Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy's First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode and today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gille, Manager of Investor Relations at Alliant Energy.

Good morning. I would like to thank all of you on the call and the webcast for joining us today. We appreciate your participation. With me here today are Pat Kampling, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tom Hanson, Senior Vice President and CFO; and Robert Durian, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller; as well as other members of the Senior Management Team. Following prepared remarks by Pat and Tom, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's first quarter 2016 earnings, re-affirmed 2016 earnings guidance. This release, as well as supplemental slides that will be referenced during today's call, are available on the investor page of our website at alliantenergy.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you the remarks we make on this call and our answers to your questions include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters discussed in Alliant Energy's press release issued last night and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release, which are available on our website at alliantenergy.com. At this point I'll turn the call over to Pat.

Thank you, Su. Good morning and thank you for joining us on the first quarter 2016 earnings call. I will begin with an overview of our first quarter performance. I will now review the progress made and transforming our generation fleet creating a smarter energy infrastructure and expanding our natural gas system. I will then turn the call over to Tom to provide details on our first quarter results as well review our regulatory calendar. Like the utilities in the region mild with the temperatures reduced first quarter results, ours by $0.05 per share. This is quite the opposite from first quarter 2015 where we experienced a positive temperature impact to earnings therefore temperature swings led to a significant quarter-over-quarter variance of $0.09 per share. During the past few years we have been executing on our plan for the orderly transition of our generating fleet and economic manner to serve our customers. We made progress in building a generation portfolio that has lower emissions, greater fuel diversity, is more cost efficient. The transition includes increasing levels of natural gas fired and renewable energy generation, lower levels of coal generation through coal unit retirements and installing emission controls on performance upgrades on largest coal fired facilities. We have also started water and ash program at our facilities to meet current and expected future environmental requirements. Now let me brief you on our construction activities. 2016 is another very active construction year with 4 investments of over $1.1 billion. Our investments are projected to include approximately $300 million for our elective distribution systems. These investments are driven by customer expectations to make our systems more robust, reliable and resilient. This year's plan also includes $200 million for improvements in expansion of our natural gas distribution business almost double our year spending. The…

Good morning everyone, we released first quarter 2016 earnings last evening with our earnings from continuing operations of $0.86 per share which was $0.01 per share lower than 2015 earnings. a summary of the quarter over quarter earning's drivers may be found on Slide 3. Consistent with our growth assumed in our 2016 earning's guidance retail electric and temperature normalized sales for Iowa, Wisconsin increased to approximately 1% between first quarter 2015 and 2016. The commercial and industrial sectors continued to be the largest hales growth drivers quarter-over-quarter. Now let's briefly review our 2016 guidance. In November we issued our consolidated 2016 earnings guidance range of $3.60 - $3.90 on a pre-stock split basis. The key drivers for the 5% growth in earnings led to infrastructure investments such as the Edgewater and the Lansing emission control equipment. And hire AFUDC related to the Marshalltown generating station. The earing's guidance is based upon the impacts of IPLs and WPLs previously announced retail based rate settlement. In 2016 IPL expects to credit customer builds by approximately $10 million. By comparison the building credits in 2015 were $24 million. IPL expects to provide tax driver billing credits to electric and gas customers of approximately $62 million compared to $72 million in 2015. Over the years the tax benefit riders may have a timing impact but are not anticipated to impact full year results. The WPL settlement reflected electric growth for the Edgewater house projected to be place in service this year. The increase in requirements in 2016 for this and other base additions completely offset by lower energy efficiency recovery amortization. Slide 4 has been provided to assist you in modeling the assisted tax rates in IPL and WPL and AEC. Turning to our forecasted capital expenditures. In March, the pipeline and hazardous…

Thank you, Mr. Hanson. At this time the company will open the call for question for members of the investment community. Alliant Energy's management team will take as many questions as they can within the one hour timeframe for this morning's call. [Operator Instructions] We will go first to Andrew Levi at Avon Capital.

