Welcome to the Chesapeake Utilities Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the call over to Beth Cooper, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer and Assistant Corporate Secretary. Please proceed.

Thank you and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Chesapeake Utilities' second quarter 2023 earnings call. As you saw in our press release issued yesterday, the Company delivered solid performance in both the quarter and year-to-date periods in 2023, despite the continued effects of warmer temperatures into the first half of the year across our operating footprint. Current quarter results also exclude the impact of a non-recurring pre-tax gain recognized in the second quarter of 2022, amounting to $1.9 million or $0.08 per share on a diluted basis. We will touch on the financial results in more detail in just a few minutes; but Chesapeake Utilities remains committed to delivering another year of record performance, executing on its growth strategy and driving long-term increased shareholder value. As shown on Slide 2, participating with me on the call today are Jeff Householder, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Moriarty, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Policy and Risk Officer. We also have other members of our management team joining us virtually. Today's presentation can be accessed on our website under the Investors Page in Events and Presentation subsection. After our prepared remarks, as we typically do, we will open the call up for questions. Moving to Slide 3, I would like to remind you that matters discussed in this conference call may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements and projections could differ materially from our actual results. The safe harbor for forward-looking statements section of the company's 2022 Form 10-K provides further information on the factors that could cause such statements to differ from our actual results. Additionally, the company evaluates its performance based on non-GAAP adjusted gross margin and has provided the appropriate disclosures in accordance with the SEC's Regulation G. A reconciliation of GAAP gross margin to non-GAAP adjusted gross margin is provided in the appendix of this presentation and in our earnings release. Now, I'll turn the call over to Jeff to provide some opening remarks, including on the company's second quarter and the key drivers of our performance.

