National Fuel Gas Company (NYSE:NFG) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call February 8, 2024 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Natalie Fischer - Director, Investor Relations

Dave Bauer - President and Chief Executive Officer

Tim Silverstein - Treasurer and Principal Financial Officer

Justin Loweth - President, Seneca Resources and National Fuel Midstream

Conference Call Participants

Neil Mehta - Goldman Sachs

Zach Parham - JPMorgan

Trafford Lamar - Raymond James

John Abbott - Bank of America

Operator

Hello, everyone and welcome to the National Fuel Gas Company First Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Bruno, and I’ll be operating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to your host, Natalie Fischer, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Natalie Fischer

Thank you, Bruno and good morning. We appreciate you joining us on today’s conference call for a discussion of last evening’s earnings release. With us on the call from National Fuel Gas Company are Dave Bauer, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tim Silverstein, Treasurer and Principal Financial Officer; and Justin Loweth, President of Seneca Resources and National Fuel Midstream.

At the end of prepared remarks, we will open the discussion to questions. The first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings release and February investor presentation have been posted on our Investor Relations website. We may refer to these materials during today’s call. We would like to remind you that today’s teleconference will contain forward-looking statements.

While National Fuel’s expectations, beliefs and projections are made in good faith and are believed to have a reasonable basis, actual results may differ materially. These statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and you may refer to last evening’s earnings release for a listing of certain specific risk factors.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Dave Bauer.

Dave Bauer

Thank you, Natalie. Good morning, everyone. Before starting, I’d like to take a moment to welcome Natalie as our new Director of Investor Relations. While she is new to the company, she isn’t new to the industry, having worked in PwC’s power and utilities practice early in her career. I’d also like to thank Brandon for his hard work over the past 3 years and wish him well in his new role within our finance organization.

Turning to the quarter. Last night, we reported adjusted operating results of $1.46 per share. It was a fairly routine quarter, one in which we continue to see strong execution across our operations. In our Upstream and Gathering businesses, production and throughput were up 11% and 15% respectively compared to last year, on the strength of several great new wells in the EDA. In addition, the benefit of our disciplined approach to hedging was evident this quarter, with our strong book of swaps, collars and firm sales, helping to mitigate the impact of lower natural gas prices on earnings and cash flows. At the regulated businesses, we started to see the impact of new delivery rates in our utilities Pennsylvania jurisdiction, which helped contribute to the 12% increase in year-over-year utility earnings.