Hi, first question.

Good morning Andy, congratulations.

Thank you. What do I get for anything or?

Nothing.

Just a quick question. Just on the non-reg, where was the breakdown on the earnings on the non-reg on the quarter?

Yes, the railroad and train facility.

I think the transportation $0.01 and our non-reg generation was another $0.01. Franklin County was a drag of about $0.01 and then we had activity of about another penny. Last time it was a positive in terms of the other benefits of the parent.

Okay and how did the Franklin, the non-reg generation and the railroad, how did that compare to last year?

I would say it's fairly consistent.

Okay and then just in general on Franklin and the railroads. What's kind of the thinking of the outlook this year relative to last year?

I think with Franklin last November when we gave guidance we said it would probably be a drag on earnings of about $0.04 to $0.05. And that is still reasonable, yes.

And on the railroad?

And assume $0.07 was our current outlook, current forecast we are assuming the same expectations for 2016.

$0.07 to the railroad. Is that what the railroad earned in 2015 or was it higher or lower?

No it was $0.07 last year as well.

Got it, that's all I needed. Thank you very much.

We move next to Brian Russo with Ladenburg Thalmann.

Hi, good morning. You reaffirmed your 5% to 7%, does that run through a particular year or through a particular planning periods? Maybe you could just talk about that just a little bit.

Yes, Brian we actually based it on last year's weather normalized sales and it goes on for 5 years so till 2019.

Okay and what was last year's weather normalized sales?

$3.57

Okay. And just remind us the Riverside settlement and options from communities to grow up and energy, just remind us of the timing of that?

Yes, Brian we updated our Investor Deck so if you got to Slide 9 on the Deck, basically the Wisconsin public service has the option for up to 200 MW in the 2024 timeframe. MG&E has up to 50 MW from the 2020 to 2025 timeframe and the co-op have up to 60 MW and they will determine that in the quarter this year.

And how is that priced?

Current book value at the time.

Okay. Thank you.

Moving next to Andrew Weisel with Macquarie Capital.

Good morning, appreciate the commentary on potential equity meets for next year. Just want to understand is that sort of a run rate we should assume for all years in 2017 and beyond or is it sort of a onetime thing? Obviously there's other variables that could make the need go up and down but should we think of that as the number for the next several years or 2017 and there could be more 2018?

Assume that as the initial estimate for 2017 and in terms of the outer years. It's going to be somewhat depended on the some of the parties just made reference to, in terms of the Riverside expansion so if and when MG&E might step into Riverside so for now assume up to $150 million applies to only till 2017.

Okay. Great and the other one there was some change to the effective tax rate forecast in the Slide Deck, I believe and want to confirm. That's earning as neutral and that offsets right to revenue line or is that something that could effectively shake out within the guidance range?

There will be some movement with the income statements. What has changed is principally an IPL which will have a less low through benefit. But that could not be impacting earnings. That will be offset someplace else.

Okay. That cancelled the effect of tax rate so both IPL and corporation, I should think of it as neutral?

No, think of it as lien adjustment tax and something else will be offsetting it so the earnings guidance will remain consistent with previous estimates.

Okay. So the $0.09 benefit in the full year guidance is still a good number to think about?

A little bit high but it is not going to be significantly high and will be offset by something else so far, guidance for 2016 is unchanged.

We know how carefully you guys track the tax rate so we want to provide the update this quarter.

Yes, appreciate it was just trying to understand the potential impact of the bottom line. Thank you.

And Tom counts every penny also.

Ms. Gille, there are no further questions at this time.

With no more questions, this concludes our call. A replay will be available through May 12, 2016 at 888-203-1112 for U.S. & Canada or 719-457-0820 for international. Callers should reference conference ID 8244179. In addition an archive of the conference call and the prepared remarks made on the call will be available on the Investor sections of the company's website later today. we thank you for your continued support of Alliant Energy and feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions.

And that concludes today's presentation. Thank you for your participation.