Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to UGI Corporation's 2020 Investor Day Presentation, The Foundation of Renewable Energy Future. My name is Brendan Heck, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations. Joining me today are John Walsh, our President and CEO Tad Yastrzebski, our CFO Bob Beard, our Executive Vice President of Natural Gas and Roger Perrault, our Executive Vice President of Global LPG. Our management team will be covering a number of key strategic areas of focus today and we'll wrap up with question and answer. Please note, you can submit questions using the Q and A chat function on our webcast.
Before I turn it over to John, I'd like to point out today's presentation contains forward looking statements that management believes to be reasonable as of today's date only. We'll also be describing our business using certain non GAAP financial measures. For more information on both of these topics, please read our annual report on Form 10 ks. With that, I'll turn it over to John. John?
Thanks, Brendan, and good afternoon, and welcome to Investor Day. Before I get into the presentation, I'd like to just bring you up to date on our plans for future Investor Days. Historically, we've done these about every 2 years. With all the changes and new opportunities emerging for UGI, we've made the decision to hold these every 6 months. So from this point on, we'll be doing an Investor Day and Investor Update every 6 months in addition to our earnings calls that are connected every quarter.
So we look forward to that more frequent update, sharing with you and discussing progress made and growth opportunities for the company. Our theme today is a foundation for the future. And it's a very apt theme for us. This has been a year for us of dynamic growth and change, a lot of change in our external environment. And we feel really good about the foundation that's being set to enable us to continue to grow and deliver on the long term commitments for our investors.
Before we talk specifically about the opportunities for the company, I'd like to just spend a moment on our mission and vision. It came into even clearer focus this year as all of us experienced the impact of the pandemic and the broad based social issues facing our communities. It reinforced the importance of our vision and mission. And as you can see, our vision is about being a safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable energy solutions provider. And we focus on critical attributes such as safety, operational effectiveness, a breadth of products and services that are developed and delivered to our customers, so critically important.
So that's who we are. Our mission in terms of what we do and how we do it is to be the preeminent energy distribution company in our targeted markets by delivering a broad range of clean and sustainable energy solutions to our customers, critically important today and critically important in the future and particularly with the changes that are underway in our society. And as we see those changes, it's an important topic as we crystallize our future strategies. And a lot of the time today, as you hear from me, Bob Beard, Roger Perrault and Ted Yastrzebski will be focused on our vision for delivering the future for the company. We're a company that has over many years demonstrated a strong capability to deliver growth from our core businesses as well as consistently meeting our commitments.
And this past year was no exception. We took a number of critical steps. We strengthened the foundations of our business. We did 2 large investments in fiscal year 2019 that really provide a great foundation for the future with the AmeriGas buy in and the large UGI Appalachia acquisition that significantly strengthened our midstream business. We also took major step forwards in terms of our LPG transformation efforts, and you'll hear a lot from Roger on that, as well as taking significant step forwards in terms of enhancing and broadening our diversity and inclusion programs.
We now have within UGI a BIDE program, BIDE, that's around belonging, inclusion, diversity and equity. It takes that strong foundation that was in place with our diversity and inclusion program and significantly broadens it. And we're excited for what that will bring to our teams, to the communities we serve and to the broader community. We did a lot this year in terms of maintaining our momentum. We're significantly focused on our EPS and dividend commitment and remain so and you'll hear more about that.
I'll comment on that, Ted will as well. We also invested in our existing infrastructure and networks, such as our investment in our Bethlehem LNG network expansion, our consistent investment in our utilities infrastructure work and that continues and significant progress there. We continue to demonstrate the ability to grow in our propane businesses with our ACE and National Accounts programs being great examples of that. And we continued broadly across the businesses in digitizing our interface, enable with customers and enabling us to work very effectively and seamlessly with our customers and making us an easier supplier and solutions provider to work with. And lastly, significant progress this year in expanding our RNG capabilities.
Most recently, we announced the acquisition of GHI and just in the last few weeks, our investment in a significant RNG feedstock infrastructure project in Idaho. These are 2 important projects for us. I'll comment more on those as well Bob and really positions us well for the future. And we do believe strongly that we're positioned as a differentiated renewable energy solutions provider. And I'll talk in much more detail about why we feel strongly about that and why we're excited about the future.
In terms of that positioning in renewables, there's a number of critical drivers that really give us confidence in terms of our ability to excel. We see rapidly growing customer demand and interest across all the segments we serve. It's very evident in the transport segment, but also strong interest among our commercial and industrial accounts and residential accounts in terms of having access to a renewable solution that is easy to gain access to and meets their needs, while also meeting the broader societal needs for lowering carbon content in our energy consumption. For UGI specifically, see some synergistic opportunities as both a producer and owner of feedstock infrastructure for renewables as well as being a significant distributor. You can see on this slide, if you look to the right hand side that graphic, you see the feedstock infrastructure, feedstock sources in the center of that diagram.
And then you see the products and outflows from those feedstocks that can be utilized across different parts of the company. So whether it's bio LPG or renewable natural gas or renewable DME or in the future hydrogen, UGI is well positioned to participate both in feedstock infrastructure investment, but also participate as a significant distributor of those products. I'll come back to that talk in more detail about how that combination of being a feedstock producer and a distributor is so powerful and so important for us. A lot of that strength comes from strategic assets and proven competencies that we have in the company, critically important in terms of our ability to successfully execute a strategy. And we're also very encouraged by the response and reaction we've gotten from potential partners and sources across the supply chain.
We find them very interested to bring to any potential opportunity. So I'll come back and talk a lot more about that in a few minutes. This type of an opportunity is not new for UGI. And I'd like to just spend a few minutes to talk about some specific examples from our recent history where we've seen changes happening in our marketplace in the broader society, identified opportunities and growth investments, quality growth investments, taken advantage of those opportunities, developed them and created significant businesses for the company. First is our midstream and marketing business.
If you look at that business, grown exponentially over the last 2 decades. It was significantly enabled by some changes that took place, particularly around the discovery of shale gas in the Eastern United States and particularly in the mid Atlantic region. You can see on this chart through a series of investments over the last 2 decades, how we've grown this business. We've taken a sequential approach to development of that strategy, lots of work to ensure that we have the competencies in place to successfully execute that strategy and also a lot of work in developing and executing on quality investment opportunities for the company. And you can see here from a small base in 2,000 of just over $6,000,000 in margin to the current margin from that business of over $350,000,000 tremendous growth built sequentially step by step, both in terms of the investments themselves, but also the capabilities that underpin that critical business for the company.
