Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2024 Unitil Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker, Christopher Goulding, Vice President of Finance and Regulatory Services. Please go ahead.

[Technical Difficulty] Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Hurstak, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Also with us today are Bob Hevert, President and Chief Administrative Officer; and Todd Diggins, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. We will discuss financial and other information on this call. As we mentioned in the press release announcing today's call, we have posted information, including a presentation to the Investors section of our website at unitil.com. We will refer to that information during this call. Moving to Slide 2. The comments made today about future operating results or events are forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted. Statements made on this call should be considered together with cautionary statements and other information contained in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other documents we have filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we assume no obligation to update them. The presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. The accompanying supplemental information more fully describes these non-GAAP financial measures and includes a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP financial measures. The company believes these non-GAAP financial measures are useful in evaluating its performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chairman and CEO, Tom Meissner.

Great. Thanks, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us. I'm going to begin on Slide 3, where today, we announced second quarter net income of $4.3 million or $0.27 per share, representing an increase of $0.02 per share over the same period of 2023. Through the first half of the year, net income was $31.5 million or $1.96 per share, representing an increase of $0.20 per share over the same period in 2023. Our results for the quarter were in line with our expectations and we are confident that our full year earnings will be within our long-term guidance range. Looking beyond 2024, we reaffirm our long-term earnings growth of 5% to 7%, supported by rate base growth in the range of 6.5% to 8.5% and a dividend payout ratio between 55% and 65%. We continue to execute on our regulatory agenda, capital investment plan and cost control initiatives and believe that our consolidated GAAP return on equity of 9.8% over the last 12 months reflects these efforts. Our regulatory agenda remains active and we recently received an order in our Fitchburg Electric and Gas rate cases. We view that order as constructive, with many items approved as filed, including the company's performance-based rate plans. Dan will provide additional detail about these rate cases later on the call. As I will outline in greater detail on the next slide, we reached an agreement with Hope Utilities to purchase Bangor Natural Gas Company, a fully regulated natural gas distribution utility. We expect the transaction to close by the end of the first quarter of 2025, subject to approval by the Maine Public Utilities Commission. We view Bangor as a natural complement to our existing operations and believe our shared commitment to affordability, safety and outstanding service will benefit…

Thank you, Tom. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin on Slide 6. As Tom mentioned, today, we announced second quarter net income of $4.3 million or $0.27 per share, an increase of $0.02 per share compared to the same period in 2023. For the first six months of the year, net income was $31.5 million, an increase of $3.2 million or $0.20 per share compared to the corresponding period in 2023. Earnings growth reflects higher adjusted electric and gas margin, partially offset by higher operating expenses. Our results for the first half of 2024 are consistent with the quarterly earnings per share distribution discussed in the past and provided in the appendix of this presentation. We expect the results for the remainder of 2024 will be largely consistent with this quarterly distribution. Turning to Slide 7. I will discuss our electric and gas adjusted gross margins. I will start with our electric operations. Electric adjusted gross margin was $52 million for the six months ended June 30, 2024, an increase of $1.1 million compared to the same period in 2023. This increase in electric adjusted gross margin reflects higher distribution rates and customer growth. The company added approximately 750 new electric customers compared to the same period in 2023. As a reminder, the company's electric distribution revenues are substantially decoupled, which eliminates the dependency of distribution revenue on the volume of electricity sales. Moving to gas operations. Gas adjusted gross margin was $92.3 million for the first six months ended June 30, 2024, an increase of $8.1 million or approximately 10% compared to the same period in 2023. The increase in gas adjusted gross margin reflects higher distribution rates and customer growth. The company added approximately 1,100 new gas customers compared to the same period in 2023. Approximately 60% of the…

Thanks, Dan. Wrapping up on Slide 12. We've enjoyed a strong first half of the year and we're currently earning our authorized returns on a consolidated basis. Recent regulatory outcomes remain constructive and our capital investment plan remains on track. Our credit metrics continue to compare favorably to our peers, ensuring access to capital to support our growth. I'm excited about the future and look forward to providing additional details about the Bangor acquisition on future calls. With that, I'll pass it back to Chris.

Thanks, Tom. That wraps up the prepared materials for this call. Thank you for attending. I'll now turn the call over to the operator who will coordinate questions.

Our next question comes from the line of Ken Sheldon with Bank of America.

I'm showing no further questions. So at this time, we would now like to close out the meeting. Thank you for your participation in today's meeting.