Hello, and welcome to the Atmos Energy Q3 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Dan Meziere, Vice President, Investor Relations, and Treasurer. Please go ahead, Dan.
Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. With me this morning are Kevin Akers, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Forsythe, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings release and conference call slide presentation, which we will reference in our prepared remarks, are available at atmosenergy.com under the Investor Relations tab. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the slides accompanying today's presentation for definitional information and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP financial measure. As we review these financial results and discuss future expectations, please keep in mind that some of our discussion might contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act. Our forward-looking statements and projections could differ materially from actual results.
The factors that could cause such material differences are outlined on slide 32 and are more fully described in our SEC filings. With that, I will now turn the call over to Kevin. Kevin?
Thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today and your interest in Atmos Energy. I hope you and your families are safe and healthy as we continue to navigate our way through this challenge together. The safety of our employees, our customers, and the safety of our communities remain our focus as we continue to deliver safe and reliable natural gas service. Today, over 95% of our employees continue to work remotely as we are doing our part to reduce the spread of the virus by following the CDC guidelines, as well as following our safety protocols such as handwashing, practicing social distancing, and wearing face coverings. As I've said before, we were early to transition to remote work, and we will be very intentional about returning to our offices.
We continue listening closely to the health experts and following the data as we go about our daily operations. As I shared last quarter, through the outstanding work of our risk management and compliance committee, our senior leadership team, and all 4,800 Atmos Energy employees, we were well prepared to transition every facet of our business to a remote work environment in mid-March. That level of preparation and agility served us well as we continued executing at the highest levels during the third fiscal quarter. For example, our customer service agents and service technicians continued providing exceptional customer service, as indicated by our customers rating their satisfaction with our agents and technicians at 98%. Our strategic focus on digital bill delivery and payment options is yielding benefits as the percentage of electronic bills issued as of the end of the Q3 increased to 45%.
Our electronic methods of payments received, such as bank drafts, credit cards, and online banking, increased to 76% of the payments received as of June 30th. Through these innovative electronic bill delivery and payment channels, Atmos Energy and our customers are doing our part to conserve environmental resources. For example, on an annual basis, the use of this technology saves approximately 1,300 tons of wood, nearly six million pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents, seven million gallons of water, and nearly 400,000 pounds of waste. During the quarter, we deployed Mobile Wallet, a unique bill delivery platform enabling customers to view and pay their bill and manage their Atmos Energy accounts from Apple Wallet or Google Pay.
I also want to highlight the great work of our safety and enterprise services and operations teams that they are doing in the area of damage prevention, especially given we are just five days away from National 811 Day. This work is an integral part of our ongoing commitment to safety and our proactive measures to help raise awareness about third-party excavation damage, which is one of the greatest threats to the safety of distribution systems. Our teams have implemented a Damage Prevention Ambassador Program. They've developed social media alerts and other public awareness campaigns, such as postponing non-essential digging during the COVID-19 pandemic. All these efforts support the year-to-date result of a damage rate that is less than the industry average.
Using our safety practices and protocols I mentioned earlier, we have continued executing our proven investment strategy and remain on track to meet our capital spending range of $1.85 billion-$1.95 billion. By safely performing distribution and transmission pipeline system work that includes maintenance and compliance activities, pipe replacement, line locating, and system inspections, our fiscal year-to-date consolidated capital spending grew 17% to $1.4 billion, with approximately 88% of our spending being directed towards safety and reliability, all to modernize our system. Finally, our financial position remains very strong. At the end of June, our liquidity was almost $3 billion, and our balance sheet continues to be very strong. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Chris for a financial update, and I will return shortly with a few closing remarks. Chris?
Thank you, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday, we reported fiscal 2020 Q3 diluted earnings per share of $0.96 compared to $0.68 in the prior year quarter. Year to date, we reported diluted earnings per share of $4.37 compared to $3.88 in the prior year period. Results for the quarter and year to date periods included a one-time non-cash income tax benefit of $21 million or $0.17 per diluted share related to a change in our state deferred tax rate, resulting from legislation that was passed by the Kansas legislature in June to eliminate the assessment of state income taxes on regulated utilities operating in the state. As a result of the change in our state deferred tax rate, we reduced our deferred tax liability by $33 million during the fiscal Q3.