2nd great example of this is our European business, UGI International. Once again, if you go back 2 decades and look at that business, we were active in Europe 20 years ago, but it was quite a small business with just over $20,000,000 in margin annually through a series of targeted investments in specific geographies where we saw opportunities, we've grown that business substantially. And again, over a 20% compound annual growth in margin in that business as well. Once again, that opportunity was created by some significant change that was taking place in our environment, specifically around global LPG. There was a change in structure in the in 2 decades in building that business, a business today that generates over $900,000,000 in annual margin for the company.
So now we look forward and where do we go next? What's the next significant business opportunity that lies ahead of us where we can create a substantial new business for the company? And we see that with Renewable Energy Solutions. This is not a new business for us. As this chart shows, we've been active in renewables for some time.
And you've seen us making investments over the last 5 years to build capabilities, learn about markets and begin to position UGI for success in renewable energy solutions. In the last 5 years, as you can see, we've made investments in beginning to source and market Bio LPG in Northern Europe. We acquired DVAP, who has a significant business where we have a significant business in marketing wind and solar power. So a significant renewable energy marketing business. We've done a lot of work on the solar segment and installed over 30,000 solar panels over the last 5 years.
And specifically around renewable natural gas, done a lot of work on our own at a specific landfill in Broad Mountain, Pennsylvania with a power generation facility that's powered by gas from that landfill. But more broadly have worked with dozens of landfills across our region in terms of sourcing gas and utilizing gas coming from landfill and treating that gas, which is a critical capability in the company. As I mentioned earlier, you saw us most recently making 2 important investments for us in renewable natural gas, the GHI investment and the more recent investment in Idaho in the renewable natural gas feedstock infrastructure. We're excited about those two investments. And in the short time that we've owned GHI, we've identified numerous other opportunities for us to identify and execute quality investments.
As we look forward over the next 5 years, 2021 through 2025, great opportunity for us. So one of the keys, as we've determined, as we've developed other businesses, is building a quality team and having the resources and capabilities to truly develop a significant business. So we've already begun to do that in terms of dedicating resources to our Renewable Solutions team. We think the magnitude of the opportunity is quite substantial. We see the opportunity to invest up to $1,000,000,000 over the next 5 years in renewable solutions opportunities.
I've already touched on renewable natural gas, and I'll talk a little bit more about that. We see bio LPG and renewable DME also as critically important opportunities where we're really well placed to execute and deliver and grow those businesses. We also see renewable hydrogen, battery storage and other technologies as being viable and important in the future as we step back and
think about
our mission as a broad based solutions provider for our customers. Those elements will be part of our solutions offering to customers. So we'll work diligently to make sure we're identifying the best solutions and then identifying potential partners and investments that will position us for future success. Why do we believe UGI is going to be successful and is well positioned? There's a number of reasons.
We believe there are some critical attributes and competencies and capabilities that we possess at UGI that make us relatively unique in terms of our ability to deliver on this specific opportunity. Our connections to customers, our range of core competencies, the core infrastructure that we have access to at UGI put us in a great position to provide those solutions to our customers with minimal disruption in terms of their own residence or business, minimal disruption in terms of local infrastructure needs and minimal incremental new costs to those customers that they'll need to bear as we incorporate those solutions into their services offering. Specifically, just to highlight some of those attributes, if we look at our connection to base customers, at UGI, we have connections to direct connections to over 3,000,000 customers. And that connection is either a gas main serving a customer with a gas meter at their location, residential, commercial, industrial accounts or it's a propane tank with a meter and pipe into a home or business supported by a broad range of infrastructure. In addition to that physical connection to customers, we also have approximately 8,000 field service personnel.
Those are service technicians, drivers, support personnel, engineering, field engineering that enable us to effectively and efficiently and safely and securely manage that infrastructure and ensure a reliable solution for our customers and safe solution for our customers. We're doing this across 18 countries in the U. S. And Europe. And as I noted earlier, we're doing it increasingly with an enhanced digital interface with our customers, making it easier to do business with us and more seamless in terms of our ability to deliver information to our customers.
The core infrastructure critically important as well, over 12,000 miles of gas mains, delivering over half a TCF of natural gas each year. So tremendous capability in terms of breadth and reach of our systems. And on the LPG side, a great network of service vehicles, delivery trucks and storage locations that enable us to deliver conventional LPG, but now renewable solutions as well using that same infrastructure. And lastly and most critically are the core competencies that exist within UGI, Really critical in terms of our ability to make good decisions, identify the best opportunities for the company and our customers to ensure that we do that effectively in terms of blending those solutions and utilizing them within our existing infrastructure and framework. We have knowledge of the regulatory and policy landscape critically important.
That's obviously something that's changing quite dramatically. And we feel like we're really well placed in terms of our knowledge and understanding of what will drive policymakers, what's important to customers, what's important to our elected officials, and we'll continue to utilize that knowledge as we develop and execute our strategy. So not only are the opportunities quite significant, we think UGI's competitive advantage in terms of being able to identify and then execute on those opportunities is unique and sets us apart from many other participants in what is quite a crowded sector. This focus and the opportunities we see with Renewable Solutions will have an impact, a significant positive impact in terms of capital allocation across the company as our strategy evolves. You can see here on this chart a simple depiction of what is what we believe is the likely progression and evolution of our capital spend.
If you look today, you can see roughly 65% of our capital goes into our natural gas business, roughly 35% into our LPG business. A small sliver today of that natural gas spend is in Renewable Solutions. As we move forward in here, we've shown over 5 year periods, a significant progression and evolution of that capital portfolio. You can see the Renewable Solutions segment really emerging by 2025 is quite significant and growing at quite a rapid rate over the decade beyond. And that's capturing our view of likely levels of investments in a range of opportunities for renewable solutions, including compressed natural gas, specific major opportunities in renewable natural gas and bio LPG, renewable DME and also in hydrogen and other emerging solutions.
So one of the things that's exciting about these opportunities is the scale of the opportunity is quite significant, but also the range of those opportunities are also significant and broad. So we can continue to be selective in where and how we invest and that's been a hallmark for UGI for many years. But also be confident that in being selective, we'll also have significant investment opportunities with attractive returns. So quite a positive outlook for us. We're really excited about our positioning, our capabilities and the range of opportunities that are developing for us that will help to drive growth and underpin our growth for the future.
