UGI (NYSE:UGI) walked into its fiscal 2026 third-quarter earnings call on August 6 with a split story to tell. Segment EBIT fell to $58 million from $72 million a year earlier, mostly because a warm April hit propane demand. But three weeks before that call, on July 31, state judges recommended approving a rate settlement that hands the utility business years of locked-in revenue.
The company is reaffirming full-year adjusted EPS guidance of $2.75 to $2.90 anyway. The Pennsylvania settlement calls for a two-step rate increase totaling $65 million, with about $40 million taking effect in October this year and another $25 million in October 2027, protected by a stay-out provision through January 2029. That gives UGI Utilities years of visibility on pricing while it keeps modernizing its pipeline network, an effort backed by directing 76% of year-to-date capital spending into the natural gas businesses and adding more than 8,500 heating customers.
The company also finished its cast iron pipe replacement commitment ahead of schedule. The propane side of the business is showing its own turnaround. Compared with fiscal 2024, AmeriGas has cut lost time injuries in half, reduced recordable injuries by 44%, and lifted its average customer satisfaction score by 63% on a year-to-date basis.
Management used the call to flag AmeriGas as being positioned for the return of distributions to the parent company in fiscal 2027. Debt work reinforced that story too, with AmeriGas retiring its 2027 maturity and part of a 2028 note that carried a 9.375% coupon, cutting net debt there by roughly $270 million in a single quarter. Overseas, UGI International held its earnings roughly flat against divestitures and pointed to heating oil to LPG conversion as a market about four times the size of what it already serves.
The quarter's weak spot was propane demand. April temperatures ran 16% warmer than the prior year, and AmeriGas retail gallons fell 10%. Strip out weather and a divested Hawaii operation, and volumes were still down 6% for the quarter and 2% year-to-date, which points to customer attrition that hasn't fully stopped.
That volume drag knocked $25 million off AmeriGas's quarterly EBIT. The bottom-line trend reflects it. Year-to-date adjusted diluted earnings per share sit at $3.17, down from $3.55 a year ago, a gap management tied to the disappearance of last year's investment tax credits and higher interest expense.
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