Kevin Akers
President and Chief Executive Officer at Atmos Energy
Thank you, Dan, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Atmos Energy. Yesterday, we reported year-to-date fiscal '24 net income of $743 million or $4.93 per diluted share and we updated our fiscal '24 earnings per share guidance to a range of $6.70 to $6.80. This performance continues to reflect the commitment, dedication, focus, and effort of all 5,000 Atmos Energy employees to successfully modernize our natural gas, distribution, transmission, and storage systems, while safely providing reliable natural gas service to 3.4 million customers in 1,400 communities across our eight states.
For the quarter, we continued to experience robust customer growth, driven by continuing favorable employment trends in Texas, along with a strong new housing market in the North Texas area. For the 12 months ended March 31, 2024, we added over 56,000 new customers with more than 43,000 of those new customers located in Texas. New home starts in North Texas were up 44.7% during the first calendar quarter of '24 compared to the first quarter of 2023. As a result, the annual new home start rate is now at the highest pace since mid-2022. The Texas Workforce Commission reported in April that the seasonally-adjusted number of employees reached a new record-high at over $14.1 million. Texas again added jobs at a faster rate than the nation over the last 12 months ending March, adding nearly 271,000 jobs, representing a 2% annual growth rate.
Industrial demand for natural gas in our service territories also remained strong. During the second quarter, we added 11 new industrial customers with an anticipated annual load of approximately 1 Bcf once they are fully operational. Fiscal year-to-date, we've added 22 new industrial customers with an anticipated annual load of approximately 4 Bcf once they are fully operational. On a volumetric basis, this is equal to adding approximately 68,000 residential customers to our system.
Commercial customer growth remained solid as well, with over 900 customers connecting to the system during the second quarter and over 2,000 customers connecting to the system fiscal year-to-date. This growth continues to highlight the value and vital role natural gas plays in economic development across our service territories.
In APT, we continue our work on several projects that will enhance the safety, reliability, versatility, and supply diversification of our system as well as support the continued growth we are seeing in the local distribution companies behind APT system. Work continues on the fourth and final phase of our Line S2 project. This phase will replace the existing 14-inch and 20-inch pipelines with 40 miles of 36-inch pipeline. As a reminder, this project brings supply from the Haynesville and Cotton Valley shale place to the east side of the growing DFW Metroplex. This phase of the project is anticipated to be in service by the end of this calendar year. To the south of the DFW Metroplex, we have a project underway that will provide additional pipeline capacity to transport gas from our Bethel storage facility into the growing DFW Metroplex and a growth corridor along Interstate 35 in Waco, Temple, and the Austin areas. This project is scheduled to be placed into service late in calendar year 2025.
During the second quarter, our customer support associates and service technicians once again received a 98% satisfaction rating from our customers, reflecting the exceptional customer service they provide each and every day. Our customer advocacy team and customer support agents continued their outreach efforts to energy assistance agencies and customers during the first six months of the fiscal year. Through their efforts, the team helped nearly 34,000 customers receive over $12 million in funding assistance.
Recently, the American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked Atmos Energy first in customer satisfaction. This is the second consecutive year we have reached this ranking. For the second year in a row as well -- recognition on Newsweek's list of most trustworthy companies in America. And we also appeared in the first Newsweek Excellent 1000 Index, which identifies models of corporate responsibility across more than 25 industries.
Finally, for the fourth consecutive year, we were named on the Forbes list of America's Best Midsize Employers, and this year, we are ranked first among all companies in the utility industry. This recognition demonstrates how our dedicated employees continue to be guided by the simple values of honesty, integrity and good moral character, the core values laid out by our Founding Chairman, Charles K. Vaughan. These values combined with our employees' laser focus on our vision to be the safest provider of natural gas services continue to benefit our customers and the communities we serve.
I will now turn the call over to Chris for his update.