Thank you, Beth. Good morning and thank you for joining our call today. We're reporting earnings per share of $0.90 for the second quarter and $2.94 for 2023 year-to-date. Warmer weather was a significant impact, $0.38 on a year-to-date basis, including $0.09 for the second quarter. Despite the warm weather and continued interest rate hikes, our team went to work looking for cost savings, margin acceleration, and other opportunities to overcome a significant impact of several million dollars. Today, we've recovered all the $0.10 per share. Keep in mind we also recognized a non-recurring gain during the prior period related to a real estate transaction that represented an $0.08 per share gain in 2022. Despite the challenges thus far during 2023, our fundamental growth strategy driven by the dedication and efforts of the Chesapeake team continue to be successful. As a result, our adjusted gross margin increased by $7.4 million over last year's second quarter. We've also initiated several new investment projects that meet the continued strong customer demand for our energy delivery services. And in addition, we have finalized several significant regulatory initiatives that are adding to margins and paving the way forward for substantial system investments over the coming years. During the second quarter, we deployed approximately $50 million in new capital investments, bringing our total spend during the first half of the year to just under $92 million. We continue to support the previously communicated 2023 capital expenditure guidance range of $200 million to $230 million. As an example of our continued investment growth opportunities, this week, we have received Florida Public Service Commission approval for our newest pipeline expansion to bring gas to the city of Newberry, Florida. We also began to recognize margin from two recently completed pipeline projects, the Beachside and Lake Wales expansions. Numerous other projects are underway, including the Eastern Shore natural gas Southern Expansion on Delmarva and an expansion in the Wildlight development in Nassau County, Florida, which we will highlight later. In addition to the Newberry expansion, the Florida PSC recently approved our GUARD program, which is the second phase of our comprehensive pipeline replacement program in Florida. GUARD will enable us to improve safety and deliverability for our Florida distribution systems through the relocation of mains located in the rear easements, the street-side locations in front of customer premises. It will also allow us to replace and upgrade other system facilities, and Jim will provide more details on the GUARD program a little later in the call. Our long-term growth initiatives have provided an earnings foundation that serves to offset most of the volumetric impact of weather and the other cost pressures presented by the current economic environment, as well as overcoming the effect of the previously mentioned non-recurring gain in 2022. While weather has been a distraction, it has not tempered or dampened our expectations in regards to achieving another strong year of performance. On Slide 5, we wanted to provide some additional color on weather, given its significant impact on volumes for the quarter and year-to-date periods. As you can see, each of our primary service territories experienced temperatures that were notably warmer, not just compared to last year but were unseasonably warmer compared to the last 10 years. In the Delmarva service area, heating degree-days were 20% lower compared to the first six months of 2022 and 24% lower compared to normal levels. In Ohio, temperatures were also more than 13% and 15% lower than year-to-date 2022 and normal levels, respectively. And while we're not as dependent on heat load in Florida, heating degree-days were down by over 30% in the year-over-year and 10-year normal comparisons. Again, the team did an excellent job to overcome these warmer temperatures by remaining focused on our growth initiatives and cost mitigation efforts. These efforts will continue through the remainder of the year with a focus to restore as much as possible of these earnings. Significantly colder temperatures later in the year would certainly be a big help. Turning to Slide 6, let me provide some updates on our key growth drivers. First, we continue to experience organic growth in our natural gas distribution businesses that far outpaces the national average across both of our Delmarva and Florida service territories. Customers continue to select natural gas as their preferred energy choice. For the quarter, we saw a 5.5% increase for our Delmarva service territories and a 4% increase in Florida. This continues to highlight the attractive nature of the communities we serve. Given the magnitude of questions we get around the growth rates we achieved and the runway for continued growth, I want to highlight just two of the many areas driving our customer growth rates, Middletown, Delaware and Wildlight in Nassau County, Florida. The magnitude of the customer growth in our distribution businesses is also continuing to drive the need for additional investment in our transmission systems. As I mentioned previously, several of our pipeline projects generated margin for the first time in the second quarter. We also continue to make headway with other projects, including our Wildlight expansion, and we added the Newberry project to our major projects table this quarter. These projects and others will deliver significant margin growth in 2023 and beyond. And while warmer temperatures impacted volumes in our propane business into the second quarter, our Sharp team did an excellent job managing margins and service fees, especially in our northern service territories. Beyond the customer growth we've secured in natural gas, we continue to add new propane community gas systems where natural gas is not yet available. As a highly desirable energy choice for our customers where natural gas is not yet available, propane remains a core component of our growth strategy. Marlin Gas Services continues to drive solid growth for the company. As our vertical pipeline solution, Marlin serves our customers with gas transportation services that solve unique and complex challenges, including service to clean energy in Florida that we mentioned on our last call. Marlin's vertical pipeline solution is delivering compressed natural gas to their fueling station. Finally, we continue to advance several sustainable investment projects. We're being disciplined and cautious in our approach. We recognize the evolving nature of the renewable natural gas markets and the regulatory constructs. We've initiated the construction on our first full-scale renewable natural gas facility at the Full Circle Dairy farm in Madison County, Florida, and we remain on track for that unit to go into service in the first half of 2024. On our last call, we also discussed our participation on a collective team, comprised of commercial, governmental, and educational institutions that submitted the proposal for a MACH2 Hydrogen Hub in the Delaware, Philadelphia, and Southern New Jersey region. About several weeks ago we participated alongside some of our team members in an interview with the Department of Energy, our proposed hub is one of 11 finalists vying for funding to both hydrogen development and deployment across multiple uses. We're excited to work with these partners and, further, it is in our mission to deliver energy that supports a more sustainable future. Back in May, we unveiled some drone footage of the growth within our service territories on the Delmarva and in Florida. The footage has been well received and clearly demonstrates the current and future runway of growth that our service territories provide. We recognize that we need to spend more time showcasing our service areas and future potential. For that, I'm going to highlight one such area in Delaware and one in Florida. These are only a few of the many areas that are experiencing high levels of growth. Middletown, Delaware was recently ranked by Fortune.com as the Fifth Best Talent in the U.S. for Families. Housing developments, commercial growth, and related infrastructure continue to build out at a fast pace; the nine schools, for example, being built in the last 10 years. More recently, this town was selected for a new pharmaceutical manufacturing facility that will drive hundreds of jobs. This is the company's second facility in the United States. As part of their manufacturing process, we will provide natural gas service to their plant, and the expectations for the facility to begin operations sometime in 2025. While we tend to talk about residential developments comprising hundreds, maybe thousands of homes, you need to think about growth at mass scales when we talk about Wildlight. Located fundamentally from the beaches of Amelia Island and Jacksonville, Wildlight is expected to be constructed over the next 10 to 20 years and will comprise approximately 22,000 homes. Our FPU distribution system is positioned to meet the growth from these residential customers as well as from the surrounding commercial infrastructure being constructed, including schools, businesses, medical facilities, and so many more. The methane/natural gas distribution, Peninsula Pipeline also had to construct additional facilities to serve demand on the distribution system. Before I turn it over to Beth, on Slide 8, I wanted to highlight several examples of pipeline expansions driven by distribution system growth. On the Delmarva, one such example is the Southern expansion. We're installing a new natural gas compressor skid at our existing Bridgeville facility that will provide additional transportation capacity to support our own distribution system demand as a result of the significant growth in Southern Delaware. This will go into service in the fourth quarter and generate $2.3 million of adjusted gross margin on an annual basis beginning in 2024. Next, I just mentioned the Wildlight pipeline expansion which supports the distribution system growth recover on the preceding pace. Another key Florida pipeline expansion project is the proposed $18.1 million expansion of Newberry, which brings natural gas to this town in Central Florida. In addition to capturing new natural gas growth from residential and commercial customers, we will be converting the town from propane to natural gas service. There are other commercial and industrial opportunities that we're also exploring which would add incremental adjusted gross margin beyond our current annualized estimate of $2.9 million once fully in service. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Beth to discuss our results in more depth.