We established a $12 million regulatory liability for excess deferred taxes that will be returned to Kansas customers. We recognized the remaining $21 million as a one-time income tax benefit. Excluding this non-recurring benefit, diluted earnings per share for the third fiscal quarter was $0.79 and $4.20 year to date. Consolidated operating income during the nine months ending June 30th rose over 10% to $723 million. Rate increases in both our operating segments, driven by increased safety and reliability spending, totaled $111 million. We also experienced a $10 million increase in distribution operating income, primarily due to customer growth in our Mid-Tex Division. During the 12 months ending June 30th, our Mid-Tex Division experienced net customer growth of 1.6%. On a consolidated basis, we experienced net customer growth of 1.3% over the same period.
The impact of COVID-19 did not have a material impact on our year-to-date operating income, as we were able to align our O&M spending with a decline in non-residential customer consumption we experienced during the Q3. Through the first nine months of the fiscal year, we earned approximately 85% of our distribution revenues. Residential revenues comprised approximately 60% of our distribution revenues during the H2 of the year. These bills are at their lowest during this time. We collect a significant portion of our revenues, excluding gas costs, through the base charge, which partially insulates us from volumetric risk. For most of our service territories, the base charge represents the largest portion of a customer's bill by the middle of our third fiscal quarter.
For the year-to-date period, we experienced a $7 million reduction in operating income due to lower sales and transportation volumes during the Q3. We did not identify a meaningful change in residential consumption due to COVID. We did experience a 14% decline in non-residential consumption. We also saw a $3 million decline in service order revenue, primarily due to the suspension of collection activities. Our non-residential consumption decline was concentrated in our commercial customer class, which declined 18% during the Q3 compared to the prior quarter. We experienced most of the volumetric decline in our Mid-Tex and Louisiana divisions. During the quarter, we saw commercial consumption decline by as much as 30% compared to the two-year historical average in certain of our states by mid-May as shelter in place orders in our service areas impacted their businesses.
However, since that time, we have seen a steady improvement. Through mid-July, commercial customer usage was just 11% below the two-year average over the same period. Additionally, we experienced a 12% decline in our transportation volumes during the Q3, primarily due to slower economic activity in the automotive and metal sectors. These declines in operating income were offset by a $17 million decrease in O&M expense, primarily associated with employee costs for overtime, standby, and other costs, lower travel and training costs, and the temporary deferral of pipeline maintenance activities. In our pipeline and storage segment, over 80% of APT's revenues are earned from delivery services to our Mid-Tex Division and a few other LDCs under a straight fixed variable rate design. The remainder of APT's revenues relates to its through- system business and other ancillary pipeline services.
As a reminder, APT only keeps 25% of the revenues earned from these activities under its rate design. During the Q3, we experienced a net $2.5 million decrease in transportation other revenue in this segment. APT's quarter-over-quarter through system volumes declined 19% and prices declined by 30% due to reduced associated gas reduction in the Permian Basin. Year-to-date, transportation other revenue declined by less than $1 million. Slide six and seven provide additional details of period-over-period changes to operating income for each of our segments. On the regulatory front, to-date, we have implemented $123 million in annual operating income increases. Additionally, we received approval for the four Texas GRIP filings that we voluntarily delayed in March for $23 million. These filings will be implemented on September 1st.
Currently, we have $141 million in regulatory filings in progress, most of which are scheduled to be implemented during the Q1 of fiscal 2021. Details of these filings can be found on slides 19 through 29. In other regulatory matters, we have orders in five of our eight states that address the impacts of COVID-19. These orders cover more than 85% of our distribution customers and APT. Generally, these orders allow us to defer net incremental expenses, including bad debt expense, and in a few of our states, certain lost revenues due to COVID-19. We are still evaluating these orders. Therefore, we did not record any regulatory assets or liabilities related to COVID-19 as of June 30th. Slide 14 summarizes these orders. As of June 30th, our balance sheet liquidity remains strong.
Our equity capitalization was 58.8%, and we finished the quarter with approximately $2.9 billion in liquidity, including $750 million in cash between our operating accounts and ATM net proceeds. During the Q3, we executed new forward sales arrangements for approximately 2.3 million shares with anticipated net proceeds of $234 million. Additionally, we sell approximately one million shares for $100 million. Through June 30th, we have settled about 3.6 million shares for $359 million. As of June 30th, we had about $547 million in cash available under equity forward arrangements. Yesterday, we reaffirmed our adjusted earnings per share guidance range of $4.58-$4.73. We now have more clarity around how COVID has and continues to affect our business from a customer perspective and an operational perspective. Based on what we understand today, we now believe earnings per share will be at the upper end of the range.
