Welcome to the First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Polleck [ph] and I will be your operator for today’s call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Jason Lang, Investor Relations Manager. You may begin.

Thanks, Polleck [ph]. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Avista’s First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Our earnings released pre-market this morning and the release is available on our website at avistacorp.com. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp Chairman of the Board, President and CEO, Scott Morris; Senior Vice President and CFO, Mark Thies; Senior Vice President and the President of Avista Utilities, Dennis Vermillion; Vice President of State and Federal Regulation, Kelly Norwood; and Vice President, Controller and Principal Accounting Officer, Christy Burmeister-Smith. I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements that will be made today are forward-looking statements that involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties which are subject to change. For reference to the various factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in today’s call, please refer to our Form 10-K for 2014, which is available on our website. Also we’re planning to file our first quarter 2015 10-Q later today. To begin this presentation, I would like to recap the financial results presented in today’s press release. Our consolidated earnings for the first quarter of 2015 were $0.74 per diluted share compared to $0.81 for the first quarter of 2014. Now I’ll turn the discussion over to Scott.

Well, thank you Jason and good morning. Earnings for the first quarter of 2015 were below our expectations due to weather that was significantly warmer than normal. However, the impact was somewhat mitigated through the decoupling mechanism in Washington. Excluding the impacts of weather, we had a solid first quarter, and I’m pleased how well our utilities have performed operationally. We continue to make significant capital investments to preserve and enhance service reliability for our customers. In addition we are maintaining our focus on effectively managing our operating costs and I believe we’re well position to sustain our long-term earnings growth. Since acquiring Alaska Electric Light and Power Company last summer, we’ve spent some time getting to know our service territory in Alaska, participating in economic development conferences and having conversations with key community leaders. The Juneau utility is well respected in Southeast Alaska, and we’re pleased with the warm welcome we’ve received. And our Alaska operations met our expectations in the first quarter. On Monday we filed a partial settlement agreement in our electric and natural gas general rate cases with the Washington commission. The partial settlement includes agreement among the parties on the cost of capital. Net power supply cost and rate design among the customer classes and Mark will provide further details of this settlement later on the call and of course Kelly is here to answer any questions. On April 16, we had new rates going to affect in Oregon which are designed to increase annual natural gas revenues by $5 million with the Oregon commission. We requested an overall increase in natural gas rates at 8% designed to increase annual gas revenues by $8.6 million. We’re also planning to file electric and natural gas general rate cases in Idaho before the end of the second quarter. And lastly, we are confirming our 2015 earnings guidance with the consolidated range of $1.86 to $2.06 per diluted share. So at this time I’m going to turn over the call to Mark who is all decked out in his Chicago Blackhawk gear this morning. I think he might be having a - had bit of rational exuberance as we’re still earlier in the playoffs and Mark is already wearing his full Blackhawks gear. Take it away, Mark.

Go Hawks, it was an exciting win last night over the wild. For the first quarter Avista Utilities contributed $0.71 per share a decrease from $0.80 in last year and that’s largely due to significantly warmer weather and lower heating loads. By contrast of the first quarter of 2014 was colder than normal, the decreases in loads work [ph] temperature as Scott mentioned by decoupling mechanism in Washington which was implemented on January 1. For the first quarter we recognized a pre-tax benefit of $5.7 million under the Energy Recovery Mechanism in Washington compared to $1.3 million for the first quarter of 2014. For the full year we still expect to be in the benefit position under the ERM within the 90% customers 10% company sharing band. We continue to be committed as Scott mentioned to update and in maintaining our utility systems. We expect Avista Utilities capital expenditures to be about $375 million in 2015 and $350 million in each of 2016 and 2017. We expect to spend approximately $15 million in each of 2015, 2016 and 2017 related to capital expenditures at AEL&P or Alaska operations. A significant portion of these capital expenditures are for the construction of an additional backup generation plan. As Scott mentioned earlier we file the partial settlement in our Washington electric and natural gas general rate cases the partial settlement agreement is based on a 48.5% equity layer and a 9.5% return on equity and that reduces our electric revenues request we also reduced our [indiscernible] revenue from $33.2 million to $17 million. And our original natural gas revenue increase was from $12 million to $11.3 million a slight decrease the revised revenue amounts reflect changes in the company’s power supply model updated lower contract cost associated with out recently signed power purchase…

Thank you, Mark. Polleck we would now like to open the call up for questions please.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Michael Weinstein from UBS. Please go ahead.

Mike?

Good morning. Sorry. So I was wondering, could you describe the impact of the two settlements the one in Oregon and the other one the partial settlement in Washington on regulatory lag, I understand the authorized ROEs that you’ve negotiated. I’m just wondering if regulatory lag is gives an improvement from the two settlement?

Yeah, this is Kelly, with regard to Oregon the rates went until that April 16 of this year that will improve the lag in Oregon a little bit, Oregon tends to cut us of on capital during the period just before the time rates into effect and so we still expect to see some lag in Oregon going forward, which is part of why we turn around and file May 1, just last week. And then with regard to Washington, if you look at our results there, we are actually in pretty good shape, the commission have move towards allowing us to use an attrition type adjustment, which allows us to reflect in rates of the future cost. So with this settlement, the partial settlement that we have we’ve addressed the cost to capital rose power supply issues, which also allows us to update our power supply cost just before rates go into effect and then lastly we settled rates square [ph] and rate design among the customer classes.

Okay, and I’m taking at the - there will be no more stock buyback this year now that you are showing debt, right. What kind of equity ratio do you expect to have at the end of the year?

We expect to have a prudent capital structure as we always have, we haven’t set out a targeted equity ratio, we try to manage our equity ratio to be at or around our authorized equity in each of our jurisdiction so that’s generally we have different in each jurisdiction and we consolidate and that’s how we have our prudent capital structure we will target that again.

Okay, alright thank you very much.

Thanks Mike.

[Operator Instructions] And we are showing no further questions, I will now turn the call over to Jason Lang for closing comments.

I would like to thank everyone for joining us today, we certainly appreciate your interest in our company. Have a great day.