So when we step back and look at growth in terms of our critical commitments we made for 6% to 10% earnings growth and 4% dividend growth, we feel great about where we're positioned today. And we feel particularly good about how UGI is positioned in this changing market. Due to the competencies, capabilities that I've just taken you through, we feel that we're really on the cusp of significant investments, significant growth around the Renewable Solutions business, which reinforces our ability to continue to deliver earnings and dividend growth for our investors. You can see here on this slide, sort of the building blocks, the layers of investment. We have a significant ongoing capability to deliver organic growth across our businesses.
We have major capital project opportunities. Some of them I've just touched on in the renewables segment of our business, but many in the core business itself, our midstream business still is definitely generating attractive capital project opportunities. We have significant capital investment opportunities across our utilities business that will continue for several decades to come. And we see consistent opportunities to grow investment in our ACE segment in AmeriGas as well as our national accounts business in both the U. S.
And Europe. Geographic expansion certainly remains an important one for us. Geographic expansion is an interesting topic. 1 of the changes and the attractive changes in terms of the move into renewable solutions is that it redefines the geographic boundaries for our business somewhat. Our natural gas business has historically been focused in the Mid Atlantic region and the East Coast.
With the development of renewable solutions and we've already seen it with the investment I've highlighted in Idaho, that opens up significantly. And the nature of the Renewable Solutions business is such that we can be active anywhere in the U. S. And in Europe as well, delivering solutions, utilizing our core capabilities around supply and delivery of gas and do that nationally. So it's quite an attractive aspect of this new set of opportunities that are emerging.
And lastly, the renewable solution piece is significant and will reinforce and support our ability to deliver that 6% to 10% earnings growth over the long term, because we see this opportunity playing out over the next several decades, much as the opportunities that I highlighted earlier with our midstream and marketing business and UGI International Business have played out and been executed over several decades. So now we're going to go into a little bit more detail around those business opportunities. You'll hear from Bob Beard and Roger Perrault, who will take you through the natural gas and global LPG businesses. And then Ted Jesterps, who will give you the financial perspective, and I'll come back and close. So with that, I thank you for your time, and I'll turn it over to Bob Beard, who will take you through the natural gas business.
Bob?
Thanks, John, and welcome, everyone, to our 2020 Investor Day. I'm Bob Beard, and I'll be talking about our natural gas which include our regulated utilities and energy services, our midstream and marketing business. On Slide 17, I lay out the basic pillars for my presentation: foundation, customers and the environment. At UGI's natural gas businesses, we continue to have a very positive story to tell as both utilities and energy services continue to grow. As I mentioned on our recent earnings call, in FY 'twenty, we saw a year over year increase in EBIT of nearly 16%, which considering the fact that we experienced weather that was considerably warmer than normal, it's really testament to the fact that the underlying businesses remain strong.
On this slide, a couple of bullet points. We're growing demand for natural gas at both our utility and at energy services. We see steady customer growth, both in number of customers and the amount of natural gas being used by existing customers, access to locally produced natural gas, capital deployment at really robust rates, particularly at utilities, and we really believe we're well positioned for a clean energy future. We believe that leveraging our significant existing assets across the natural gas business is a really strong foundation for us to build on. For the natural gas businesses, we have 13,000 miles of pipe across Pennsylvania.
And importantly, we have direct connections to more than 740,000 customers. I think those two things position us very well as we venture into the renewable energy business. I think the fact that customers, many of them have been our customers for decades, the fact that they look to us, that there's brand recognition that for many years we've been their trusted energy advisor, again, positions us well as we embark on sustainable energy opportunities. Slide 18, again, foundation, customers and the environment. Our foundation, as I mentioned, we have a long history and deep experience in the energy space, and that is a great foundation.
We've delivered natural gas in Pennsylvania to customers for well over a century, and we've been in the energy marketing and midstream space for quite a long time now as well. We continue to see strong demand for natural gas throughout our service territory, and keeping energy affordable remains top of mind for us. But most importantly, operating safe and reliable energy distribution system is the most critical focus that we have. We continue to meet our customers' needs both today and anticipate their needs for tomorrow. And we do all this with an eye on how UGI can help create a cleaner energy grid.
Slide 19. I talk about a strong foundation for growth. So here are a couple of bullet points for each business relative to how the foundational businesses remain very strong and I think, again, enable us to compete in a very strong way in the renewable energy space. Rate based growth at utilities is expected to have a CAGR of more than 11% between FY 'twenty and FY 'twenty four as we expect strong consistent growth as we've seen in the past. We have deep experience navigating complex regulatory and legislative landscapes.
And again, the fact that we're physically connected to 740,000 customers is a real advantage for us. At Energy Services, our footprint of operations across the Appalachian Basin is really great. We have operations in Northeastern Pennsylvania and Southwestern Pennsylvania, the 2 most prolific production regions in the Marcellus. We market gas on 42 gas distribution systems. We have more than 4 Bcf a day of pipeline capacity and 15 Bcf of underground reservoir storage.
I think what sets us apart from most other midstream businesses is the fact that the majority of our margin is underpinned by take or pay contracts. And we expect that by 2023, approximately 80% of all of our margin from energy services will be fee based. We're expanding our geographic reach, as we talked about with GHI and the digester project that we announced in Idaho. So we're growing that portfolio of renewable energy solutions. And again, I think our deep experience and our distinctive capabilities that we've gleaned through many, many years of operating gas distribution and transmission networks really serve as a great foundation for us to be successful in the renewable energy space.
Slide 20, meeting customer needs. We remain intently focused on the needs and expectations of our customers. And for them, the most important factor is affordability. So when we start to talk about renewable energy opportunities and including renewable energy into our portfolio, we never lose sight of the fact that affordability is really important to our customers. And because of that affordability, as a matter of fact, I've been in the energy industry for more than 30 years.
In the last handful of years, it's the first period of time that I've actually seen companies locate to Pennsylvania or expand their operations in Pennsylvania because they have access to low cost abundant natural gas, again, produced right here in Pennsylvania. So we look at that as an opportunity for us to continue to grow. We have about 675,000 customers within one mile of our existing facilities. We have creative tariff provisions such as GetGas, our TEDRider, our EE and C program that are all designed to help customers make better energy choices. Locally sourced gas, affordability and reliability.