For the Q4, we have assumed similar non-residential consumption declines to what we experienced in the Q3, as several of our states have slowed the pace of reopening their economies. Additionally, we expect Q4 O&M to trend similarly to what we experienced during the Q3. Slides 15 and 16 provide additional details around our guidance. Thanks for your time this morning. I'll now turn the call back over to Kevin for some closing remarks.
Thank you, Chris. Community service is woven into the fabric of Atmos Energy's culture we call Atmos Spirit, and our 4,800 employees take pride in fueling safe and thriving communities each and every day. During National Hospital Week or Hospital Week in May, we saluted our medical professionals' heroic efforts by delivering more than 12,000 meals to healthcare heroes across our eight-state service area. In valuing our strong partnerships with local restaurant owners and chefs across our 1,400 communities, we celebrated Takeout Tuesday, an initiative that brings support to local restaurants by offering all employees the opportunity to enjoy lunch from their favorite neighborhood restaurant. Along with these enterprise-wide efforts to lift each other up during these uncertain times, we are fueling safe and thriving communities in ways both large and small.
By working with school districts, early childhood programs, and nonprofits across our service area to improve the reading proficiency by third grade and to feed hungry children so they can learn and thrive. I'm truly inspired by the many ways our employees come together to give of their time and talent to further support those who need a helping hand. As I said earlier, our robust risk management process has served us extremely well during this pandemic and will continue to guide us as we execute at the highest levels on all facets of our business. On year-to-date results, we're in line with our expectations. Our balance sheet is strong, and we have further enhanced our liquidity.
Our focus remains the same, the health and safety of our employees, customers, and communities as we execute our proven investment strategy and continue delivering safe, reliable, affordable, and efficient natural gas to homes, businesses, and industries to fuel our energy needs now and in the future. With that, I'll open it up for questions.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed in the question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing star one. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question today is coming from Richie Ciciarelli from Bank of America. Your line is now live.
Hey, morning, guys. Hope you're doing well.
Good morning, Richie. How are you doing?
Good morning. Thank you.
Doing well. Thanks for taking my question here. Just curious, given some of the deterioration in volumes you've seen on the non-residential side, obviously appreciate the confidence for the back half or the remainder of the year in 2020. Just curious how you're thinking of things beyond that, in light of the COVID impacts and just really considering the fact that you and really all of your gas LDC peers haven't gotten to experience this through the more meaningful peak winter heating season.
Well, Richie, that's a good question. With the fiscal year-end rapidly coming to a close, we're deep in our planning cycle right now, and we're certainly evaluating what's going on in the economies in the eight states that we serve. We're keeping a close eye on that. We're not ready to announce yet what assumptions we're going to put into the fiscal 2021 guidance. As you know, we'll roll that out here in the fall, in November. We are taking a look at that. We're also assessing operationally what we're going to be doing to keep our employees safe, the community safe, and we'll have a better picture and more information to provide in November.
Got it. Just to follow up on that a little, if I can. Just given, like, the annual true-up mechanisms you have for your O&M efforts, is there any other offsets that you could pursue into next year if the economic recovery is a bit more prolonged?
When you say offsets, I mean, it's primarily we'll just have to continue to see first and foremost what we can do in terms of work that can be performed and do it in a way that we can keep our employees safe and keep our community safe. As Kevin said at the top of the call, doing our part to minimize the spread of the virus in the community. We obviously have compliance work that has to be completed on certain schedules and timelines, and we can't let that slip. We will be evaluating things where we do have a little bit of discretion, in the event that we do need to align our O&M with any potential volume metric and revenue declines due to the pandemic.
All right, great. Thanks a lot. That's very helpful. That's all I had.
Thank you. Have a good day.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Aga Zmigrodzka from UBS. Your line is now live.
Good morning.
Good morning, Aga. How you doing?
Good morning.
Good. How are you?
Great.
How should we think about your equity needs for 2021? Is it fair to assume that with the updated forward equity agreements, that'll be sufficient? Or should we expect a larger equity offering?
I think we've been pretty consistent now for the last year, 12-15 months, that the ATM is our preferred method for raising equity. We've got our financing plan out there, we intend to execute that financing plan in a balanced fashion with both long-term debt and equity. We'll seek to use the ATM to the best of our ability to meet those equity needs for fiscal 2021 and beyond.
What has been an increase in bad debt and how quickly you can recover those costs for the mechanisms that you have in place?