Thank you, Jeff, and good morning again everyone. Turning to Slide 9, I'd like to begin by saying I am proud of the things that we continue to accomplish as an organization and our performance relative to our peers. Now, I'll provide some additional details on our results for the second quarter and first six months of the year. As Jeff mentioned, diluted EPS for the second quarter of the year was $0.90 compared to $0.96 during the prior year, which included warmer weather that impacted EPS by $0.09, the impact of the $0.08 gain related to real estate, and higher interest costs of $0.05. We overcame $0.16 of the cumulative $0.22 impact. Adjusted gross margin and operating income for the quarter increased by more than 8% and 7%, respectively, both relative to the prior-year period despite the weather impacts. The key factors shaping the growth of our adjusted gross margin during headquarters included contributions from new permanent base rates that went into effect in Florida in March and incremental contributions associated with regulated infrastructure programs, organic growth in our natural gas distribution businesses, higher fees and margin per gallon in our propane business, new pipeline expansions, and increased demand for our virtual pipeline solutions including compressed natural gas and renewable natural gas. Consistent with the conditions that we saw during the first quarter, our consumption was impacted by warmer weather, which partially offset the overall adjusted gross margin growth. However, on a year-to-date basis, weather has had a more significant impact on our results. While our diluted EPS came in at $2.94 during the first six months of 2023 compared to $3.04 during the prior year, the current year results reflect a margin impact of approximately $0.38 attributable to the significantly warmer weather experienced throughout 2023. Overcoming $0.28 of this impact through growth was a monumental task by our team. On Slide 10, our financial summary shows that adjusted gross margin increased $7.4 million and operating income increased $1.9 million for the second quarter. Interest expense was almost 20% higher during the current quarter as the effects of the rising rate environment experienced during 2022 were more impactful during the second half of the year and, unfortunately, continue to linger into 2023. Again despite these headwinds, EPS for the second quarter of 2023 was just $0.06 lower than the second quarter of last year; and more importantly, on a year-to-date basis, the impact was only 10%. This performance continues to highlight the resilience of our team, who continue to stay focused on our long-term growth initiatives and strategic plan. Moving to Slide 11, let me provide some additional insight on our EPS walk for the quarter. As mentioned now several times, we recognized a gain related to real estate rationalization in the second quarter of 2022 of $0.08 per share. Our core businesses, excluding the continued impact of weather, provided additional margin contributions that increased earnings by $0.42 per share. We previously touched on the key drivers of this growth. Although to a lesser degree than the first quarter, weather continued to partially offset this growth through reduced volumes, representing approximately $0.09 for the quarter. Higher operating expenses tied to our core business drove a $0.17 impact or just 40% of adjusted gross margin. While this is reflective of our continued focus on cost management, I want to remind everyone that had weather been consistent with historical averages, operating expenses would have been higher for both the quarter and year-to-date periods. At a minimum, incremental volumes would have required incremental expenses tied to such volumes, particularly in the propane businesses. Higher depreciation, amortization, and property tax costs resulted in a $0.03 impact. And, finally, increased interest expense and other changes together resulted in an 11% cumulative impact compared to the same quarter last year. On Slide 12, we provide a bridge with regard to our year-to-date performance. The primary drivers are similar to what we just covered for the quarter, so I won't walk through all the details, but I did want to note a few key items. First, the year-to-date period includes a $0.07 increase related to the one-time asset associated with a decrease in one of our state tax rates. This serves to largely offset the absence of the real estate gain from the prior year. Second, weather was much more impactful on our year-to-date performance. The historic temperatures experienced during the first quarter along with the continuation of warmer temperatures into the second quarter have impacted our results by $0.38 per share relative to the prior year. As you can see on this slide, the weather impact cut into the core business growth contribution of $0.84 per share year-to-date by 45%. So, with that said, we generated EPS within $0.10 of the prior year or approximately 3% with temperatures that were 20% warmer than 2022 in our northern service territories. This further demonstrates the dedication of our team and that the fundamental growth strategies are delivering results that will drive future long-term earnings. Moving to the next two slides, let me touch on Chesapeake Utilities' operating segments. As you can see on Slide 13, adjusted gross margin was up 9.4% for the quarter and 7.3% year-over-year for our Regulated Energy segment. Operating income was also higher in both periods by double-digit growth rates, up 13.4% and 10.5%, respectively, and driven by new rates associated with our Florida natural gas base rate proceedings, organic growth in our natural gas distribution systems, including propane CGS conversions, transmission pipeline expansions and, finally, incremental contributions from our various infrastructure programs. Turning to Slide 14, adjusted gross margin for the Unregulated segment increased 4% for the quarter and was relatively constant with the prior-year period. At the operating income level, the combination of the significantly warmer temperatures experienced throughout the year and the fixed operating expenses that are inherent in those businesses resulted in a decrease of $1.6 million and $4.4 million for the quarter and year-to-date periods, respectively. As our capital projections remain on track, as our strategic plan continues to support strong capital investment in the future, I'd like to highlight some of the details on our strong balance sheet position. As shown on Slide 15 and as mentioned last quarter, the $80 million of 15-year senior notes that we issued in March allowed us to reduce short-term borrowings considerably. With a short-term debt balance of just under $96 million, we have been able to mitigate some of the continued effects of the raising interest rate environment. We locked in the interest rates for $50 million of the short-term debt balance, utilizing a three-year swap that we executed several months ago. At the end of the period, total capitalization was approximately $1.63 billion. This included 53.2% stockholders' equity, 40.9% long-term debt at an average fixed rate of 3.89%, and only 5.9% of short-term debt, given the long-term debt financing I just mentioned. You will see us continue to execute financing plans that facilitate our growth while also maintaining our financial discipline and targets that have yielded our top quartile performance over the last 10-plus years. Moving to Slide 16, we highlight our major projects, including the pipeline expansions, CNG, LNG, and RNG transportation projects, and strategic regulatory initiatives, which will drive our adjusted gross margin growth this year and next. As always, we remind you that this table does not include organic growth and it is not indicative of all the projects that we are evaluating and pursuing. We continue to be encouraged with the opportunities that are presented by our business development team and look forward to announcing other projects in the future. Combining these initiatives are expected to add more than $21 million in 2023 and approximately $8.6 million in additional margin in 2024. As new projects or initiatives are announced or finalized, we will add them to this table. Moving to Slide 17, we highlight our key pipeline expansion projects and the increased level of activity, projects to be completed as well as projects that will be partially constructed this year. With an investment of approximately $83 million, these projects are expected to contribute more than $11 million in adjusted gross margin once completed. With that said, I would like to finish by acknowledging the efforts of our team year-to-date. Standing together, we remain committed to achieving our long-standing track record of year-over-year earnings growth and delivering industry-leading performance. The diversity of our operations, strong organic growth, a pipeline of investment growth opportunities, regulatory innovation, and our talented workforce will continue to drive increased financial performance for our stakeholders. I will now pass the call to Jim to discuss our regulatory and company culture update.

