward sale agreements totaling approximately $350 million, with settlements through the end of next year, providing us added near-term flexibility as we finance our capital plan. Our service territories have demonstrated a need for new housing and support natural gas as a favored fuel source, with demonstrated reliability and significant cost advantages compared to the prevailing alternatives. Accordingly, with the enduring longer-term growth embedded in our business, we see improving out-year growth rates consistent with those previously articulated. We've always valued transparent communication with our stakeholders. In that spirit, we offer this year's guidance using the same frame provided in the past, anchoring to the prior year, in this case, our 2023 guidance midpoints, to give you a clear and comparable picture of our updated five-year plan. We've also detailed key assumptions that support our guidance in the accompanying slide deck, again, to provide transparency into our view of the current economic landscape and how things may unfold over the next several years. Being candid about financial realities, whether positive or not, and delivering on the targets we establish, have been hallmarks of our company's operations, and we aim to continue both traditions as we enter 2024.... With that, I'll turn it over to Chris to discuss our 2024 and five-year financial outlook in greater detail. Chris? Thanks, Sid, and good morning, everyone. We remain on track to achieve our 2023 financial targets, in line with the guidance we initially shared last November. The dynamic shift in economic conditions, which began in 2022, remains a factor in our updated financial outlook. Slide five of our accompanying presentation illustrates key changes to the macroeconomic landscape over the last year, which we believe provides useful context for today's discussion. Though commodity prices and materials inflation have significantly moderated, a persistently tight labor market has kept wage inflation elevated. At the same time, the yield curve has moved meaningfully higher and become more steeply inverted. As Sid noted, we have $773 million of debt maturing in the first quarter of next year, so interest rates have an outsized impact on our 2024 financial projection. As detailed on Slide six, consensus rate expectations have consistently underrepresented the magnitude of interest rate hikes over the last two years, and the market continues to expect significant rate cuts over the next two years. It would be beneficial, to us if this occurred, but we do not formally expect meaningful rate cuts next year. Given the recent market volatility, we thought it would be valuable to offer baseline modeling assumptions used to support our guidance outlook, which are detailed on Slide seven of the presentation. With the maturities of $300 million of 3.6% notes and $473 million of 1.1% notes in the first quarter, the anticipated increase in interest expense will have an impact on net income and earnings per share in 2024 and into 2025. While these impacts are significant, we believe the financial conditions causing them are temporary and see a path to moderating rates and the return of a normalized yield curve in the outer years of our plan. As we discussed on our third quarter call, we have confidence that demand for natural gas will continue to grow within our service territories due to the in-migration of families and the robust economic development we are experiencing, and so we expect to return to higher rates of customer growth in the outer years of the five-year plan. We will also remain thoughtful about capital investments and system expansion to ensure we are ready to serve our growing customer base. For 2024, we project net income to range from $214 million- $231 million, with earnings per diluted share of $3.70-$4.00. Our capital investments for the year are expected to be approximately $750 million, with expenditures on system integrity continuing to anchor our capital plan. These investments are expected to produce an average estimated 2024 rate base of $5.55 billion. Total capital spending for the next five years is anticipated to be approximately $4.25 billion, underpinning compound annual rate base growth of 7%-9%. Our forecasted five-year compound annual growth rate for net income is also expected to be 7%-9%, with EPS growth of 4%-6%. Consistent with prior practice, our CAGRs are calculated based off the midpoints of our most recent 2023 guidance. We expect net 2024- 2028 financing needs of approximately $2.3 billion, with roughly 45%-50% of this amount in the form of equity. We expect compound annual dividend growth of 1%-2% through 2028, with a target payout ratio of 55%-65%, subject to board approval. As a reminder, we have forward sale agreements covering approximately 1.69 million shares of common stock to be settled by the end of this year, and we have greatly de-risked our 2024 equity needs by executing forward sale agreements covering approximately 2.9 million shares. Had all forward shares been settled at September 30, we would have received net proceeds of approximately $350 million, implying an average per share price of roughly $76.50. We have also taken steps to ensure adequate liquidity as we execute our capital plan. We expanded our credit facility to $1.2 billion in October from $1 billion. We have incorporated what we believe are realistic assumptions about near-term costs and the time required for these items to be reflected in our regulatory model. Our view of our business's long-term, durable growth has not changed, and as with our near-term assessments, is based on the operating realities within our service territories. Now I'll turn things over to Curtis to speak further about the drivers underpinning our confidence in our growth expectations and how our rates teams are prepared to execute regulatory activity at an appropriate cadence. Curtis? Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. We remain confident in our future growth opportunities despite the near-term financial challenges Chris has indicated. We operate in territories with constructive regulatory frameworks, social and political support for natural gas as part of our ongoing energy mix, and affordable housing and cost of living that attract new businesses and support population growth. The slides accompanying our guidance release highlight some of the more significant recent project announcements within our service territory, and it is important to note that with each of these comes a multitude of support services and other related economic activity to serve the people migrating here to operate these new manufacturing facilities. As we mentioned during our recent earnings call, rising interest rates are leading to some slowing in the national housing market and to some degree, in our service areas. However, we remain optimistic as our pace of new meter sets this year is commensurate with 2021, which represented a step change increase over the growth levels witnessed prior to 2019, and there is still a shortage of housing stock within our service territories. We also maintain a sizable cost advantage versus alternative fuel sources for the applications we primarily serve, and as we've discussed, we have bolstered the reliability of our system, making natural gas an attractive energy source for homes and businesses. Finally, I want to express my confidence in our rates and regulatory team and recognize the growth in that team's capabilities. In 2023, we filed regulatory actions in each jurisdiction in which we operate, including the West- North Consolidated Rate Case and the Rio Grande Valley Rate Case, both in Texas, and interim rate filings in all other jurisdictions. We are prepared to execute our regulatory strategy at the pace needed to respond to the operating conditions we experienced in 2023 and expect in 2024. In 2023, we also helped guide legislation in Texas allowing for statewide energy efficiency programs and established our voluntary renewable natural gas tariff, which the Oklahoma Corporation Commission approved just last week. With that, I'll turn it back to Sid for closing remarks. As we approach year-end and look forward to 2024, we're prepared to address the near-term challenges posed by external financial conditions. Our track record of transparency regarding our expectations and achieving our targets gives us confidence as we enter the new year and execute our plan. I want to take the opportunity this morning to acknowledge and thank our retiring Chief Financial Officer, Caron Lawhorn, for her years of dedication and service to ONE Gas. Caron will be retiring effective December 31st, after 25 years of service with our company, and so today marks her final conference call with us. Caron has helped lead ONE Gas through many milestones, including the company's separation from ONEOK, building our environmental, social, and governance framework, and managing through the financial implications of Winter Storm Uri. Her tireless dedication, sound judgment, and steadfast leadership over the years have had a tremendous impact on our company and our coworkers, and I speak on their behalf when I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Caron and wish her the very best in her retirement. In closing, while the magnitude, volatility, and direction of future changes in economic conditions are always uncertain, we remain focused on managing our business with sustainable, long-term value creation in mind. That work is made possible by the commitment of each one of our nearly 3,900 coworkers. I'm grateful for their dedication to safe operations, reliable service, and growth, and I'm privileged to work alongside them every day. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Operator, we're now ready for questions. Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will pause for a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. Our first question today comes from Gabriel Moreen from Mizuho. Gabe, please go ahead. Your line is open. Good morning, everyone, and, congrats to Chris, and, we'll miss working with you, Caron. Maybe if I can start out by just asking on sort of the rate case. I know Curtis's rate case cadence here and, and sort of regulatory pursuits. I know Curtis touched on it a little bit. I'm just wondering, in sort of the medium to long term, the degree to which you think you have to do rate case filings beyond your typical PBRC and GRIP filings in your various jurisdictions and, and what the timing may be around on that. The second part of that question, and particularly as it relates to refinancing some of the near-term maturities, how you're thinking about refinancing those in longer-term capital markets versus shorter-term capital markets and hoping, you know, and hopefully, the assumptions on that forward curve for interest rates play out, and you get to refinance something lower, have something lower and how that would impact the rate case strategy? Sorry, long-winded question, but maybe I'll leave it there. So, Gabe, this is Curtis, and I'll take the first part on the, on the rate cases. As we articulated last year, in this type of an environment, the need to have more frequent rate activity in terms of full rate cases, is more important because there's some mechanisms we have, like PBR, that capture your year-to-year cost of service increases, so you, you don't necessarily have to go through a full rate case. But other mechanisms like the GRIPS and the GSRS that you mentioned, those don't capture those cost of service adjustments. So when you're in an inflationary period, you have to go in more frequently, for rate cases to stay current in what your cost of service looks like. Continuing in that environment, we would expect to see activity similar to what we saw in 2023 continuing in 2024 and 2025. Gabe, good morning. It's Sid. As to the second question, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we don't have another debt maturity until 2030, so we have a good bit of flexibility as we look forward and think about our options with the first quarter refinancing. So we'll be looking to optimize our optionality around that, take advantage of what the market offers us, to your point. And so we haven't made a commitment on that yet, but we'll maintain that flexibility up until the moment we make the decision. Thanks, Sid. Thanks, Curtis. And maybe if I can talk about your OpEx and operating cost expectations. Seems like it's similar-ish to last year. Can you just talk about within the plan, whether there is an expectation at this point that maybe your operating costs taper off, inflation normalizing, et cetera? Or are you, at this point, thinking that 5% is more of a rate that's here to stay? Yeah, I'd say, Gabe, that that's more the average that