The fact that our gas is sourced hours from here and not states from here means that from a reliability standpoint, we're well positioned. At our utility, we plan to spend approximately $2,000,000,000 over the next 5 years to build out infrastructure, to serve underserved and unserved areas of the service territory and also to retire and replace aged infrastructure. So we continue to focus on working with our customers to find solutions, combined heat and power opportunities, natural gas vehicle fueling stations, RNG and other sustainable technologies. And a really successful program for us has been our energy efficiency and conservation program. Over the last 5 years, we've invested more than $64,000,000 helping customers make smarter energy choices.
So when I reference UGI as looked upon by our customers as the energy expert, Things like our energy efficiency and conservation program, I think, put us in that position. Focusing on the right side of the charts, about customer growth, it's impressive to think that over the last 20 years, we've essentially doubled the size of the company, more than doubled the size of the company. You'll see in 2006, there was an acquisition. In 2008, there was an acquisition. So you see those bumps in customer counts through those periods.
But if you focus on the graph between 2,008 and today, we continue to have a good trajectory for organic growth, and we see that continuing. So contributing to a cleaner environment, we really do see ourselves as a strong enabler of a cleaner energy grid. We're reducing our carbon footprint. We're investing in feedstock opportunities like the RNG project I referenced in Idaho, cleaner sources of RNG and businesses like GHI that operates in California investments that advance our GHG reduction commitment. Some other examples.
We divested our interest in the Conemaugh Electric Generating plant in Pennsylvania. That alone will reduce our direct emissions by 30%. Another example is utilities. Since 2,009, through our replacement and betterment program, we have seen CO2 equivalent emissions reduced by more than 35%, and we expect to see an additional 30% reduction over the next 10 years as we invest 1,000,000,000 of dollars in replacing aged infrastructure, thereby making a safer, more reliable distribution network for our customers. The chart on the right basically shows methane loss to pipeline leakage.
You see a significant decrease between 1999 2019, and we continue to see and expect to see reduced methane emissions due to leaking pipelines. And again, that is absolutely a function of all of the investment that we have made in modernizing our system, retiring cast iron and bare steel mains and replacing them with more contemporary material. So in conclusion, we really believe we're focused on the right things. We continue to see growth at both of our natural gas businesses, and we believe that leveraging the assets that we have and our deep experience is really a great foundation for us to move further into the renewable and sustainable energy space. As always, we meet the demands of our customers, including their desire to have access to cleaner energy choices, but we never lose sight of the fact that affordability is really important to our customers.
So from a foundation standpoint, again, strategically located asset base and ability to navigate evolving regulatory and legislative environments, which are ever changing, geographic expansion, in particular through the RNG market focus on customers, we have strong growth, we want to continue to drive that growth Significant investment opportunities at both utilities and energy services will allow us to deploy significant amounts of capital and continuously evaluating ways to drive efficiency, again, to continue to ensure that our energy solution is the most affordable, best solution for our customers. And then finally, the environment. I think it's pretty clear today that UGI is intensely focused on the environment and how we can be a solution. We look at natural gas as the foundation of a cleaner energy grid, and I think as a company, we're very well positioned to make that happen. So through all of the activity that we talked about today, I think our natural gas businesses are well positioned to be a significant contributor of earnings for UGI Corporation, not just today or through the planned years, but for the foreseeable future.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Roger.
Thanks, Bob, and welcome to the Global LPG section of today's presentation. The general theme of the Global LPG strategy is continuous improvement and growth, which really spans across the entire business from supply to a hassle free customer experience. Particular focus on efficient operations and cash generation, while also bringing cleaner energy solutions as a fundamental contributor to UGI's core strategy. Focus, develop, grow provides the framework for how we think about our business. The strategy builds on a platform of serving over 2,000,000 customers, significant supply infrastructure which provides a solid foundation for renewable solutions.
The strategy also spans all aspects of the business: efficient operations starting with transformation initiatives that are now operational in this new fiscal year focus on the customer experience from the moment a customer is evaluating energy options to the hassle free continuous supply on terms that meet their expectations and focus on our social responsibility with conversions from carbon intensive energy solutions to LPG, while enhancing our supply infrastructure towards bio LPG. How will we make an attractive, strong cash generating business even better? Well, it starts with the customer and the business model. With a very modest investment, we build strong ties with our customers that can last decades. However, we must earn the customer loyalty, and we do that by improving efficiencies to maintain competitiveness, also by improving reliability and by modernizing our customer interface via digital tools in an effort to be very easy to do business with.
We will make our business better by bringing new market opportunities in the business, by expanding our renewable offerings such as Bio LPG and Dimethyl ether, or DME. We will also leverage our infrastructure and make strategic investments in the value chain of the production and the distribution of renewables. Let me share more on the framework of our global strategy and in particular, the focus component. Just over a year ago, we announced the transformation initiatives across AmeriGas and UGI International. Since that announcement, we successfully reengineered key processes across the global LPG business with an objective of decreasing cost, but also with the objective of significantly improving the customer experience.
We began our journey of sharing best practices by connecting our international business across 17 countries with our U. S.-based business via our industrial and or operations management system. To remove cost, we implemented new routing and logistics tools. We established a new organization structure that enables our over 10,000 employees to deliver the service and customer service experience our customers expect and deserve each and every day. We are also leveraging our spend across our company and implemented procurement capabilities that not only drive costs out, but ensure strong partnerships with our suppliers.
We also invested in how we interact with customers by implementing customer relationship management tools and enhancing our web platforms, customer portals with an eye on how to be the easiest to do business with while driving effective and efficient operations. And last but not least, we leveraged our business analytic capabilities to promote our customer lifetime value and pricing across the various segments we serve. These investments are already paying off, and they will deliver what we mentioned during the last earnings call. We have now identified and will deliver $140,000,000 in permanent savings at AmeriGas. The total cost to implement the various systems is approximately $200,000,000 As mentioned during the earnings call, we will invest about onethree of the benefits on high value customer retention with a very attractive return.
Likewise, at UGI International, we will deliver €30,000,000 in permanent benefits with an investment of approximately €55,000,000 We're very pleased with this pillar of our continuous improvement initiatives, which is really only the beginning of driving a culture of pushing for efficiencies in our LPG business. Our strategy is not only to focus on efficiencies, our customers and cash generation. We're also developing and growing. On the develop front, we will leverage our infrastructure and our over 2,000,000 customer relationships. We are very well positioned to defossilize LPG via potential acquisitions and building on our supply infrastructure and our relationship with partners.