So far, it really hasn't materially impacted us. There's a couple things to keep in mind around bad debt and collections. First, in all of our service territories, moratoriums are still in place or in most of our service territories to prohibit the disconnect or resumption of collection activities. We then need to evaluate what the tone is from the regulatory environment. What's the tone from just the community in terms of those types of activities? Once we do begin to collect or resume collection activities, one, that could be several months down the road, but then number two, we won't see the impact of really bad debt until well beyond the resumption of those activities because it takes a certain number of months for it to work through the process of collection before it ultimately gets written off.
Right now, as where we sit here today, it hasn't had a material impact on our business for fiscal 2020. Certainly a watch item that we're keeping an eye on for fiscal 2021. We think it's going to be some time before we begin to see those bad debts really begin to rise up, and then you have to work it through the regulatory process. Because we do have the opportunity first to have an annual filing mechanism, and as I mentioned, we do have the reg asset orders in five of our eight states, which provides us another tool to address those types of costs. I think at this point, it's probably just a little bit too soon to tell when exactly we're going to see that rise in bad debt, and then number two, when it will ultimately be reflected in rates.
Yeah, Aga, this is Kevin. I'll just follow up a little bit on that. In addition, our customer service agents and our customer advocacy team that supports those agents have been, for several months now, reaching out to customers in all classes, residential, commercial, and industrial, about different payment options that exist out there for them, LIHEAP, local health agencies, those sort of things. Whether those were outbound calls, letters, some folks allow us to have their email address, getting in contact them with it that way. We've been very proactive in reaching out to customers that appear to be having a tough time paying their bill. We're going to continue to do that as we move forward and head toward this upcoming heating season.
Thank you for that call. I have the last question. Could you please maybe discuss a little more detail what are the components of lower O&M? What is short in nature, and you could still benefit from that in 4Q, and how much of cost savings you're expecting going forward, kind of more sustainable?
Sure. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Kevin, you start.
Well, I was going to talk about the components and things that we looked at that we could defer going into the period. I'll hand off to Chris to talk to you about the numbers specifically. There's such things like there's right of way encroachment clearing, trees, overhang brush, those sort of things. Cleanup around GIS data, record digitization, those sort of things. Where we're ahead on certain inspections on our systems right now, those things that we can move out to a different period, not do away with, not cancel, but move to a different period. Those are the sort of O&M things that we have shifted during the last quarter to two quarters and are currently evaluating now.
What opportunities do we have maybe to pick back up some of that, and what does that timing look like as we head into the end of this fiscal year into next fiscal year? Chris?
Yeah, I would just say to add to that, too, as you know, we are still working remotely. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we are still seeing lower employee travel entertainment costs, some of the overtime and standby. Certainly into the Q3, we expect that to be consistent as we move into the Q4. Again, it's basically items that are certainly within our control, items where it's not a compliance deadline related, where we have a little bit of discretion around the timing of that. In terms of actual dollars saved, again, as we think about 2021, we'll provide a little bit more color around our O&M spending levels for 2021 in November.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Insoo Kim from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.
Thank you. A question on just demand trends that you're seeing on a more geographic basis. I know the bulk of your exposure is in Texas, but you do have exposure to a lot of different states. Just which jurisdictions are performing from a demand perspective better than what you had expected, and which are a little bit more concerning?
Well, really what we're seeing across the board, as I mentioned, Mid-Tex and Louisiana in the Q3 were probably the hardest hit from a volume metric perspective. That was all in, around in the 20% range. The other states range anywhere from 9%-17%, 18%. As I mentioned too, we have seen a steady improvement since really the middle part of May, kind of when things seemed to have bottomed out. All in, when I talked about that 11% versus the two-year historical average, most of our divisions now are kind of right in that range. You do see a little bit of weakness still, but again, it's improving in Mississippi and Louisiana. Overall, things continue to trend in a better way than what we were seeing in the H1 of the Q3.
Yeah. It's Kevin. The other thing I'll just add is if you go back in as we did, as we're looking at these volumes, we also looked at the unemployment rates as some of our jurisdictions opened up their phased reopenings and moved into the second or third tiers of those, if you will. We've noticed slight improvements in the unemployment rates in just about every jurisdictions from April Bureau of Labor Statistics average. If you look at those through the June numbers, almost every one of them has shown some slight improvement. We think that's reflected again back in those phased reopenings, commercial, retail, some other businesses, industrials opening back up, bringing folks back in and picking up some of the business there. That was a good indicator for us as well.
