Thank you for standing by. My name is Prilla, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the New Jersey Resources Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Conference Call. For those of you listening on the live call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to introduce your speaker for today, Adam Fryer, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Welcome to New Jersey Resources' Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. I'm joined here today by Steve Westhoven, our President and CEO, Roberto Bell, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of our Senior Management Certain statements in today's call contain estimates and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities laws. We wish to caution listeners of this call that the current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs forming the basis of our forward-looking statements include many factors that are beyond our ability to control or estimate precisely. This could cause results to materially differ from our expectations as found on slide two. These items can also be found in the forward-looking statement section of yesterday's earnings release, furnished on Form 8K and in our most recent Forms 10K and 10Q as filed with the SEC. We do not, by including this statement, assume any obligation to review or revise any particular forward-looking statement referenced herein in light of future events. We will also be referencing to certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as net financial earnings, or NFE. We believe that NFC, net financial loss, utility gross margin, financial margin, adjusted funds from operations, and adjusted debt provide a more complete understanding of our financial performance. However, these non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for GAAP. Our non-GAAP financial measures are discussed more fully in Item 7 of our 10-K. The slides accompanying today's presentation are available on our website and were furnished on our Form 8-K filed yesterday. Steve will begin with this quarter's highlights, beginning on Slide 4, followed by Roberta who will review our financial results. Then we will open the call for your questions. With that said, I'll turn the call over to our President and CEO, Steve Westhoven.

Please go ahead, Steve. Thanks, Adam, and good morning, everyone. Fiscal 2025 is off to a strong start. During the first quarter, we continued to execute on our strategic initiatives, driving growth across our business segments. At New Jersey Natural Gas, we achieved a significant milestone with the implementation of new rates following the approval of our base rate case. This was supportive of our ability to recover the $850 million of investments made since our last rate case and results in a rate-based. We launched the next iteration of Save Green, our $386 million energy efficiency program, which is the largest in New Jersey Natural Gas's history. Investments in save green or increment and earn a near real-time return to a rider that is updated. Clean Energy Ventures continues to advance its commercial solar strategy. With a project pipeline of over one gigawatt, we remain well-positioned to drive growth. At Storage and Transportation, we continue to move forward on our capacity recovery project at Leaf River. And at Delphia Gateway, Section 4 rate case is progressing with an expected resolution later this year. And finally, at Energy Services, we continue to derive significant value from our portfolio of strategically located storage and transportation assets, as well as continued contribution from the Asset Management Agreements announced in 2020. These achievements reinforce our commitment to delivering shareholder value through disciplined capital allocation. As we review our strong first quarter performance, it's clear that NJR is not only delivering on its commitments, but it's strategically positioned to capitalize on emerging growth opportunities. Let's turn to our guidance for fiscal 2025 on slide 5. This reflects the strength of our diversified portfolio and our ability to navigate current opportunities and long-term objectives. Our fiscal 2025 NAPPS guidance is $3.05 a share to $3.20 per share, which exceeds our long-term growth rate of 79% and incorporates the one-time gain from our sale of our residential solar portfolio. By the recent operating performance, we will carefully monitor and assess our financial outlook as we move forward through the winter season, NFVPS by segment. We slightly narrowed the contribution ranges of our business units in the first quarter and will continue to do so as the year progresses. The majority of our NFVPS is expected to come from our utility operations. Now let's discuss our complementary business units, starting with New Jersey Natural Gas on slide 7. We invested $127 million at New Jersey Natural Gas, with 43% of that capex providing near real-time returns, leveraging investments to enhance reliability and drive consistent customer growth through our new construction and conversions, as well as expanding. At Clean Energy Ventures, we successfully placed approximately 11 megawatts of commercial solar projects into service during the period currently under construction, we are well positioned to continue growing our capacity by leveraging a robust and steadily expanding project pipeline of over one gate lot. Furthermore, the sale of our residential solar portfolio enhances our balance sheet and recycles capital to support the future growth opportunities. These deliver stable returns through fee-based revenue. Structure investments including pipelines and storage in strained energy markets. The Delphia Gateway continues to work through its FERC rate case, which reflects the investments made to enhance and modernize our pipeline system. We anticipate the conclusion to the process later in 2025, so actively advancing our capacity recovery project at Leaf River, focusing on restoring and enhancing storage capabilities to meet growing energy demand. While we have made excellent progress throughout the quarter on several fronts. With that, I'll turn the call over to Roberta for review of the financial results.

