Northwest Natural Holding Company (NYSE:NWN) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Nikki Sparley - Director of IR

David Anderson - President and Chief Executive Officer

Frank Burkhartsmeyer - Senior VP and CFO

Conference Call Participants

Kody Clark - BofA Securities

Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the NW Natural Holdings Company Q2 2022 Earnings Call. My name is Seb, and I will be the operator for your call today. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the floor over to Nikki Sparley to begin. Please go ahead.

Nikki Sparley

Thank you, Seb. Good morning, and welcome to our second quarter 2022 earnings call. As a reminder, some things that will be said this morning contain forward-looking statements. They are based on management's assumptions, which may or may not occur. For a complete list of cautionary statements, please refer to the language at the end of our press release. We expect to file our 10-Q later today.

As mentioned, this teleconference is being recorded and will be available on our website following the call. Please note, these calls are designed for the financial community. If you are an investor and have additional questions after the call, please contact me directly at (503) 721-2530. News media may contact David Roy at (503) 610-7157.

Speaking this morning are David Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Frank Burkhartsmeyer, senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. David and Frank have prepared remarks and then will be available along with other members of our executive team to answer your questions.

With that, I will turn it over to David.

David Anderson

Thanks, Nikki. Good morning, and welcome, everybody.

We continue to see strong financial results that are in line with our expectations and the guidance that we provided earlier this year. Frank will go through more of the details here in a moment. This morning, I'll walk through some economic indicators for Oregon and Washington and provide an update on our Oregon general rate case. I'll wrap up with some exciting efforts related to hydrogen gas facility and an update on our water and competitive renewables business.

Turning to a few comments on the economy. In our service territory, we continue to experience growth despite a dynamic macroeconomic backdrop. Reports from the first quarter of 2022 rank Oregon in the top 10 space for the change -- positive change in [EP]. That outperformance is based on stronger than average growth in real estate and the health care industries as the Oregon economy continues to rebound after COVID. So the labor market also remains robust with low unemployment and strong employment gains. In Oregon, unemployment was 3.6% in June 2022. That's nearly as low as pre-pandemic levels of 3.4% in February of 2020.