Great. Thanks for that color. In terms of cost contingencies, I think you've spoke on it and a couple of people have asked the questions already, but given a little bit stronger than expected performance for this year, does it, all else being equal, give you a little bit more contingencies that you could utilize in 2021?
Like I said earlier, yeah, we're still evaluating and putting together our fiscal 2021 budgets. We'll have to obviously see what's happening with our customer behavior, particularly on the non-residential side here in the Q4 before we make a final determination of how we align our O&M going into 2021. We'll have more color on that in November.
Got it. Finally, just on the technology side, I think you mentioned things like automated customer bill payments and whatnot. Whether it's that or other technological advancements you are making or plan to make in on the horizon, what type of efficiencies could you realize from that type of work?
Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about that. There's some more data, access to data and providing data in a sooner format, in a better format, a consumable format, more in real time, if you will. An example of that is our AMR network. We're now working with our vendor to have real-time cathodic protection pilots on our system. Now instead of going out and having manual reads on our system, we can upload those through our network and get those readings off of our pipeline and our distribution system in real time. Now that, again, not much from an efficiency standpoint, but it provides continuous monitoring of your system and allows you to identify where you might have a cathodic protection system down sooner rather than later. We continue to roll out our automated leak detection equipment as well.
You've heard us talk before about our Locus Map technology that we are in the final stages of rolling out to some of our crews here in the Mid-Tex Division, which allows us to gather construction, material information, geolocation positions in real time as we're at these sites and upload those right back into our compliance systems.
Got it. Thank you very much, and stay safe.
Great. Thank you, and you as well.
Thank you. You too.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Ryan Levine from Citi. Your line is now live.
Good morning.
Good morning, Ryan.
What's the capacity of your system to handle hydrogen, and is that capacity different than the RNG capacity from a constraint standpoint?
Yeah, Ryan, two separate things there. We know there's a lot of discussion here lately about hydrogen, particularly with some of the things that are going on in Europe right now. I know some of the dual fuel companies are talking about projects at particular sites, a site-specific hydrogen utilization, if you will. It's a much different look than if you think about some of the discussion of blending. That's not yet on the near-term horizon. There are studies going on through particular groups, associations, GTI even has a group together that's studying opportunities around hydrogen at this point. That to say, I think it's early for us to think about, to your question, how does that fit into our current distribution system? There's a lot of things that need to be worked out from a material standpoint, a supply standpoint, a utilization standpoint at the customer premises.
I think that's further out for us. It is separate from RNG. RNG, whether it comes from landfill, it's captured through digesters. The only challenge there is the BTU content, the quality of the gas. Once you get over that hurdle, it blends right in with the rest of our stream that we're delivering to customers. As we talked about before with you, we're doing about five to six BCF a year of RNG across our system that we're moving, and we continue to look for those opportunities near our system today.
Thanks. To clarify some of the earlier questions, in terms of contingencies in place to the extent that COVID impacts extend into the winter months, am I correct in hearing that the key tools that you're looking at are O&M cost management and potentially capital market activity? Are there other opportunities that you can pursue in order to adapt to the market condition?
I think you hit it on the head. It's just, again, looking at the O&M, aligning that O&M with the revenues that we're expected to get going into the next fiscal year. We're certainly mindful of the capital markets opportunities as well. You can see in our 10-Q, we have layered in some hedges for future financing activities going out for a few years now to help lock in or take advantage of some of the current interest rate environment. Those are a couple of opportunities as well. I think those are two very good ones to keep an eye on, and that's certainly items that we are contemplating as we finalize our fiscal 2021 plans.
On the capital market activity, given your regulatory construct, would you look to cement those plans in the coming months? Could they be phased in over a broader time frame?
I'm not sure I understand your question.
Would you need to refinance debt or raise equity into the calendar year-end given the regulatory construct in different jurisdictions? Can you be more patient if that's an option that you wanted to pursue?
I see. Yeah. Really, the financing needs of the corporation, they're outlined on the website. It's at $5 billion-$6 billion over the current five-year planning window of 2020 through 2024. Obviously, we'll update that in the fall as well. Those financing needs are really driven just primarily by the cash flow needs of the corp and the spending needs. I think we'll evaluate the timing, the execution of the various tools that we have available to us from a financing perspective. Obviously, you can also see we've layered in hedges for the fall for an anticipated debt issuance. That one is kind of forecasted already and is out there for all to see.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Charles Fishman from Morningstar. Your line is now live.