Roberta, noted earlier is off to a good start. In the first quarter, we reported NFEPS of $1.29 per share compared with NFEPS of $0.74. NGNG reported higher NFE as a result of new rates being in place on November 21st following the successful conclusion and Clean Energy Ventures reported higher NFE as a result of the sale of our residential solar transportation and energy services businesses also delivered higher NFE compared to the prior year period. Now let's move to slide 12 where we will discuss in your capital plan. For fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 we're planning capital expenditures ranging from 1.3 to 1.6 billion dollars which aligns with our long-term NFPS growth target. We did not make any changes to our capital plan compared to our prior disclosure and continue to expect spending between 610 and 7000 capital investments during fiscal 2025 several years we expect to deploy capital to enhance our utility infrastructure expand our clean energy portfolio and optimize our storage and transportation assets highlighted on slide 13 our strong balance sheet and liquidity position enable us to execute on our strategic priorities while maintaining financial flexibility. Our adjusted funds from operations to adjusted debt ratio is projected to range between 18% and 20% for fiscal 2025, which reflects our ability to generate solid operating cash flows and manage debt effectively. These levels are consistent with maintaining our investment-grade credit rating at NJNG and a strong balance sheet at NJR, and $500 million in fiscal 2025. The public foundation for our capital plan, dividends, contracts to deliver on our long-term growth objectives supported by a solid balance sheet and steady cash flows. With that, I'll turn the call back to Steve for a discussion on our carbonization initiatives and see with our stakeholders.

Thank you, and we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press the store, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to invite your questions, simply press the star one again. One moment, please, for your first question. And the first question comes from the line of Shar Poreza with Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys.

Hey, Shar.

Morning. I just want to get a sense on how you feel about the guide for 25 to 283 that's out there. You know, if we strip out that gain from the residential sale, add back a couple of pennies from lost earnings, we get to about $0.92 for Q1 on a more recurring basis, which, you know, is slightly below expectations. I guess, how are you trending within the EPS range you have out there for $0.25? I know winter matters a lot, and you highlighted you're going to be monitoring it, but just curious how you're trending for $0.25.

This is Roberto. So, we have our guidance out there, 305 to 320. We're not changing that at this point in time.

Understood. But any sense on how you're trending within that range?

We're well in our range. That's all I can tell you right now. Okay.

That's perfect. And then just on CEV, I mean, obviously good growth. You're seeing slightly larger opportunities outside your footprint versus a year ago. So I guess what's driving that? Should we assume more of that mix will continue to shift outside of New Jersey? And any sense on whether any of the uncertainties around maybe IRA are impacting the discussions, especially as we think about the pull forward of demand?

Yeah, you know, Char, we've, you know, purposely have diversified that portfolio. And that strategy has been in place, you know, for many years and, you know, really focused on jurisdictions that are friendly towards solar. So, you know, that is basically, you know, when you look at the portfolio, we've got, you know, 11 megawatts are in service. You've got 63 megawatts are in construction. You've got about a gigawatt in our project pipeline. So, you know, robust and certainly quite a bit of investment, you know, more than we need for what we've projected as CapEx over the next few years. You know, as far as, you know, kind of the, you know, IRA, you know, currently, you know, based on our past Harvard provisions, you know, we don't see any impacts in the near term, you know, project pipeline as we move forward. So it's really a business.

Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. And see you soon. Appreciate it.

And your next question comes from the line of Richard Sunderland with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the time today. Hey, Rich. Maybe starting on winter and energy services, any color on the market opportunities for energy services upside during last month's cold snaps? I don't know if there's any way to frame this on an order of magnitude basis versus what you're able to realize last year. Just any thoughts there.