We are also working to partner on technologies for new fuels, which will have expansive reach across our global portfolio. More will be communicated soon at the appropriate time. And we will leverage our energy marketing business, which has a focus on green energy, wind and solar as we continue to expand our customer footprint. And then growth. Our LPG business net income has grown 12% over the last decade, both organically with elements such as our cylinder exchange business, national accounts, introduction of vending machines, new packages in Europe, home delivery, convenience pay for customers that desire more of a spread out payment plan, and that's just to name a few.
On the acquisition front, this has been the largest growth engine, and this will continue to be a strategic initiative as we continue to identify and fold in bolt on acquisitions and explore new geographies as we maintain our focus on balancing our natural gas business and our LPG business. So to conclude, our strategy of focus, develop, grow is well in place. The transformation initiative was the 1st step towards implementing a continuous improvement culture with an eye on efficiencies, while modernizing our customer experience. We are very well positioned, and we look forward to introducing new clean fuels into our supply infrastructure to feed the energy needs of our over 2,000,000 customers and grow with very attractive post acquisition multiples, while we continue to explore new geographies in an evolving energy landscape. Thanks for your attention.
And now I'll turn it over to Ted.
Thank you, Roger. And thanks to all of you for taking time out of what I'm sure are busy schedules to spend time with us today. I'm going to take you through an overview of our financial strategy and hit some of the key highlights of what we believe will be focused on over the next 4 years of our current plan. Over the years, we've used a number of different approaches on how we've driven strategy within the company. For many years, we are focused at the business unit level, giving the business units a lot of autonomy, a lot of self sufficiencies.
At the end of 2018, though, we announced leadership at the line of business level with Roger and Bob leading the propane business, leading the natural gas business. And as we made that shift, we were able to bring a much more deliberate strategic approach to identifying efficiencies that ran across the business units, able to bring best practices to bear, look for synergies across the businesses. Transformation, the transformation initiatives that we've talked to a number of times throughout this presentation is a clear example that came out of this shift to a line of business approach. This has now created a foundation where we can more aggressively pursue company wide imperatives. Great example of that is ESG, where we've made considerable strides over the last couple of years, but are now doubling down on specific hard measurables and deliverables for the next year and next several years.
Another example is our diversification into renewable energy solutions and offerings. I will say though that while the strategy that we bring to the business and the way we approach creating that strategy has evolved over time, our financial commitments have remained absolutely constant. We deliver against our commitment of 6% to 10% in EPS and 4% in dividends. As you can see over this time period, 6.8% is the CAGR against which we've been growing EPS. We announced last month when we shared with you our earnings results for fiscal year 'twenty, the fact that we're creating a transformation event with the support functions.
This is a pretty natural, pretty predictable, frankly, outcome of the kind of strategic approach, the framework that I just shared with you. What we're doing is focusing on finance, IT, HR procurement. We're investing about $40,000,000 and expecting about $15,000,000 in savings returns roughly in the next 3 year period. We're moving from what has been a very BU siloed kind of reinventing the wheel when it comes to say accounting or talent management or IT infrastructure to a very different approach. We're looking at becoming centralized, more standardized using best in class solutions at scale, leveraging automation and technology and being able to move the best talent throughout the organization where it's most needed.
With this, of course, we expect to be delivering much better service to the business units at a lower cost and with much better controls. But maybe even more importantly, what we intend with this initiative is to free up the business units from the distraction of needing to create these processes themselves to manage this transactional work. And it allows them to be really focused on building their businesses, building their profitability, servicing their customers in the best way possible. And just before I leave this slide, I want to underscore the fact that this is really the first phase for us and it's primarily focused on accounting, much like the transformations we've been doing in propane kind of being the first movement into an area that creates a platform. In this case, this will be a platform for all of the support functions to be moving on over time as we move forward.
Cash flow stability is a key differentiator for UGI. If you look at the graph on the top side of this page, we compare ourselves in free cash flow, which we're defining as cash from operations, less dividends, less CapEx. And we're benchmarking ourselves here against what we believe is a representative set of diverse energy companies. You can see what the list of those companies are. I would encourage you to think about other companies and make the same comparison.
If you feel our list is not the right representative group, you will find consistently on free cash flow. This is an average over the last 10 years across these companies, we excel. Moving to the lower graph, you can see just how consistent over time and how stable the cash flow we generate from operations looks over time. This is happening regardless of weather patterns, regardless of economic cycles, commodity cycles. It's not dependent on what government happens to be in office at the time.
And now, fortunately or unfortunately, I can add disease and pestilence as one of the categories that also comes along and still doesn't derail the kind of cash flow that we generate. We're looking at having risen to about $1,000,000,000 a year, which is certainly enough to cover our dividends and our cash and our capital expenditures. And we are expecting to see a step up in this as we have finished the buy in of AmeriGas and as we see that business move into something more like a normal winter and we get past the bulk of these larger investments we're making with the transformation, we should see that rise to yet another step up level. This is a picture that we've shared with you in the past. We call it our cash engine.
We're looking at the numbers of this slide as being an annual average of what's coming out of our current latest 4 year projection and plan. And what we're looking at is generating $1,200,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 in cash flow from operations. Importantly, I'll point out that over this time period, we're seeing this cash flow generation being about 55% coming from propane, about 45% coming from the natural gas side of the house. If you recall, that's coming from a point where after those acquisitions, we are at a sixty-forty split. So you're seeing that natural organic movement in our business, where most of our cash is generated on the LPG side of the house, but we're disproportionately investing it in natural gas opportunities.
So with that $1,200,000,000 to $1,600,000,000 in cash from operations, we're covering our committed dividends, paying down debt and we're still left with over $1,000,000,000 to invest. I'll say that our approach to allocating those funds is very rigorous. It follows a 0 based approach, really looking at where are the best opportunities at that point in time, irrelevant which business it's coming from, what are those best opportunities that are going to continue to deliver for us 6% to 10% in EPS growth, 4% in dividend growth. You'll see that in the box where we talk about capital expenditures and M and A, we're featuring renewable solutions. This is no different than what you would have seen in that box over the last few years where we are focusing on investing and building out that Marcellus infrastructure.
A few years before that, you would have seen in this box us featuring the fact that we needed to build out that footprint in our international business to get to the right level of scale. Just a bit more specificity on our cash deployment. If you look at the 4 years of our plan, we expect to generate over $5,500,000,000 in cash. We'll use about $1,000,000,000 of that to deliver on dividend commitments to shareholders and expect to invest about 3.5 in CapEx and M and A funds. We intend to maintain this level of investment allocated to investments in the company as long as we continue to have highly lucrative opportunities that will be contributing to the 6% to 10% EPS growth commitment.
