Good morning, and welcome to the Spire Inc 2022 Year-End Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Dudley. Please go ahead. Morning, welcome to our Fiscal 2022 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Call. You should have our earnings release this morning, and you may access it on our website at spireenergy.com under Newsroom. There's also a slide presentation that accompanies our webcast, and you may download that either from the webcast site or from our website, which will be found under Investors and then Events and Presentations. Before we begin, let me cover our safe harbor statement and use of non-GAAP earnings measures. Today's call, including responses to questions, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although our forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, there are various uncertainties and risk factors that may cause future performance or results to be different than those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in our quarterly and annual filings with the SEC. In our comments, we'll be discussing net economic earnings, which is a non-GAAP measure used by management when evaluating our performance and results of operations. An explanation and reconciliation of this measure to its GAAP counterpart is contained in both our news release and slide presentation. On our call today is Suzanne Sitherwood, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Also in the room with us today is Scott Carter, President of Spire Missouri, and Adam Woodard, Vice President and Treasurer and CFO of our gas utilities. With that, I will turn the call over to Suzanne. Thank you, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It is our pleasure to speak with you today about Spire's performance for the fiscal year just completed, to update you on recent developments and to share our outlook for the future. Last year, we remained squarely focused on our long-term strategic priorities and commitments while being mindful of the vital role of our natural gas businesses play in ensuring a sustainable energy future. Fiscal 2022 was a year of challenges and opportunities. We collectively tackled both with equal energy, and as we closed the year, we delivered for our customers while achieving strong operating performance. We reported earnings for the year of $3.86 per share, reflecting the strong performance in our midstream and marketing businesses. At our gas utilities, we met the headwinds of weather and a lower rate of return in Missouri with a path for improvement in fiscal 2023. We continued the robust investment in our gas utilities to upgrade infrastructure, drive new businesses, and advance our technology. This led to further gains in safety, system integrity, environmental performance, and overall service experience for the 1.7 million homes and businesses we proudly serve. We successfully met important challenges head on, including working to settle the contested issues in our Missouri rate review. We, along with other parties, have filed a proposed agreement. This settlement is subject to Missouri Commission review and approval, but we are pleased by the prospect for a timely resolution to the case. At the same time, we dealt with the challenges of higher natural gas costs and inflationary pressures. We continue to work hard to manage all of our costs and minimize their impact on our customer bills. In fact, part of the Missouri rate case settlement includes a commitment to enhance programs that provide support and financial assistance to customers. While it is our job to manage the challenges for our customers, I want to thank our 3,600 employees for stepping up this year and remaining focused on ensuring people have safe and reliable natural gas delivered with great service every day while supporting our communities. In fiscal 2022, we also had success in advancing our midstream businesses. We remain focused on securing a permanent FERC operating certificate for Spire STL Pipeline, and we began the expansion project at Spire Storage. These are both great natural gas businesses that serve their customers and regions. As we step forward into fiscal 2023, we are further increasing our capital investment plan and expanding our time horizon to 10 years. This long-term commitment to capital deployment ensures our continued growth while delivering innovation and safe, reliable, sustainable energy for decades to come. Recognizing our performance in 2022 as well as confidence in our long-term growth prospects, our board of directors recently increased Spire's common dividend by 5.1% to an annualized rate of $2.88 per share. This is the 20th consecutive year of dividend increases, which we have continuously paid since 1946. Now, I'll pass the call to Steve Lindsey. Thank you, Suzanne. Let me begin with an update on our very recent progress we've made on our Missouri rate review. November fourth, Spire Missouri and other parties to the case, most notably the Missouri Public Service Commission staff and the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, filed a full unanimous stipulation agreement. As Suzanne mentioned, this is a proposed settlement of all issues in the case. From the beginning, it was our desire to settle the case in a timely manner, and we are on track to do just that. Filing represents