Yeah. You know, the weather was, you know, constructive across all of our businesses, you know, not only energy services, but just all of our infrastructure business, really shows the value of existing infrastructure in these peak periods. As the market grows, we just see our infrastructure becoming more valuable to organically, you know, for our business. You know, as far as how to think about that in reference, you know, the event that happened, you know, we've got quite a bit of that, you know, as we look forward, you know, the next quarter.

The color there. And then turning to the Adelphia rate case process, I realize it's early, but are there any key dates in the procedural schedule we should watch for? I guess I'm curious what the typical settlement window is.

Yeah, you know, it's a typical rate case. You know, it's really just, you know, verifying, you know, quite a bit of the money that we spent during the initial construction, which was several years ago. So a regular Section 4 rate case. And, you know, we said we expect this to proceed forward and be settled, you know, sometime in 2025. So we haven't changed from any of that. So that's about all the color that we can give right now since we're in the regulatory.

Thank you. I'll leave it there.

All right. Thanks, Rich.

And your next question comes from the line of Gabe Marine with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Morning, everyone. If I could just ask a question on CEV TAPEX relative to what you spent year to date in the target range. Was this kind of what you intended, I guess, to spend, and we should expect maybe a potential acceleration to kind of get you to the midpoint of the range? Or is there still just, I guess, uncertainty around the timing and spend as to whether you're going to get to that midpoint of the CapEx range for CV this year?

Yeah, so this Roberto gave, so for this year, you see what our guidance range for CapEx for CV is out there. This is higher than what we did last year. So, from that perspective, yeah, you can consider it as an acceleration, but we expect to be well within our guidance range for the year in our presentation. Thanks, Roberto.

And I know I think we asked about this last quarter about a potential follow-on to the IIP. Any additional thoughts as far as renewing the IIP now that the rate case is in the review?

Hey, Gabe. It's Pat Migliaccio. Thanks for the question. You know, just as a reminder, we do have the current IIP that has spending forecasted through fiscal year 25. That'll close out with rates effective in 2026. We had a really constructive energy efficiency filing, record level of approved investment of $386 million. That ramps up over time. As far as a success or a follow on IIP, we'll evaluate that and update you when we have something to report. Thanks, Pat. Appreciate it.

And once again, if you would like to ask a question, simply press the star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Travis Miller with Morning Star. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Hey, Travis. I think Richard asked my question on the January operations of your midstream business. So look forward to hearing about that. next quarter. But Save Green, I'm wondering if you could remind us of the regulatory treatment. Was any of that included in the rate case? And then, if not, what's the recovery of the capital side of that program?

Hey, Travis, it's Pat Migliaccio. So Save Green's spend is not included in our base rate case filings. It is a separate filing that operates a little like our infrastructure writers. So we recover annual investment each year as we make that investment. So when we consider our complexion of our capital investment, that's as near real-time recovery as we can possibly get.

Okay, perfect.

And then a broader question, since someone asked you, tariffs, is that going to have any impact either on getting the equipment that you need to execute the capital investment program or even more directly possibly on the solar buildup hey travis this is steve you know we talked about you know just general you know impacts from before you know at this point in time you know due to the construct of our business and you know safe harbor visions and things like that um you know we don't expect any impacts um you know from what's going on out in the regulatory world.

Okay. And no impact on just your regular need for equipment or supplies and stuff like that for your utility operations, aside from the solar stuff?

No, I don't think there's anything that is significant at this point in time. When you look at our overall makeup, especially if you look at the utility, most of it's labor. So materials is a smaller portion of it. And yeah, I would expect that, you know, any issues we'd have would be kind of quickly, you know, work as a big issue. You know, it's going to be fluid. You know, we'll monitor this as it moves forward, but, you know, we have no expectation.

Okay, great. Thanks so much. All right.

Thanks, Travis.

All right. Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Adam Pryor for closing remarks.

Thanks so much. And thanks to all of you for joining us. As always, we appreciate your investment and interest in NJR and have a good rest of your day. Thanks again.

Thank you. And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.