Good morning. I got a question on slide eight, the capital spending. Certainly, the 17% increase is terrific. You say you're on target. I guess I happen to be in the Dallas area over the July 4th weekend. The construction along I-75 is amazing. I was just wondering if you could provide some color. Is your new construction connections, which I believe is not part of the 88% safety and reliability, is that on target as well? Has that been impacted by COVID-19, at least with respect to your plan? Obviously, my viewing is just a small piece of all your jurisdictions. I wonder if you could maybe provide some color on new construction in your other jurisdictions, because obviously you don't have as much control over that as you do on the safety and reliability spend.
Right. I'll start out with a little color on the North Texas area there, as you talked about, and then on some of our other jurisdictions. Going into COVID, and particularly that first month and a half, we did see a bit of a slowdown, a dip, if you will, in the housing market in particular, but they quickly rebounded. We're doing virtual tours of homes. The inventory of available homes on the market quickly tightened up, and we're seeing a lot of individuals, as you know, with the low interest rate, moving to the new construction. We certainly see that pick up as things started to open back up and we got into these phased reopenings. We continue to see good growth in that market here in the North Texas area.
I think as we said last year, we're experiencing somewhere around 1.5%-1.6% net customer growth. On the system particularly, most of that's going to be here in the Metroplex area. We've continued to see a little bit of a lull, but now a pickup in that residential market. In other areas, not to quite that scale, but outside of Nashville and Franklin service territory, we continue to see some good residential growth there as well. Outside of our Kansas City location there in Olathe, that area, we do continue to see some residential growth as well. All taking advantage of, we believe, as we keep a handle on, have conversations with builders, developers, and realtors association, trying to take advantage of this low interest rate environment.
As we sit here today, 2021, do you expect customer growth to still be around the 1.5%?
I think that's a good indication here of, as we, again, talk to builders and developers, they're continuing to develop properties. They're continuing to have people come in. Right now, we are continuing to see strong activity in that area. Yes.
Okay. That's all I had.
I was just going to say, the other piece that's driving it too is that same home sales. Folks that already have homes are staying in their homes for obvious reasons. Folks that are looking to get out of the apartment environment or maybe out of an urban downtown environment are now flocking into that new home and growth market. That's just another piece that's driving some of that customer growth.
Okay. That's all I had. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one to be placed in the question queue. Our next question today is coming from Jeremy Tonet from JPMorgan. Your line is now live.
Hi, everyone. This is actually Peter on for Jeremy.
Hey, Peter.
Hey, how you doing?
Good.
Good. I have a quick question on the EPS sensitivities, the update that you gave here. Is the change each quarter, or at least what we have, strictly related to historical demand for each customer class, or are there other factors I should think about when you give these?
Yeah. On slide 13, we do have the EPS sensitivity that we've updated that for the Q4. You can see again, on the bottom half of the page, the revenue by customer class, residential on down through the non-residential, and then the sensitivities to the right. That's basically the 1% change relative in the customer volumes in the Q4 and how that moves it for us. In terms of how that compares to the prior year, that's just a 1% change for each of those customer classes produces that EPS sensitivity.
Right. Okay. That's for the last quarter.
Right.
On a standalone basis. Just to clarify, the sensitivity you provided at your last call, that was for just the back half, or that was on a full year basis?
That was for the back half of the fiscal year. We'll probably update this slide again in November to provide a better impact of what that 1% looks like on a full fiscal year basis here in November.
Okay. I guess just last one here. I guess looking at the sensitivities, obviously lower for each class compared to what you showed for the back half last quarter. Should we think about the net impact being the same as we see recovery across all classes where residential still offsets the same amount of, I guess, drag from the other classes on a relative basis? Kind of like what we saw in Q3?
Well, a couple of comments there. The impacts are smaller here in the Q4 because as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the H1 of the Q3, you're still seeing some volumetric influence across all customer classes. Now beginning about the latter half of May to June, all the way through December, we're primarily into the base charge component only of the bill given the summer months. It remains to be seen exactly how customers are going to behave. Like I said, we have seen the most improvement since the lows have been made. That's something we're watching very closely. For that reason, it's hard for us to predict as we look out, particularly as some of our reopenings have slowed a little bit. That's why we provided the sensitivities in 13 for you to make that assessment.
Okay, great. Thanks, guys. That's it for me.
Yeah. Thanks, Peter.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.
Sorry. We appreciate your interest in Atmos Energy, and thank you for joining us. A recording of this call will be available for replay on our website through November 12th, 2020. Have a good day.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webinar. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.