Gas Natural Inc (NYSEMKT: EGAS ) Q3 2015 Results Earnings Conference Call November 10, 2015, 1:00 pm ET Executives Deborah Pawlowski – Investor Relations, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kei Advisors LLC Gregory Osborne – Chief Executive Officer, Director Jim Sprague – Chief Financial Officer, Vice President Analysts Operator Greetings and welcome to Gas Natural Inc. third quarter 2015 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Deborah Pawlowski, Investor Relations for Gas Natural. Thank you. You may begin. Deborah Pawlowski Thank you, Adam and good afternoon, everyone. I apologize for the delay on the call today having just telephone technical difficulties. And we are glad that you are here for our 2015 third quarter earnings conference call. I do have with me Gregory Osborne, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Sprague, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Kevin Degenstein, our Chief Operating Officer as well as Vince Parisi, our General Counsel. So we are going to go through a quick review of the third quarter results. Gregory and Jim have some formal remarks. Unfortunately we are really short on time today as well. So we won’t be able to go into a Q&A. You are more than welcome to give me follow-up call if you have any other questions. I can be reached at 716-843-3908. You should have the financial results released after market closed yesterday, otherwise it can be found on our website at www.egas.net. So for the Safe Harbor statement, as you are aware, we may make some forward-looking statements on this call during the formal discussion. These statements apply to future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties as well as other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is stated on today’s call. These risks and uncertainties and other factors are provided on our earnings release as well as with other documents that are filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents can be found on the company’s website as well or at sec.gov. So with that, I am going to turn the call over to Gregory to begin. Gregory? Gregory Osborne Thank you, Deb and good morning, everyone. I appreciate your time today and your interest in Gas Natural. It’s been another quarter of continue progress for us as we have made significant headway toward resolution of regulatory items and are moving toward completion of our asset rationalization program. Let me summarize some highlights for you. On the regulatory front, the stipulation and recommendation between Ohio utilities and the Commission Staff of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio or PUCO was filed on October 30. All stipulations are subject to review and final approval by the Commission as is the case with this settlement. We believe this stipulation addresses the issues raised by last year’s investigative regulatory audit of Ohio utilities. We made excellent progress on our asset rationalization initiatives in the third quarter. As previously announced, on July 1, the first day of the quarter, we completed the sale of our Wyoming operations. The proceeds will approximate $17 million subject to closing adjustments and this sale resulted in a $3.4 million gain after-tax in the quarter. This is recorded in discontinued operations. We followed that sale with the announcement on August 5 that we reached an agreement to sell our Kentucky utility for just under $2 million subject to normal regulatory approval. Our Pennsylvania utility is also under agreement for sale. That divestiture is moving through the normal regulatory approval process and we expect to close it this quarter. Subsequent to the quarter-end, in October we sold our former corporate headquarters building for approximately $1.4 million monetizing another non-core asset. When the sales of our Kentucky and Pennsylvania utilities are closed, we would have completed our asset rationalization program. The divestment these non-core assets enables us to focus our energies and resources on our operations which have higher growth potential. In Montana and Ohio, we can leverage scale we the already have in those markets. North Carolina and Maine are both underserved markets where demand for natural gas is growing. Overall, we continue to grow our customer base with approximate 1,000 customers added in the third quarter, driven by increases in Ohio, North Carolina and Maine. And internally we are progressing with our SAP implementation. This will facilitate our access to data for decision making and provide consistency and productivity improvements across our utilities. There was still some noise in our financial results. So let me turn it over to Jim to review those details. Jim? Jim Sprague Thank you, Gregory and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Our third quarter 2015 financial results reflect lower full service distribution throughput primarily due to warmer weather in most of our markets. Because of unusual expense items that impacted our results for the quarter, so we are going to present both GAAP and adjusted non-GAAP results. For the quarter, revenue decreased to $13.1 million, down $0.5 million on an 11% decline in full service distribution throughput. Let me break down the contributing factors by segment. Revenue from our natural gas operations segment decreased $1.2 million or 9% to $11.4 million. The primary driver of the decrease was lower prices paid for natural gas in Montana, North Carolina and Ohio. Since our cost of natural gas is a direct pass-through to our customers, it is neutral to gross margin. However, on a weighted average basis, the 17% decline in heating degree days and resulting lower full service distribution throughput has a direct impact on margins. Consolidated gross margin was $6.9 million in the quarter, down about 2%. In the natural gas operations segment, it was virtually unchanged as a $0.2 million downward adjustment of the sales volume used to calculate unbilled revenue in Ohio was almost entirely offset by a $0.2 million increase in gross margin in Maine attributable to higher transportation volume. Our consolidated operating expenses for the third quarter increased by $0.5 million compared with the prior quarter to $9.9 million. The increase was primarily due to a $0.4 million recurring asset impairment charge related to our former corporate headquarters building that we be sold in October as well as other nonrecurring professional service costs. Those costs were offset by a reduction in corporate expenses resulting from operational improvement initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA was $0.5 million, down just about $0.1 million from the third quarter of 2014. Loss from continuing operations on an adjusted non-GAAP basis was $1.4 million or $0.13 per share, compared with a loss of $1.2 million or $0.11 per share in last year’s third quarter. You can find reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP numbers in the news release. On a GAAP basis, loss from continuing operations was $2.3 million or $0.22 per share in the third quarter. Turning to the balance sheet. We had $3.9 million of cash at the end of the quarter, up from $1.6 million at the end of December. We expect to continue to grow our cash position as we move into the winter months. Upon final resolution number of our PUCO ratio, we plan to complete refinancing of our long-term debt, which does not come due until mid-2017. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we obtained a $3 million short-term bridge loan. The helps with providing g additional liquidity until we get to higher cash flow of funds to ensure we can support our unusual expenses. Cash provided by operating activities of continuing operations was $12.2 million in the first nine months, up 42% over the prior period. This increase was primarily due to improvements in working capital management. Capital expenditures for the first nine months of 2015 were $8.3 million, down from $16.3 million in the first nine months of 2014. Currently we expect another $1.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2015. This year’s investments have been primarily focused on adding services to install Maine in order to systematically expand our customer base primarily in our growth territories. We have established a greater amount of discipline in our project selection and management processes, focusing our resources where we can effectively drive earnings. We are currently evaluating our plans for 2016, which will help determine the timing of the decline of these unusual costs so we can redirect cash to capital expenditures. With that summary, let me turn the call back to Gregory. Gregory? Gregory Osborne Thank you, Jim. We are executing our strategy to leverage our utility management operation and investment capabilities to capture greater market penetration and earn the highest level of turns where there are growth opportunities. I would like to thank you all for joining us for 2015 third quarter earnings teleconference. This is an exciting time for Gas Natural as we continue to execute our strategy to improve our earnings power. In closing, I would like to turn it back to Deb. Deborah Pawlowski So thank you again, everyone. And I apologize for our lack of time here today, but management is more than happy to entertain follow-up calls later this week. So if you give me a call, 716-843-3908, if you would like to schedule for a follow-up, I would be more than happy to accommodate. Thanks so much. Have a great day. Question-and-Answer Session Operator Copyright policy: All transcripts on this site are the copyright of Seeking Alpha. However, we view them as an important resource for bloggers and journalists, and are excited to contribute to the democratization of financial information on the Internet. (Until now investors have had to pay thousands of dollars in subscription fees for transcripts.) 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