a settlement of all contested issues, without a determination of each component that goes into the calculation of new rates. Elements of the pending settlement include additional annual revenues of $78 million, a pre-tax ISRS rate of return of 8.25%. Resolution of the overheads issue from the last case, with all costs capitalized or expensed beginning October first, as confirmed in our cost study approved earlier in the year, and all deferred amounts as of September thirtieth being recovered in rates. Increased funding by Spire Missouri for various customer assistance programs with expanded eligibility. Spire Missouri has requested rates to be effective on December twenty-sixth, right before the beginning of the 2023 winter season. Given that there is a proposed settlement, the procedural schedule for the rate review has been suspended. However, the Missouri Public Service Commission has scheduled an on-the-record public hearing on the settlement this Friday. Public Service Commission could take up the matter at one of the two upcoming agenda conferences later this month. In our filings for both rates and recovery of natural gas costs, we are very sensitive to the impact that higher utility bills have on our customers. We understand that any increase to bills can be concerning, and we want to do everything we can to help. For example, we requested that the additional natural gas costs we incurred during Winter Storm Uri be spread over three years to minimize the impact on our Missouri customers. In Alabama, we share the cost savings we achieve under the cost control measure, with 50% going back to the customer. We're collecting our benefit over a five-year period, again, to reduce the impact on customers' bills. Overall, in FY 2022, we helped connect customers who are struggling in more than $27 million in federal, state, and Spire Energy Assistance funding. Starting this month, we're expanding eligibility requirements to our DollarHelp program, providing additional funds to assist even more customers. Let me provide some other updates, starting with Missouri ISRS. The Missouri Public Service Commission approved a $10.5 million annual increase in ISRS effective October 21st, bringing our annualized ISRS to $19 million. In Alabama, Spire Alabama and Spire Gulf each filed their 2023 budgets for the annual rate-setting process under the Rate Stabilization and Equalization mechanism, or RSE. We anticipate the new rates will be effective in early December. We know our Spire STL Pipeline continues to operate under a temporary certificate while the FERC considers approval of a new permanent certificate under a court-ordered remand. While there is no formal schedule, we believe the process will likely continue into 2023. Meanwhile, FERC issued a positive environmental impact statement last month, which clears a potential hold-up in the recertification process. We turn to an update on our capital expenditures. Fiscal 2022, we invested $552 million, with almost all that spend going into our gas utilities. Put nearly $280 million towards pipeline replacement while investing $114 million in new business. We also continued our investment in technology, including about $55 million for the further rollout of ultrasonic meters. Midstream investment this year included $12 million for Spire Storage expansion in the fourth quarter. For FY 2023, our capital investment is expected to total $700 million, reflecting higher gas utility spend, as well as a substantial increase in CapEx from midstream to $150 million, mostly related to the storage expansion project. The gas utility investment this year, infrastructure upgrades account for the lion's share of our capital spend as we continue to focus on reliability and system integrity of our distribution network. We also plan to continue our robust investment in new business. Overall, we expect the majority of our utility spend to be recovered with minimal lag or reflected in earnings. We'll keep investing in innovation and technology. Our investments continue to drive further advancements in operating performance and sustainability. As you can see, our key metrics for resilience, safety, and system integrity continue to show improving trend over the last five years. Employee injury rates, damage rates, and leaks on our system all hit record lows. At the same time, we're continuing our progress in reducing methane emissions from our gas utility operations. These reductions support our commitment to becoming a carbon neutral company by mid-century. We hit our target for fiscal 2021 to reduce emissions by 46% from 2005 levels, and we expect to see a further reduction for 2022. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve Rasche for a financial review and update. Steve? Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let's start with a brief review of results, and then I'll provide some updates as we look into 2023 and beyond. For our fiscal fourth quarter, we reported a seasonal loss of $31 million, which is $4 million or $0.07 a share higher than last year on a run rate basis. As you may recall, we had several significant events that flowed through the income statement last year, including, for the quarter, benefits from Winter Storm Uri and adjustments for the 2021 Missouri rate order, which makes the comparison of as-reported results for last year a bit difficult to understand. For the analysis here, we excluded those items to provide a better comparison, and we've included a full reconciliation in the appendix. Looking at our businesses on a run rate basis. Our gas utilities typically have a seasonal loss this quarter due to reduced usage in the warmest days of summer. For the quarter, the segment lost $38 million, or nearly $20 million greater than last year. As we discussed earlier this year, the 2021 Missouri rate order changed the cadence of our recovery, shifting a greater share to our winter heating season and out of our fiscal third and fourth quarters. Water results also reflect lower margins in Alabama due to the spread of the cost control measure over a multiple year period, as Steve Lindsey discussed a few minutes ago. Gas marketing was well positioned in the southeast this quarter and was able to capture value from its transportation inventory positions. Earnings of roughly $12 million compared to a run rate loss last year. Slide 10 summarizes other key variances for the quarter. Hitting on a couple of the highlights. Operation and maintenance expenses, net of the pension reclass, were up roughly 1% as higher marketing and utility costs were offset by lower corporate spend. Interest expense was also higher, reflecting higher short-term debt levels tied to commodity costs and higher short-term interest rates. Let me provide commentary briefly on our full year fiscal year 2022 results. Overall, our net economic earnings were $3.86 per share, down $0.32 from last year's run rate, as lower gas utility earnings were partially offset by stronger marketing results. As a reminder, the gas utility results reflect the headwinds of, first, a lower rate of return in Missouri from the 21 rate order, and second, warmer weather in Alabama that was not fully mitigated, as we discussed last spring, offset in part by higher off system sales in the second half of the year. Our marketing's earnings in the current year of $27 million includes a $6.2 million benefit from the favorable settlement of our commercial disputes. The remaining earnings roughly equal to last year. Turning to our outlook. We remain confident in our long-term per share growth target rates of 5%-7%, driven by our rate-based growth. Speaking of rate-based growth, we have updated and extended our capital spend plan to a full 10 years, reflecting the long-term nature of our utility investment plan. This updated plan, totaling $7 billion, supports our safety, reliability, and sustainability goals and is covered by good regulatory recovery mechanisms. Our plan for 2023, as Steve mentioned, is $700 million, including our expansion investment at Spire Storage. We've also updated our financing guidance reflecting the Spire Storage expansion and a steadily decreasing level of equity required beyond 2023. We also updated our debt forecast, including operating company debt and refinancing activity to support ongoing investments. Two quick additional financing updates. First, Spire Alabama and Spire Gulf issued a total of $205 million of long-term debt last month. Secondly, our liquidity is well positioned heading into the winter heating season. Turning to fiscal year 2023 operating forecast. The summary here provides some context on the headwinds and tailwinds we see as we enter a new fiscal year. Let me hit on a few points. Pending regulatory recovery, we expect to benefit from new rates in all jurisdictions and recovery of overheads in Missouri. We have plans in place to address higher commodity costs and inflation overall, and we expect that our costs will increase net of our mitigation efforts by approximately 4% next year. We are well positioned from an interest rate perspective for long-term rates given our ongoing hedging program. As noted earlier, we do anticipate higher short-term borrowing costs as we work through this period of higher deferred gas costs, a portion of which is recovered through rates. Finally, I would also remind you that we anticipate the Spire Storage expansion to have a dilutive impact on our earnings per share during its development period in fiscal years 2023 and 2024. For 2023, we estimate that impact to be $0.09 per share, reflecting both interest on borrowings and the equity issued in advance of the project completion in late fiscal 2024. Our project financing plan targets a 50/50 capital structure, and it is our intent to separately disclose this impact each quarter and exclude it from our net economic earnings calculations during the development period. Those are a few of the items we focus on heading into 2023, and we'll have much more to say on guidance after we complete the regulatory process in Missouri. In summary, we enter fiscal year 2023 in a strong position, operationally and financially. We're focused on delivering for our customers, communities, investors, and all stakeholders, and we look forward to updating you on our progress as the year progresses. With that, let me turn it back over to you, Suzanne. Thank you, Steve. In closing, we delivered another successful year. We managed through a number of challenges and have emerged in fiscal 2023 poised to grow and deliver even stronger overall performance for our customers, communities, and investors. We look forward to updating you and others on our progress and successes. Thank you for your continued interest and investment in Spire. We're now ready to take your questions. Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Today's first question comes from Richard Sunderland with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, and thank you for the time today. Appreciate the disclosures on the 2023 outlook slide. Wanted to dig in a little bit more to the commentary around inflation, higher interest rates. Higher gas prices. If I heard you correctly, there was a 4% cost increase you anticipate net of mitigation efforts. Is this inclusive of all of those headwinds and across all the businesses? Maybe if you could parse that a little bit more into the component pieces and how you expect that to impact the bottom line. Is it, you know, is it fair to assume that 4% is the drag you're anticipating on the bottom line? That'd be helpful. Thank you. Morning, Richard. There was about five questions buried in there, so let me see if I can get them all straight, and I'm looking at Adam across the table. He'll help out too. As we looked at everything we have ongoing, and let's keep it all in perspective, we generally report reduced O&M year-over-year, or it's up sub inflation, including this year. You can look at the material in the earnings presentation. We have ongoing investment and plans in place, technology, and process improvement in order to continue to stay well below inflation. As we look at the current year, you know, we've actually been able to offset most of those early headwinds that we and all companies are dealing with in the market. As we look forward, we do see some headwinds that we won't be able to offset. When we look at our utility, which is really where our focus was in looking at the impact of inflation, you know, that number is 4%, give or take half a percent. It really, we're not that precise, but I figured I'd just give you a ballpark to point to. It's really driven by costs that we can't control. We know we have a pretty good feel where our employee line is going to go in terms of salary costs. It's really the other things that tend to be spiraling a lot faster. That is a net number, net of the things that we are already doing or will continue to do in order to drive down costs. Adam, what else did you want to add to that? You know, Richard, it's a good question. I would agree. You know, that is a kind of a net number for us. You know, there are other puts and takes there, as we've chatted about before. You know, I think 4% on an O&M basis, they're obviously talking about interest. You know, there is obviously rising interest rates. I think we've seen most of the rise there on a short-term side. We feel pretty good about where we sit from a long-term interest rate standpoint. Understood. That was very helpful. Maybe switching gears to the storage side, I'll try to keep this below 5 questions in my question here. The 9-cent drag for 2023, you know, how do you see that trending in 2024? Again, I appreciate this will be stripped out of operating earnings. Has your 2025 outlook changed at all for storage in light of some these other factors? No. As a matter of fact, our outlook on storage hasn't changed one bit from when we made the announcement in July. You're right, you know, we've disclosed the drag for the current year at $0.09, and that's really interest costs on the borrowing side and then the dilution on the equity side in order to keep our capital structure at the spot that makes the most sense for that project. When you get into 2024, we will actually see some of the capacity being used and useful through that winter of 2023-2024. We should expect, and you should expect that dilution to decrease a little bit because we're starting to see some margin pull through. It's really when you get to 25, after the project is complete and all of the capacity is available, that all of the financing costs are more than offset, and we're getting the return in the mid-teens that we talked about earlier for that project. I would add, Steve mentioned it in his prepared remarks, we are on track both from a cost and a timing perspective with the project. We're early in the project, but we're wrapping up the early prep work that we could do before the winter season hit us in Wyoming, and we're very pleased with their progress. Understood. Maybe one last one from me, just, you know, the rate case settlement, obviously great progress there. Still a little work to be done in terms of a final commission order. Any thoughts on kind of the backdrop feeding into that process, your ability to reach a settlement now? You know, how do you feel about, you know, where you've gotten and, you know, your outlook in the states, you know, coming off this agreement? Yeah, Richard, this is Scott Carter. You know, as Suzanne mentioned, you know, we're happy to be at this point of the process. We had filed the case to resolve obviously many of the deficiencies coming out of the last case, and the timely resolution is important to us. You know, getting all parties on board and having a unanimous stipulation that the commission can consider is a positive for us. We expect the commission to take that up and take seriously, you know, all the parties' interest that got settled through that collaboration and through that negotiation process. We feel like we're well positioned from that standpoint of fixing the overheads issue that was created, you know, clawing out of some of the cost of capital issues and updating the capital we've deployed since the previous case. It puts us on a pretty solid footing, as a place from which to grow and continue to operate. The next question comes from Christopher Jeffrey with Mizuho Securities. