Spire, Inc. (NYSE:SR) Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 1, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Megan McPhail - Managing Director of Investor Relations
Steve Lindsey - President and Chief Executive Officer
Scott Doyle - Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer
Steven Rasche - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
Adam Woodard - Vice President and Treasurer

Conference Call Participants

Richard Sunderland - JPMorgan
Jamieson Ward - Guggenheim Partners
Christopher Jeffrey - Mizuho Securities

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Spire Fiscal 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Megan McPhail, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Megan McPhail

Good morning and welcome to Spire's fiscal 2024 second quarter earnings call. We issued an earnings news release this morning. And you may access it on our website at spireenergy.com, under Newsroom. There's a slide presentation that accompanies our webcast. You may download it either from the webcast site; or from the -- our website, under investors and then Events & Presentations.

Before we begin, let me quickly cover our Safe Harbor statement and use of non-GAAP earnings measures. Today's call, including responses to questions, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although our forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, there are various uncertainties and risk factors that may cause future performance or results to be different than those anticipated. These risks and uncertainties are outlined in our quarterly and annual filings with the SEC.

In our comments, we will be discussing net economic earnings and contribution margin, which are both non-GAAP measures used by management when evaluating our performance and results of operations. Explanations and reconciliations of these measures to their GAAP counterparts are contained in both our news release and slide presentation.

On the call today is Steve Lindsey, President and CEO; Scott Doyle, Executive Vice President and COO; and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Also in the room today is Adam Woodard, Vice President and Treasurer.

With that, I will turn the call over to Steve Lindsey. Steve?

Steve Lindsey

Thanks, Megan. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for a review of our second quarter performance and an update on recent developments and outlook.

Let's start with our quarterly results. This morning, we reported fiscal second quarter net economic earnings of $3.45 per share compared to NEE of $3.70 per share a year ago. The year-over-year decrease was driven by a few key items, including lower usage in Missouri due to significantly warmer-than-normal weather and higher interest expense. Scott and Steve will discuss our results in more detail in a moment.