UGI Corporation (NYSE:UGI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Marc Solecitto: Got it. Understood. And then if we look at Slide 20 in the outlined international energy marketing volumes, have you hedged your exposure there? And could there be more volumetric exposure into the full requirement contracts that you have remaining?

Roger Perreault: Yes. Let me kick off the answer for this question, Marc. What we’re seeing — so again, we — as we’ve described previously, we’re like over 90% hedged, right? So we have these fixed price contracts hedged at over 90%, and the remaining portfolio is a very similar story. We do have very solid hedged positions for those customers that are going to be hanging with us in the Netherlands and Belgium. That being said, I think where there’s a bit of an unknown here is what will the volume consumption actually look like. We see in Europe today that the European governments are encouraging customers to reduce consumption. I expect that to be the case. I expect that the customer portfolio, the customers will, in fact, be very sensitive to the amount of product they take.

That being said, I can’t be certain, right? There are no specific rules in Europe that are really mandating customers to take less product, but there’s a strong encouragement to do so. Now just to give you some insight on our customers we serve, we primarily serve small, medium enterprises. So we’re serving customers like schools and other establishments that are these medium-type enterprises with whom we are having conversations. We are, of course, having conversations with them to really understand what their consumption profile could look like, understand more from them, are they expected to take less volume. And if they are expecting to take more volume, then we’re engaging with them on ensuring we have a commercial discussion that recognizes that there could be additional costs.

And where possible, we would be passing on that cost to the customers.

Marc Solecitto: And then maybe lastly, as it relates to the 8% EPS CAGR target at AmeriGas through 2026, could you maybe peel back the onion a bit around the embedded assumptions related to volume versus margin recovery? And does that bake in any M&A? And what would be the capital costs expected to incur your or require to get to that 8% EPS CAGR target?

Roger Perreault: Yes. So, a few things that I’d like to highlight. It’s a combination of many of the things you’ve described, right? We are expecting organic growth. So, we are expecting and we will succeed at ensuring that the customer churn continues to diminish during the period. We are always focused on effective margin management. Now again, that’s when I say effective margin management, that’s being very surgical in how do we manage margins when we see cost increases, which include inflation and, of course, product costs that we pass through to the customer bases and in addition to that, some acquisitions. What we’ve talked about is our excitement around reengaging into the acquisition space. We’ve invested now a couple of years of redesigning how AmeriGas operates with a much more centralized model, where we’re now able to route trucks across the country centrally.

We’re able to do service — apply service to our customer base across the country from a centralized center. We’re able to handle customer calls from a centralized center as well. And when we think of the acquisition model, post synergies are going to be tremendous for us. We’re going to be able to bring in these small, medium-sized propane distribution companies into our new operating model with what we expect to be very attractive synergies and based on the fact that we made these very significant investments to improve the customer experience, but also operate way more efficiently overall. So, we’re excited about the combination of all the three areas that I described where we’re going to continue to see improvements in customer churn, organic growth while at the same time, blending in some acquisitions.