Thank you, Beth, and good morning. It is great to be with you all. I would first like to highlight some of our recent regulatory activities. As we have already mentioned, the outcome of the Florida rate case was significant on many fronts, including financially, as well as serving to simplify our business. The second quarter of 2023 was the first full quarter with permanent rates in effect. With a full year of permanent rates in 2024, you should expect to recognize close to the $17.2 million projected margin impact. Building off of the process we followed in Florida, we're preparing for our upcoming Maryland filings. We're required to file a rate case in early 2024 for our Maryland division and Sandpiper Energy. We will look to build on regulatory strategies and lessons learned from Florida as we prepare these filings. I would also like to provide a little more context around the approval of the GUARD program earlier this week by the Florida PSC. As shown on Slide 19, this projected 10-year program is expected to represent $205 million of additional capital investment, including $8 million of investment in 2023, which is reflected in our capital forecast. For 2024, we are projecting $20 million of capital investment, which is reflected in our long-term forecast that will result in $1.4 million of margin in 2024. GUARD, combined with our other infrastructure programs like our Electric Storm Protection Plan, Eastern Shore's Capital Cost Surcharge plan, and our planned investments by Eastern Shore to meet the new PHMSA requirements demonstrate the importance that our regulatory approaches play in maintaining safe and reliable service and, secondarily, contributing to margin growth.