we see. There's certainly periods, you know, here on the front end, that it's a little more impacted by what's happening with inflation and some other things that we've chosen to do because we think it's the right thing to do in the long term. We've as you heard in Sid's discussion of the number of coworkers we have at the company, we're a little bit higher now because we've chosen to insource some work that we think over the long term, we will be able to do more efficiently, and it gives us a stronger pipeline in the company longer term. So while there's that creates headwinds for us in the short term, we think it creates more value in the long term and is the right way to think about managing our company. But stepping back broadly, again, to the heart of your question, we see still that 5% average through that five-year period of our guidance. You know, and Gabe, that's representative of the way that this entire guidance is built, and I think consistent with the way we've engaged with our stakeholders. Your question implies there may be some opportunity to the upside if we see labor markets, for example, correct. And we think there's an upside there, but that's how this entire guidance plan is built. We didn't build it on assumptions that we feel like we can't prove, and we do think there's upside in the plan, but we have confidence. And that's why we wanted both to share the slide deck and to have the call this morning pre-market, to signal very clearly that, you know, we have confidence in our plan, we think there is long-term opportunity here, and we're ready to go forward. Understood. Thanks, Sid. Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, if anyone would like to register a question, please press Star, followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Paul Zimmer, from Bank of America. Paul, please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, good morning, team. Thank you. Good morning, Paul. Congratulations, Chris. Now, good morning as well. Just to start at the top a little bit. So, when should or, kinda, when do you expect, when should we expect investors to return kinda towards the 4%-6% EPS growth, kinda from that 2023? I acknowledge the, the, the challenges in 2024, and just if 2023 is the starting point, is it really the right way to think about it, 6%-7% EPS growth using that 2024 starting point? If you could just help reconcile the two, that'd be helpful. Thanks. Yeah. Hey, Paul. Good morning, this is Chris. I think the best way to interpret it is that, you know, we have confidence in the tightened range around 2023. The CAGR is effectively giving you a cone of expectations for 2028. And then you're right to recognize that in year one of that five-year plan, at the midpoint, there's a 7% step down, largely due to the refinancing headwinds that are acutely in that period. And so, you know, Caron had mentioned last year when we, when we offered our plan, that it was nonlinear in profile. Certainly, you get a better sense for the nature of the shape of that curve, seeing, you know, that, that shape from 2023 into 2024, and then the cone of expectations for 2028. I hope that's helpful. Okay, thank you. Then shifting a little bit to the updated financing plan and the balance sheet. I noticed there's about $650 million CapEx increase, a pretty big lift in the five-year plan, with equity up about $460-$470, which just seemed like a little bit more equity mix than historical. If you could just help understand the drivers there. Is it a higher equity ratio in some of the platforms or something else that's driving that? Well, it's—Again, Paul, this is Chris. It's a confluence of factors. You know, one is obviously with rates being higher for longer, there's some bleed on the performance of the business, and so that has to be supplanted with external financing, with equity to maintain the capital ratios and to maintain the credit strength of the balance sheet. You mentioned the higher CapEx, that's also part of it. And then, you know, we've noted that we've been successful at getting actual capital in our rate structures everywhere except Kansas, historically, and there's perhaps an opportunity based on a recent Atmos case to pursue that. So, you know, the equity ratios that we maintain are not different, but they're with successive rate cases held up. You know, Paul, just to add a little bit of commentary there. We signaled pretty clearly in our prepared remarks. We continue to see growth opportunities across our service territory. That means that if we don't lean into those opportunities, we sacrifice those for the long term. We've always been very clear that we operate the company with long-term value creation in mind. We don't shape our financial plans for quarterly returns. We look at what's the best outcome for the business and for our stakeholders, investors included, in the long term. So what you see is us shaping our financial plan in a way that allows us to react appropriately to the current financial environment, but also to support the growth that we know is there. It's not, it's not speculation, it's not we hope it's there. We can see it. We know it's there, and we know that if we're not prepared for it, when the economy goes back to a contangoed yield curve, we'll start to see growth accelerate in a way that we want to be prepared to capture. And what we believe about this plan, and the reason you hear so much confidence from us, is that we know that we are preparing for that growth, and we, we think that we've balanced correctly reacting to the current macroeconomic environment and preparing for long-term value creation. I totally appreciate that. Thank you very much. Very clear. See you all next week. Thank you, Paul. Thank you. We do not have any further questions at this time, so I'd like to hand back to management for any further or closing remarks. Thank you all again for your interest in ONE Gas. We will be attending the Bank of America Virtual Gas Utility Conference, the Mizuho Power, Energy, and Infrastructure Conference, and the Wells Fargo Midstream and Utility Symposium next week in New York, and look forward to seeing many of you while in town. As a reminder, our quiet period for the fourth quarter starts when we close our books in early January and extends until we release earnings in late February. We'll provide details on the conference call at a later date. Have a great day.