RGC Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:RGCO) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call August 7, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Tommy Oliver - Senior Vice President of Regulatory and External Affairs

Paul Nester - President and Chief Executive Officer

Kelsie Davenport - Director of Finance

Conference Call Participants

Mike Gaugler - Janney Montgomery Scott

Tommy Oliver

Good morning. Thank you for joining us as we discuss RGC Resources' 2023 Third Quarter Results. I am Tommy Oliver, Senior Vice President of Regulatory and External Affairs for RGC Resources, Inc. I am joined this morning by Paul Nester, President and CEO of RGC Resources; and Kelsie Davenport, our Director of Finance.

Before we get started, I want to review a few administrative items. We have muted all lines and asked that all participants remain muted. The link to today's presentation is available on the Investor and Financial Information page on our website at www.rgcresources.com. And lastly, at the conclusion of the presentation and our remarks, we will take questions.

So, let's transition over to Slide 1. And all note that this presentation contains forecasts and projections. So, Slide 1 is the forward-looking statement disclaimer.

On to Slide 2, which contains our agenda; during the presentation, we will review our quarterly operational and financial results and discuss the outlook for the remainder of fiscal 2023, with time allotted for questions at the end.

Over to Slide 3, our main extensions for the year have totaled 3.1 miles, and we have added, which is really reflective of the great construction weather we've experienced in the Roanoke area, and we have added 464 customers through the first nine months of the fiscal year. Our customer counts in the graph on the right-side of the slide represents a steady increase in total customers since 2020. You've got to be mindful that customer counts for 2021 and 2022 were impacted by the state-mandated service disconnection moratoriums that occurred during parts of 2020 and 2021. Overall, our collections have improved, and we are experiencing collection activity which largely resembles pre-pandemic results. Our bad debt expense for the nine-months is approximately $223,000 less than this time last year.

So, we're on Slide 4, which shows our delivered gas volumes, which were lower than last year largely due to warmer weather compared to third quarter of 2022. Heating degree days were 6% lower, which resulted in 3% lower delivery of total volumes compared to third quarter of last year.