Regulatory capital and Utilities, LPG transformation, National Accounts Investments and ACE and the continued build out of Marcellus, these are currently the areas where we see these really compelling opportunities today. And we're also in the last box here just calling out, we're continuing to be focused on reducing our leverage down to those levels that existed before we did the buy in with $1,000,000,000 in debt over this next 4 year period that we'll be paying down. We love that our business generates tremendous amounts of cash. But I want to make it really clear that we don't take that for granted. Transformation is the transformations that we've been talking to you about is a really great example of something that arose out of this recognized need to continue to generate and grow cash flows in spite of things like the volume conservation we see on the LPG side of the business.
And while the savings from our transformations are certainly significant and certainly impressive, need to underscore that those transformations are creating changes in our customer capabilities that are being instituted with technology, analytics that then creates a platform that we can build on for years. And it's exactly these kinds of continuous improvement efforts that we will be leaning on going forward to blunt the negative effects of what we see regularly occur in our business landscape. Great example is our move from a 15 year weather pattern to now a 10 year weather pattern. It forces us in advance as we build our plans to think about exactly how we're going to deal with the most challenging conditions financially and already have solutions built in, in advance of those things happening. At the same time, if you look at how we've been diversifying our business, we've been moving more and more of our efforts, investments, leaning into those opportunities that are less weather sensitive.
Examples like LNG peaking, national accounts in ACE, fee based margins that are coming from take or pay contracts. I think we've talked to you about our intentions on how we want to manage leverage and how we want to manage our balance sheet. We want to return our debt multiple levels to what we had before the AmeriGas buy in, before the acquisition of UGI Appalachia. As we've shared before, the ways we want to approach this, we want to get AmeriGas down to something closer to a 4 to 4.25 multiple. We also want to free up capacity at the holding company at UGI Corporate.
As we've shared before, this is an area we see as wanting to have dry powder that we can then move quickly, invest heavily when this buy in of AmeriGas, as was the case with the purchase of UGI Appalachia. I will say though, while this is our intent, it suggests a static world. We know we're not in a static world. Things are changing all the time. New opportunities are coming up all the time.
Yet our balance sheet remains healthy enough that should a compelling opportunity come along, we can lean into that balance sheet and execute a deal if it was compelling and provided that kind of strategic rationale. We believe we're really well positioned to meet not only our robust record setting CapEx plan for this fiscal year that we've just entered and to deliver on our guidance, which we've shared is $2.65 to $2.95 I just want to remind folks that within that guidance range, we've assumed $0.10 in COVID impact in this year, most of that happening in this Q1 of the year. The initiatives that we focused on in the back half of fiscal year 2020, and I'd name a few, the transformation initiatives, the new base rates that we've achieved in utilities, the record pace of utility CapEx spending, the midstream throughput increases, ACE and national accounts, all of those focus areas have set us up very nicely for entering this new fiscal year with a lot of momentum. And as we look further out, we feel we're also well set up to continue to deliver on our long term financial commitments. This shows our 10 years of delivery of EPS growth at about 7%.
It also shows our dividend growth growing at just short of 7%. If you looked at a similar graph to this for the last 20 years, we've delivered over 10% in EPS growth. And this is coming off of several warm years and yet we believe we're very well positioned to continue to deliver on that 6% to 10% commitment. We have a lot of confidence as we're seeing our transformation savings start to ramp up and we have line of sight on how we're going to morph those savings and those initiatives into a rigorous and consistent continuous improvement program that ensures that our cash flow is going to continue to grow in order to be able to make the investments that we intend to make. And then on the receiving side, we see opportunities that are compelling, that are really exciting for us, not only across the current business platforms in which we're engaged, but also as we start to move our business and expand it into the renewables area.
With those kinds of opportunities, we feel that our cash engine remains stoked to produce the kind of results that we're committing to you for years to come. Thank you very much for your time and attention. And with that, I will turn it back over to John.
Thanks, Ted. In closing, I'd just like to take a couple of minutes to reinforce some critical messages. And hopefully, these have all come through to you today as we've discussed over the past hour. We believe I believe the company remains extremely well positioned to deliver on our long term commitments of 6% to 10% earnings growth and 4% dividend growth and feel equally strongly about our ability to position UGI as a leader in terms of delivery of renewable energy solutions. So as we look forward and you think as you think about UGI and our position moving forward, a couple of critical ways to look at it.
Things that we're going to continue to do that are really core for us, We'll continue to focus on building a weather resilient business, continue on the critical area of cash flow to make sure we're growing cash flow to fuel that investment for the future. We're very committed to continuing to improve our infrastructure, replace and upgrade our pipelines to ensure that we're meeting all the targets we've set for our ESG goals, reducing carbon emissions, reducing greenhouse gas and methane emissions, and we're well on our way there. We'll focus heavily on our customers and improving the customer experience. We've mentioned digitization as being an important element of that interaction with customers. We've made great strides there and we'll continue to focus on that.
We'll also focus on the core commitments we make to our customers in terms of delivery of safe, affordable, resilient and reliable energy solutions. That's part of our core mission. That's why we exist and we'll continue to focus heavily on that. And we'll continue to look for attractive businesses that can be acquired and added to our business portfolio. We've done that successfully over the last 2 decades.
We'll continue to look for opportunities to do that to strengthen and grow our business. In terms of things we're looking to accelerate, clearly, as we've discussed today, we're looking to accelerate our development and positioning of the Renewable Solutions business. We're well on our way. We're making great progress. We have a breadth of opportunities upon which to build that foundation.
And we really look forward to continuing to develop that business and keeping you informed. We'll look broadly. We'll look across renewable natural gas, bio LPG, renewable DME, hydrogen and other solutions. So it's not a narrow focus, it's a broad focus. In the short term, we have some very clear opportunities that we're looking to take advantage of.
And over time, this development of our Renewable Solutions business will also achieve our goal of rebalancing our business mix, which we've talked about for the last 2 years following the AmeriGas buy in. Our continuing investment in natural gas infrastructure enables that rebalancing. The accelerated development of our Renewable Solutions business further accelerates. So we really feel good about that. And as I noted at the outset, we'll be doing these updates more regularly.
You'll be hearing from us every 6 months on these strategic issues. So I very much look forward to keeping you updated on our progress in this exciting area. And with that, I'll open it up for questions.
