Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Third Quarter 2025 Unitil Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Chris Goulding, Vice President of Finance and Regulatory. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's Third Quarter 2025 financial results. Speaking on the call today will be Tom Meissner, Chairman and 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. 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. This 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.

Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm going to begin on Slide 3, where today, we announced adjusted net income, excluding transaction-related costs of $0.4 million and adjusted earnings of $0.03 per share for the third quarter of 2025. This represents an increase of $0.01 per share compared to the third quarter of 2024. Through the first 9 months of the year, adjusted net income was $33.5 million or $2.03 per share an increase of $1.4 million or $0.03 per share compared to the same period of the prior year. During this call, I'll cover several business updates, including the successful integration of Bangor Natural Gas into our utility operations, the recent closing of our Maine Natural Gas acquisition, the status of the Aquarion Water transaction and our ongoing rate case in New Hampshire. In addition, in connection with our recent acquisitions, we recently completed a $72 million equity offering which strengthened our balance sheet and improved our credit metrics. As of September 30, our ratio of funds from operations to debt was approximately 17%. Looking ahead, we see continued strong execution of our plan and reaffirm our guidance for earnings growth, dividend growth and rate base growth. Turning now to the 3 acquisitions on Slide 4. We're pleased to have acquired 2 highly complementary natural gas companies in Maine and have now fully integrated Bangor natural gas into our existing operations. I'm extremely proud of our employees throughout the company, including our colleagues in Bangor, whose focus and dedication led to this successful outcome. With the integration now complete, we expect to file our first distribution rate case in early 2027. As noted earlier, we closed our acquisition of Maine Natural Gas on October 31. Having successfully integrated Bangor Natural Gas, we're…

Thank you, Tom. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin on Slide 8. As Tom mentioned, Today, we announced third quarter adjusted net income of $0.4 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.03, representing an increase of $0.01 per share compared to the same period in the prior year. For the first 9 months of the year, adjusted net income was $33.5 million and adjusted earnings per share were $2.03, representing an increase of $1.4 million or $0.03 per share compared to the corresponding period in 2024. Moving to Slide 9. I will discuss our electric adjusted gross margin. For the 9 months ended September 30, 2025, electric adjusted gross margin was $86.4 million, an increase of $4.7 million or 5.8% and compared to the same period in 2024. The increase in electric adjusted gross margin reflects higher distribution rates and customer growth. The company added approximately 560 new electric customers compared to the same period in 2024, including 126 new commercial and industrial customers. As noted during prior calls, electric distribution revenues are substantially decoupled which eliminates the dependency of distribution revenue on the volume of electricity sales. Turning to Slide 10. I will discuss our gas adjusted gross margin. For the 9 months ended September 30, 2025, gas adjusted gross margin was $134.7 million, an increase of $19.1 million or approximately 16.5% compared to the same period in 2024. The increase in gas adjusted gross margin reflects higher distribution rates, customer growth and the effects of colder winter weather in 2025. The company added approximately 9,400 new gas customers compared to the same period in 2024, including approximately 8,800 customers from the acquisition of Bangor Natural Gas. As of September 30, 2025, approximately 55% of the company's gas customers were under decoupled rates. When excluding banger natural gas, gas…

Thanks, Dan. Ending on Slide 16, we are on pace for yet another successful year and remain laser-focused on executing our strategic priorities. We've successfully integrated Bangor Natural Gas completed the purchase of Maine Natural Gas and have maintained the operational excellence we are known for. We're focused on sustainable growth and remain confident in our execution and our ability to provide strong shareholder returns for many years. With that, I'll pass the call back to Chris.

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

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matvey Tayts with Freedom Broker.

So my question is about -- so if you compare Slide 19 and Slide #5, so you'll see that base rate -- total base rate is $1.152 million as of 9 months 2025. And on the Slide #5, it says that 2025 forecast is $1.4 million, which looks like significantly more than we already have on the Page #19. So is it a function of M&A to be consolidated. This is my first question. And also -- the second one is also regarding this Slide #19. So if you compare this slide to the previous one in the second quarter, so the total rate base change like just by $1 million. But at the same time, we see that like CapEx net of depreciation was like $33 million. So is it also a function of later revision by the regulator. So that's my question.

Sure. Thanks. Well, I guess, we'll take those in order. So the difference between the $1.2 million in rate base on Slide 19 and the $1.4 million of rate base on Slide 5 reflects the additional rate base for the acquired companies, Maine Natural Gas, Bangor Natural Gas and Aquarion. The difference in CapEx versus rate base increase is a function of when capital projects are closed and placed into service and when the initial capital expenditures are paid or funded. So for a lot of the projects that we have on an annual basis, those capital expenditures will go into construction work in progress during the year, and it closed out later in the year once the assets are placed in service.

Yes. Okay. So -- but just one more additional follow-up on the first one. So this $1.4 million, it's it includes additional base rate for all 3 companies, which will be acquired, right, not for the one which will be acquired by the end of 2025. So there is also some implications for future M&As, right?

Correct. The amount here in the light blue shaded box would capture all 3 acquisitions.

[Operator Instructions] I'm showing no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.