Thanks, Jim. Turning to Slide 21, I want to reaffirm that we remain on track with both our long-term capital guidance of $900 million to $1.1 billion for the 2021 to 2025 period and this year's expectations for $200 million to $230 million. Capital guidance continues to support our earnings guidance of $6.15 to $6.35 per share in 2025. Earlier this week, we reviewed our latest strategic plan update with our Board. We discussed a number of additional investment opportunities before us. We expect to issue updated guidance in early 2024, inclusive of these new opportunities. Our capital plan includes cyclical growth in vessels, including organic distribution system growth, pipeline expansions, and the reliability infrastructure programs as well as our new technology platform to more than $50 million of projected investments. As discussed previously, we're upgrading our utility customer information and billing system. We've established and accomplished a team that will help us undertake this monumental task, including partnering with SAP and IBM. Over the next few years, we'll also implement our new work management and dispatch system as well as our financial ERP system. The customer growth we've experienced along with our expectations for the future has necessitated the need for an enhanced technology platform that will leave us well prepared to deliver a high level of service to our customers. We also see these technology upgrades as significantly transformational and enabling us to accelerate, standardize, and enhance the way we deliver service to both stakeholders, internally and externally.

Hello, thank you. Middletown and Wildlight, thank you for the detail. I mean, putting it into context, I mean, these are just one of the many projects in both Delmarva and Florida. It appears just based on the Slide 17, with the pipeline projects, that there could be a meaningful part of the growth going forward. Or can you put it more into context?

Sure. Good morning, Tate. It’s great to hear from you. As we approached the AGA, it became clear that we needed to visually represent the areas we’ve been discussing regarding our growth. As Jeff mentioned, we started by creating drone footage, and I would love to discuss that with you and show you the footage. We also identified some key areas to highlight. For instance, Middletown is a community not located in the beach areas commonly associated with our growth, yet it has experienced significant growth. Situated in the central northern part of Delaware, it’s a community outside of Wilmington where many residents commute to Ludington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and other locations for work. There’s been substantial growth here, even though it’s quite a distance from the other beach areas experiencing exceptional growth. In Florida, we chose to highlight the Wildlight community due to its size and the considerable commercial infrastructure planned alongside the residential development. We also included a community in Central Florida and another in Southern Florida in our drone footage as examples. Our aim is to provide you with more opportunities to see where growth is happening and to emphasize the long-term potential ahead.

Yes, it's great examples. And then, just on the pipeline page, page 17, in the presentation. Related to the '25 guidance, the expanded infrastructure from Newberry, is that not in '25 EPS guidance currently? I think Newberry is related to Wildlight. Is that correct?

No, Newberry is actually not related to Wildlight; it's actually left to Wildlight on the map. And so, it's a new expansion. Keep in mind, though, Tate, as we're developing our five-year guidance, both from a capital standpoint and an earnings standpoint, we are looking at projects way before they're being announced. And we are thinking about where expansion is likely. So, as we've created that capital guidance that's out there through 2025 and the earnings guidance, there is some level of projects that we feel have a high probability of occurring. So, that is inherent within that current capital and earnings guidance.

And then, the Southern Expansion project, is that expansion related to supporting Middletown partly as well?

No, it's actually further south; it is supportive of growth that would be occurring in that Southern Delaware area, surrounding those each areas into Maryland growth that's happening there. So, Middletown is much more Northern in the State of Delaware. The Southern Expansion, which is at Bridgeville, is somewhat west of the growth that's happening in Sussex County, but there's a lot of growth that's starting to come westward from the beach area. So, it's supporting all of the Delaware division's growth in the southern area. And I'd be happy. Yes, it is. There is significant commercial development occurring in that area. As the manufacturing facility progresses, there may be additional facilities that develop around it.

Hi, Tate, this is Jeff. Just to add another little factor in all of this. I guess, in the Newberry example, that was - that's the town right outside of Gainesville, Florida. They never had natural gas service before. And we had an underground propane system there serving a variety of customers. And so, the town has literally been approaching us for the last several years, asking us to get natural gas service there. So, it's reflective, I think, of a couple of things. One is the continued demand for natural gas service on the part of consumers and the fact that we have once again found a way to take our propane operations well into a facility or go into a town before we can get natural gas pipe there, serve customers, generate demand from the service, and then come along later and convert those propane customers to natural gas. So, it really I think is reflective of kind of a larger picture that we see across our distribution systems. We're not heavily in urbanized areas and that has led to significant opportunities for expansion, as people continue to move into being smaller communities like Middletown of the surrounding urban areas of Philadelphia and Wilmington, as Beth mentioned.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Beth.