There are no questions at this time. You may continue.
Okay. We will take some questions from the Q and A chat line here. The first question involves how we measure and quantify the risk around renewable investments. As an example of that type of question, do we think R and D will be a competitive climate change solution?
Sure, Brendan. Thanks. And thanks for the question. I'll kick off on this and probably ask Bob to comment as well. Yes, we certainly see renewable natural gas as a very competitive and compelling solution for a number of reasons.
It certainly, as I pointed out, it has a huge benefit in that it can be utilized with existing infrastructure and we can reach a broad range of customers, meaning our customer base of well over 800,000 customers that we serve directly today in our utilities and our energy marketing businesses using existing infrastructure. Also, there's a preponderance and a diversity of RNG sources that are very attractive in terms of robust supply portfolio, but also attractive in terms of their environmental attributes. Not only do you have opportunities to identify and access 0 carbon solutions. Depending on the feedstock itself, you have the opportunity to access and develop negative carbon solution. So obviously very attractive from an environmental standpoint, accessible, viable today and enables us to reach a broad range of customers.
And the other driver for us is the increasing interest among policymakers across many states and many commissions' interest in incorporating renewable natural gas into a supply portfolio. So a number of factors that drive that attractiveness and its cost competitive as well, which is crucially important. And I'll turn it over to Bob. He can comment as well.
Thanks, John. Yes, I think John hit the main points. Really, it's affordability. There are a lot of renewable opportunities that we hear a lot about every day. I think renewable natural gas is at the neck of that funnel.
It's the most actionable. So affordability, availability, as we talked about the 2 projects that we recently did, the GHI acquisition and the digester project in Idaho. Aside from those, we've got probably a dozen projects that the utility people are working with developers to bring their gas to market. So affordability, availability and then as John mentioned during his presentation, our distinctive capabilities, we've been moving natural gas for over 100 years. So we consider ourselves experts in the acquisition and transportation and distribution of natural gas.
Really is our wheelhouse.
And the only thing I'd add Brendan is, it's not limited to natural gas when we look across our LPG businesses as well. And we look at solutions such as bio LPG or renewable DME. There's a lot of attraction to those solutions as well in terms of customer demand and interest in those solutions. And as policymakers focus on long term solutions around reducing carbon levels. There are some very attractive opportunities out there for us to invest and grow that portion of our supply portfolio.
And I'll let Roger comment for a minute on the LPG side.
Yes. Thank you, John. Yes, maybe just one additional point is when we're thinking of cost competitiveness and thinking of leveraging our existing infrastructure, the fact that being able to maximize the amount of infrastructure we have will significantly reduce capital intensity for new solutions to come in place and displace LPG or natural gas. So overall, just the availability of where our infrastructures are, terminals, tanks, etcetera, will be part of that. So we as Bob mentioned, several projects where renewable solutions are currently being developed and in the near future on these.
Okay. For our next question, we're going to stay on the renewables topic. It is where will the renewable energy initiatives live within the organization? Examples given were rate base or midstream.
Yes. The I mean, the short answer is both. And that's there's some parallels there to our development of our position in the Marcellus and that we have assets related to sourcing and delivery of shale gas that some are included and embedded in the utilities business, a larger proportion is in the midstream marketing business. When we look at renewable natural gas, there's some parallels in that. Part of this will be the utilities assessing and for the long term revamping the supply portfolio to incorporate renewable natural gas, particularly in conjunction with our regulator as we move forward.
So certainly there'll be assets and contracts within the utilities business that we where we invest and hold those assets. But more broadly, there'll be assets outside the utilities business because we'll be investing well beyond our existing footprint with the project in Idaho being an example and the GHI investment, which is serving primarily transport customers in California being another great example of investments, assets that are held in our midstream and marketing business. The other key point I'd make with regard to this is resourcing. And I mentioned that we're dedicating resources to this effort. So we have dedicated resources at both the LPG line of business level and also at the natural gas line of business level.
So we have focused teams looking at these opportunities on a daily basis. And the good news is we've got a breadth of opportunities to assess.
John, we have another question on renewables. Question is how scalable are renewable energy solutions longer term?
Yes, our view is that they are quite scalable. And as we look at opportunities, we're looking at a range of opportunities in terms of feedstock infrastructure opportunities and also distribution opportunities. As the technology progresses and there's been a lot of work done and a lot of progress made, we've already seen progress in terms of scale, viable scale of solutions. The other attractive aspect to this business from our standpoint is similar to some other businesses we've developed, there's an opportunity to invest sequentially. And a good example of that is our LNG business, which has been built through a series of sort of moderate size investments, dollars 50,000,000 to $100,000,000 investments.
Same could be true here. We develop a network of infrastructure to support an RNG position or a bio LPG or renewable DME position. We love businesses that are supported by networks that can be effectively and efficiently managed in order to optimize supply demand balance. So there's some of that clearly that we see in both RNG and Bio LPG, and we're attracted by that. So it's a combination of scalable investments, but also the opportunity to develop supply portfolio or network and then optimize that from an operational performance standpoint, but also optimize it from a financial performance standpoint.
And I'm happy for Bob or Roger to jump in as well if they have any other comments in terms of scalability.
Yes, I'll jump in, John. I agree. And I think the fact that our footprint has expanded outside the Greater Mid Atlantic with R and G gives us opportunities that we wouldn't have seen 5 or 6 years ago. And again, we continue with the theme that the fact that with your 2 natural gas businesses, we have nearly 13,000 miles of pipe running across Pennsylvania, all a lot of access to renewable opportunities, whether it's landfill, whether it's digesters. So I agree with you, it's definitely scalable and look forward to seeing what we come up with over the next handful of years.
Yes. And maybe just one additional comment to add a little more color to what Don just said is the fact that a lot of these bio facilities are quite distributed. They're very localized areas where you have a digester, for example. But that suits us very well. Business at AmeriGas and across the country, likewise across the countries we operate in Europe.
So we can develop these projects or be a partner to a project in any one of the countries and then sales on those anchor.
Yes, I think one of the and we touched on a bit earlier, but one of the key attributes that makes this an important solution set of solutions and attractive is, in many cases here, we're addressing or the supplier is addressing a fundamental environmental issue around some form of waste, bio waste, cleaning it up and then utilizing the off gas. So you're actually addressing sort of multiple environmental issues and developing and delivering the solution, which I think from a societal standpoint is really important and also leads to strong support across different critical communities that are important to policymakers. So it's an interesting and important aspect to this that not only are you delivering are we delivering a renewable solution, we're part of a solution that cleans up an issue around waste and effluent that's important to the agricultural sector, for example.