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Just wondering, as far as your expectations for bad debt expense, and you know, it seems like comparing your PGA for the upcoming winter from 2 years ago, bills are up pretty significantly. Just kind of wondering how you're thinking about that. Maybe how much expected relief do you expect once the arrears portion of the bills roll off? I guess if you could confirm, is this the second heating season of that or the first of the three? Right, Chris, thanks for the question. This is Adam. On the PGA side, we did just file in Missouri an updated PGA increase that will be approximately a 9% increase on bills. I think we've done a good job trying to keep that to a minimum. The supply team really has done a great job of, you know, working through our hedge program and such. As Steve had mentioned in his remarks, we really have leaned into the customer impact portion of this and continue to do so. We're, you know, pleased to keep that last increase on a more limited basis. Then similarly, not too long, a little bit longer ago, we have had some steady increases in Alabama as well. That's in the mid-teens or so on a year-over-year basis. Again, you know, continue to keep that under control. I would add to that, Chris. This is Scott. I would add to that just, you know, the highlights we gave where we're putting additional funding towards those low-income assistance programs. We are in that second year of trying to work through the Uri costs and the discount that we're carrying over there. As we work through this case, we're really focused on those customer impacts and those most impacted at the more challenging income levels. We believe those tools will be helpful in helping manage through keeping customers on, keeping them served, and helping us manage bad debt a bit. Got it. Thanks. Maybe just following up on the rate case settlement. I don't think there are many details as far as the authorized ROE or the cap structure. Are there any kind of puts and takes away from it, like maybe as far as a resolution on the short-term debt issue? Or should we expect to hear more from it after Friday when the case kind of goes before the commission? Yeah, Chris, again, this is Scott. You know, it is a black box, so inherently it doesn't spell out a lot of those elements. We did include a cost of capital that we use for ISRS cases going forward. Kind of think of that as a proxy for the cost of capital. Again, it's not spelled out in the case, but we feel like we've made large progress on capital structure, short-term debt issue, permanent financing relative to permanent capitalization. We feel like we're, again, back in a good place. The number gets us where, you know, in the range we need to be, and then it establishes a reasonable return compared to other, you know, returns in the state that we've seen in other cases, that we're gonna work against and deliver on the ISRS deployment going forward. Got it. Thanks, everyone. The next question is from Matt Davis with Cowen. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Can you hear me? Yep. Sure, Matt. Morning. I got two, maybe three questions. Did I hear you correctly in that the dilution from the storage investment will not be included in guidance? Is that correct? We obviously have provided the impact. In the absolute sense, we've given you the number, but we are going to exclude it from net economic earnings. We'll keep a light shining on that because that's our commitment to you and the other investors, is to make sure that we outline what the impacts are, but also what the benefits are once we get through the development. Okay. As we think about rolling forward, now you've given some of the puts and takes going into 2023. How should we think about the roll forward of your 5%-7% long-term earnings growth commitment and where that should be, I guess, based from? It's a great question, Matt, and we'll address that when we launch guidance. We know that's one of the boxes that we need to check. Let us get through the Missouri regulatory process, and then we'll be able to be a bit more forthcoming in what our expectations are going forward. Okay. Just lastly, in terms of the cost pressure going into 2023, what should we imply from that your earned ROE should be a little weaker in 2023, given the 4% year-on-year cost? Or do you still expect to earn your allowed return? Yeah, you know, we plan in a dynamic environment, and 4% is a little bit higher cost than we've seen in the past, and it's a lot higher than we've actually delivered because we have long-term plans to keep that down. It does present a little bit of a drag. I don't think anybody on the call finds that surprising because we know that is. That's pretty much where all businesses are right now. We wanted to be forthcoming with everybody about the challenges that we see going forward, but we will continue to work hard to offset as much of that as we possibly can. Okay. I know I said two or three, but I'm gonna ask one more. In terms of the equity that you need, do you think that you can do this via an ATM? Is it manageable enough that you wouldn't need additional discrete issuance? Yes, that's right. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Selman Akyol with Stifel. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to go back to the CapEx and $7 billion, specifically on slide 12. You've got $550 at the utility, I guess that's up from $528 or so this year. That's 4%. As I look into fiscal year 2024, you have it accelerating up 11% to $610, and then it grows gradually from there. Can you maybe just talk about what you're seeing in 2024 that takes your utility up at that rate? Part of it is, Selman, the cadence of underlying projects. As you know, we have ongoing projects that are the upgrade of the system, but then you have chunky projects on top of that tend to fall in discrete time periods. There are a couple chunky projects when we get to fiscal year 2024. That's really the explanation. We're also ramping up a little bit more of the ultrasonic meters as we get into 2024. There's a combination of factors. We have, obviously, very detailed plans because we need to be planning 6, 12, 18 months in advance to make sure that we have the right supplies and materials in order to meet our goals. Yeah. This is Steve. Thanks for the question. I think it's the continued capital plan that we have relative to our infrastructure upgrades, our new business which runs in the 15% range. Steve mentioned a few of the innovation projects such as ultrasonic meters, but then I think we really start to pivot to other parts of our system, such as transmission integrity, reliability, system improvements, pressure improvements. Really, as you think about kinda your DIMP and your TIMP plan, this is just the next priority in terms of the way we're thinking about long-term investments. It's really, I think it's a building of where we've come to this point relative to for the most part, it's been infrastructure upgrades on bare steel and cast iron. It's the next transition for us. Got you. Can you just remind us of any way to quantify how much of this is gonna fall under ISRS, as you think? Again, that's kinda where we start to pivot. The ISRS primarily covers, as you know, bare steel and cast iron replacement in Missouri. Those are almost very specific to those type of infrastructure upgrades. I think over time, we'll look for opportunities to really take that type of philosophy and look at all of your integrity management programs and go spend some time with the commission saying, "These are the priorities. Let's help understand and lay out a longer term plan for these." Because in some cases, they're more about system reliability and being able to make sure that we have pressure and we have gas during the coldest times of the year. It's not necessarily just replacing old and aging pipes. It's a combination of quite a few things. Again, ISRS is specific, and we continue to have that on both sides of the state here in Missouri. We'll look for a potential mechanism down the road, but those will be early discussions. Again, I think it's more around the long-term planning for your system and being able to sit down and prioritize. Yeah. Got it. Selman, another way to look at it, if you step back and look at the totality of our capital spend and how much of that is being recovered with minimal regulatory lag or is driving new business, it's about 75%. It's in the same category that we've been operating in for a number of years. Okay. I guess at one time, there was some consideration of potentially looking at building another pipe on the west side of the state. Should I just assume that's completely off the table over this next 10 years? This is Scott Carter. We continue to look at as the following Winter Storm Uri, you know, obviously our Kansas City region, west side of the state was more impacted than the east. Largely because we had STL in place that brought us a diversity of fuel supply from those more impacted regions, actually from less impacted regions. As we look at that, we're looking at everything, all of our supply portfolio for Missouri West. That includes a number of things from pipelines to storage, even the movements of you know, where the population centers are and the load centers, you know, is necessitating us taking a good hard look at that. We're tying that together with kind of our infrastructure replacement, make sure we're building a backbone that's gonna support that future growth and the future needs and demands, while also providing that safety and environmental benefit in the short run. We're looking upstream from that. That's still all in flight and in analysis. More to come as we land what our needs are there. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks, Selman. Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Seeing no more questions in the queue, this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Scott Dudley for closing remarks. Thank you everyone for joining us. We will be around throughout the day today for any follow-ups, and we look forward to that. Take care. Goodbye. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.