Hi, good morning.

Good morning, Brian.

Hi, just the customer growth, 5.5% in Delmarva, 4% in Florida, I think that compares to last quarter of 5.4% in Delmarva and 4.4% in Florida. I mean, is there any read through there or is it just kind of getting too granular on a quarter-to-quarter type of change?

It's too detailed, Brian. For instance, even if we look at the Wildlight community, there's a lot of growth expected. The number of individual customers added in one quarter compared to another may fluctuate slightly, but that won't indicate any significant change because substantial growth is still on the horizon. I believe it's important to view the long-term trends. Currently, there has been no slowdown at all, and we're keeping an eye on things, especially with the current economic conditions. However, we haven't seen any decline so far. Homes are still selling, new communities are being developed, and we are also adding a few community gas systems. Growth is ongoing across all our service areas.

Okay, got it. Newberry, you mentioned your footprint isn't in heavily urbanized areas. How many opportunities similar to Newberry do you potentially have to convert propane to gas?

I wouldn't say there is a lot. There are communities that come up from time to time, like Ocean City, Maryland, which we acquired in 2013, as well as Ocean Pines, Maryland, and Newberry, Florida. There may be opportunities, but considering the span of ten years for a community, I wouldn't say there are many. There are specific areas in Florida that might present some potential, but there is less opportunity now on the Delmarva Peninsula. I know there are one or two options in suburban Maryland, but it hasn't made sense to convert them at this time. Overall, I don't believe there are many opportunities. Jeff, do you have anything you'd like to add?

Hi, Brian. We are quite opportunistic about our goals regarding natural gas service, especially in states like Florida and Delaware, where we notice significant population growth. For instance, Florida is still seeing about 1,000 people relocating every day. Communities like Newberry, located just outside of Gainesville, are continuing to develop, and we're observing more people moving into these areas. This presents opportunities for us. While we may not have many brand-new towns to serve as we do with Newberry, there remains substantial development in regions where we have nearby facilities.

Okay, great. And then, switching to the propane side, you mentioned, volume is down obviously because of weather. What were the margins like? And then, also, what are your criteria when evaluating complementary or bolt-on acquisitions to the existing business?

Great questions. We have continued to see benefits in both the first and second quarters. In lower volume quarters, there tends to be less downward pressure on prices. As a result, we have been able to maintain some of our margins as we move into the spring and summer months, which continued into the second quarter. Regarding acquisitions, we look for opportunities on several fronts. First, we assess whether we can add something to our existing operations and create synergies. Second, we consider entering high-growth areas, like we did in North Carolina, especially in coastal regions where natural gas is not yet available. This presents an opportunity for us to implement our services, including AutoGas and our community gas systems. Additionally, we evaluate opportunities from a financial standpoint, ensuring they are immediately accretive to earnings per share. We also aim to meet our target returns over time. Those are typically the criteria we consider. Jeff, do you have anything else to add? That's a summary of our approach.

We're also considering the cultural fit between the organizations. We want to assess the political and regulatory environments to ensure we will be welcomed. Integration ease is a factor we’re evaluating, along with technology issues that may enhance smaller propane operations. We’re examining the business model we would inherit to determine if it aligns with our current operations or if we can adapt it to better fit our practices at Chesapeake. Additionally, we are assessing operational risks and environmental concerns, as you would expect.

Okay, great. Lastly, regarding the Florida GUARD program, which previously had an undetermined margin, that $205 million over 10 years and the $1.4 million for 2024 margin is incremental to that margin slide. Will the earnings generated each year be consistent, or will it be a neutral margin, will it ramp up, or are there other factors we need to consider looking beyond 2024?

I think looking at it, linear gives you a good base. But I think if you go back and look at our GUARD program, depending on what other projects we have going on, how many pipeline expansions, how many other projects, where are resources being dedicated, you could see some spikes up and down depending on what else is going on from a growth standpoint and what other projects that are happening. But, I think, for purposes of your model, using that as a base from which to start, Brian, is a good place to go.

All right, great. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. And I want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time and we appreciate your continued interest in the company. Goodbye.

Thank you. This concludes today's Chesapeake Utilities second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.