Switching gears a little bit, we have a couple of questions for the propane side of the house. What does the current supply demand picture look like on the U. S. Propane side, assuming weather has been a headwind with maybe some tailwinds from outdoor activities, people staying at home, etcetera?
Yes. I'll happily take that question. Yes, so far, maybe just talk about supply for a moment. What we feel very good about is we really got ahead of the curve this year and really organized our supply contracts early on. So we feel very good about the supply and those supply points to a 100 locations that we get through the AmeriGas business.
When you look at the demand side, while it's still early in the season, but we're obviously ready for weather to come our way and
obviously
be able to supply all of our end customers with the infrastructure we have in the different assets to enable that seamless. There's another point here is that we have seen this year with stay at home activities where the propane still under business has particularly seen a lot more individuals, they're barbecuing, in meat plants and outdoor restaurants. That's something we've talked a lot about during our recent earnings call, where we have seen a significant increase in year over year demand. It was about 18% increase in our solar exchange business relative to prior fiscal year. So that's an area that we expect to continue as we continue to operate in this pandemic right now until business continues.
In contrary to that, we are also seeing some commercial activities like in the resorts or other resorts being quite low in demand.
Okay. We have another question. I think this is it's about propane, but it's more from a UGI whole perspective. One analyst said to like UGI, you have to love propane. Under what conditions would UGI management no longer love propane?
Well, I would just say it's hard for us not to love propane based on the cash generation sort of attributes of the business. So it's an important critically important attribute in terms of the free cash flow generated by our LPG businesses consistently over a long period. Ted sort of highlighted that in some of his comments. But the other thing I would point out is, as I noted earlier, we're going to see a progression in terms of the capital mix in terms of where our CapEx is spent. But it evolves quite significantly over time.
So we're going to continue to love the tremendous cash flow generated by our propane businesses and look to continue from an organic standpoint with the level of capital that we've outlined for the future to continue to grow that cash flow. So that's really important for us. So we'll continue to love that. But as we noted, you'll see a rebalancing of our business portfolio towards natural gas and renewable solutions through the effective and significant reinvestment of capital in that part of our business. So we still really appreciate the attributes and the contributions of our LPG business.
But we'll see a natural progression for the corporation and a rebalancing over time as we put capital to work in our natural gas businesses and in our renewable solutions business, some of which will be utilizing the tremendous reach of our global LPG business. So when we talk about bio LPG or renewable DME and the direct access to customers in those emerging markets, the reason we'll have access to over 2,000,000 customers is because of the position we're in with our existing LPG businesses. So that's another crucially important attribute of our LPG businesses.
Okay. Switching gears a little bit here, we have a few questions related to our financials. The first was, does our 2021 CapEx forecast include anything for pennies?
Yes, I'll comment and I'll certainly turn it over to either Ted or Bob, if they want to comment. There's very limited capital anticipated in 2021 on PennEast. As I think most are aware, the activities around PennEast now are all related to some regulatory filings that are and court filings that are under review. And that's essentially what's included in our future in our forecast for the upcoming year, which is kind of at an immaterial level for us overall. But I'll let Ted comment as well.
Yes. No, there's really nothing to add there.
That's it. Okay.
Next question is reconciling a number we put out last year, which was in relation to your previous fiscal 'twenty three EPS guidance range of $3.75 to $4.05 Can you help us bridge that with today's 'twenty four EPS target of $3.50 to $4
Yes, I'll comment and I'll let Ted. I think basically, we take a fresh view every year. There are certain factors that were adjusted, including as Ted noted earlier, weather. As we look forward, we're projecting future earnings growth that's in the band of 6% to 10%. So it's consistent with the view we've historically taken.
But I'll let Ted comment specifically.
Yes. If you took the guidance we provided for fiscal year 2020 that we just closed, the original guidance, the midpoint of that would have been $2.75 Our 2024 EPS target of $3.50 to $4 is, as John noted, within that 6% to 10% CAGR of growth rate over that time period. We do build a plan from scratch every year over the next 4 year period and we have a number of items and strategic areas and in timing that shift over those plans as we update them every year. We won't provide a detailed reconciliation
for this, but a couple of items
that I'd offer up as examples on shifting. UGI Appalachia, an investment we made in 2019 is turning out to deliver on all of the economics that we originally created for justifying that acquisition. But some of the incremental investments we had planned to make with UGI Appalachia, some of that was displaced in this last year and so there's a timing issue there. The discussions we've had on renewables is a area that we've expanded considerably in this plan and that's why we've spent so much time focusing on that. Another example would be the move from a 15 year weather history to now a 10 year weather history that's had some impact on our financials.
So those are the kinds of shifts that we would normally see as we move from plan period to plan period.
Okay. Another question on PennEast. When does your current forecast assume construction begins and when the project goes into service?
Bob, why don't you comment on PennEast, you're the closest to
it? Sure. Yes. So our current plan is to have construction begin next fiscal year and we expect completion of the project and I believe we have $0.07 or $0.08 earnings in the back half of FY 'twenty four. But as John said, right now we're waiting to hear what happens with the solicitor general if he is going to ask the Supreme Court to take up our case.
And until then, there's not a lot of activity on the
Just
Just one related point, it's not specific to PennEast, but as we've seen over the last few years, with some uncertainty around incremental new pipeline delivery capacity across the Greater Mid Atlantic and Northeast part of the U. S. I mean, what we have seen is continued strong interest in LNG and other peaking solutions. So it's not a zero sum game. There's other opportunities and opportunities that are actually created by the fact that there are some constraints or delays in terms of incremental capacity coming to market.
We've seen strong interest and investment opportunities in several areas, but specifically in our LNG network.
Okay. That's all we have for now. So I'll turn it back over to Cheri.
If not, Brendan, I can jump in. Just to summarize, we certainly appreciate your time and attention today. And as I noted at the outset, this is the first of what we plan to have as every 6 month meetings, updates to you. The level of activity as we've laid out today is quite substantial. The opportunities are great.
So we look forward to keeping you updated with our progress and as our strategy evolves. We'll do that with our quarterly earnings call, but we think it's going to be really helpful to have these discussions, separate discussions on broader strategic issues every 6 months. So we look forward to speaking with you on our next earnings call and then later this fiscal year doing another strategic update for you. So thanks for your time today. Take care.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.