Star Group, L.P. (NYSE:SGU) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 4, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Chris Witty - Investor Relations

Jeff Woosnam - President and Chief Executive Officer

Rich Ambury - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Michael Prouting - 10K Capital

Bruce Stone - Stone Investment Management

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Star Group Fiscal Third Quarter Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Witty, Investor Relations Adviser. Please go ahead.

Chris Witty

Thank you and good morning. With me on the call today are Jeff Woosnam, President and CEO and Rich Ambury, CFO.

I would now like to provide a brief Safe Harbor statement. This conference call may include forward-looking statements that represent the company’s expectations and beliefs concerning future events that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the company’s actual performance to be materially different from the performance indicated or implied by such statements. All forward-looking statements other than statements of historical facts are forward-looking statements.

Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the company’s expectations are disclosed in this conference call, the company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 and the company’s other filings with the SEC. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements. Unless otherwise required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date of this conference call.

I’d now like to turn the call over to Jeff Woosnam. Jeff?

Jeff Woosnam

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us to discuss our fiscal third quarter results. As was the case last quarter, Star continued to be challenged by higher petroleum costs and related expenses this period, exemplified by product costs that were nearly double those of 2021.

The wholesale cost of home heating oil in the New York Mercantile Exchange varied from $3.27 per gallon to a historic high of $5.14 per gallon during the quarter. This increase led to higher operating expenses in areas such as bad debt reserves, bank charges and vehicle fuels. Such elevated product costs as well as volatility also impacted net customer attrition, which was higher than the prior year period due to an increase in lost accounts related to price, credit and fuel conversions.