Please standby. Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Alliant Energy's Year End 2017 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. 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. Please go ahead.

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 and Chief Executive Officer; Robert Durian, Senior Vice President, CFO and Treasurer; and John Larsen President, as well as other members of the senior management team. Following prepared remarks by Pat and Robert, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's Year End and Fourth Quarter Financial Results and affirmed the consolidated 2018 earnings guidance issued in November 2017. The press release, as well as supplemental slides that will be referenced during today's call, are available on the investor page of our website at www.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 the non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in our investor presentation, which are available on our website at www.alliantenergy.com. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Pat.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. 2017 was another excellent year for our company and I'm happy to share our financial results with you today. On slide two, you'll notice that our non-GAAP temperature normalized earnings of a $1.99 per share, a 6% higher than 2016's comparable number. Also, I'm reaffirming our 2018 earnings guidance midpoint of $2.11 per share and our long-term earnings growth guidance of 5% to 7%. Our forecasted long-term growth guidance through 2021 is supported by our capital expenditure plans, modest sales growth, constructive regulatory outcomes and assumes normal temperatures and was also re-based of the 2017 non-GAAP temperature normalized earnings of $1.99 per share. This was the fifth year in a row that we achieved at least 5% to 7% earnings per share growth and increased our dividend by at least 6%. Our robust capital plan during this time has helped us transition our generation fleet to and that achieve significant reductions in SOx, NOx, mercury and carbon, this made our grid stronger and more resilient. We began the transition of our generation fleet almost a decade ago with the retirements of our smaller, less efficient fossil fuel generating stations and the start of our utility owned wind additions. In 2017, we achieved some major milestones including a commercial operation of a 700 megawatt highly efficient natural gas-fired generating facility in Marshalltown Iowa. The start of construction of a similar unit at our West Riverside Energy Center in Beloit, Wisconsin and the announcement of our plant 1,200 megawatt wind addition. In 2016, the Iowa utility board approved the first 500 megawatts of our 1,000 megawatt plant wind additions. In 2017, we initiated an advanced rate making principal docket for the second 500 megawatt. We expect a ruling on our quest for the second…

Good morning, everyone. Yesterday, we announced 2017 GAAP earnings of $1.99 per share, which include the impacts of the recent Tax Reform Legislation. Tax Reform resulted in $0.08 per share of non-recurring earnings due to re-measuring deferred tax associated with our non-utility operations and changes in valuation allowances for tax credit carry forwards. Our 2017 results also included $0.02 per share non-recurring charge for the write-down of regulatory assets as a result of the settlement of IPL's retail electric rate review. Excluding these two non-recurring impacts and the $0.06 per share negative impact from the normal temperatures in 2017, our non-GAAP normal temperatures normalized earnings were $1.99 per share, which were in line with our expectation. Please see the earnings walks provided on slides three, four and five of our supplemental slides for more details. Excluding the impacts of milder temperatures in 2017 and the impacts related to leap year in 2016, we saw a slightly positive sales growth in our service territories year-over-year. We continue to see sales growth from industrial customers, offset by lower usage by residential customers, largely due to energy efficiency effort. The recently enacted Tax Reform Legislation provides a unique and historic opportunity for the company to provide material benefits to customers in both the short and long run. We are working with our regulators on plans which provide our customers with near-term benefits from tax reform, while maintaining strong balance sheet. This will ensure our company continues to have access to capital at reasonable rates thereby reducing cost for our customers. We recently submitted proposals to our state regulators in Iowa and Wisconsin, which include a variety of options for customer benefits including customer billing credits, accelerated asset amortizations, deferral or avoidance of future rate cases and funding for future investments important to our…

Thank you, Mr. Durian. At this time the company will open up the call to questions from members of the investment community. Alliant Energy's management will take as many questions as they can within the one hour timeframe for this morning's call. [Operator Instructions] And we'll take our first question from Nick Campanella from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Congrats on a successful year.

Good morning, Nick. How are you?

Good. How are you? I was just curious on your comments for additional equity. Could there be any changes to your consolidated cap structure, I think there was a targeted 40% to 45% ratio discussed on the 3Q call. So is there any changes to that?

No, we're going to stay with that plan.

Got it. And I understand the dockets are ongoing, but is there kind of a base case number that we should be thinking about for '18 or '19 as things change there?

You're talking about sort of rate review, I'm sorry, we don't understand your question.

I'm sorry. The tax reform dockets that are ongoing in your jurisdictions, and I know that the cash flow impacts will be dependent on how those cases play out, but is there kind of a base case on how to think about the equity number?

Yeah, from an equity prospective, we're obviously sharing with you what we're doing in 2018 with no plan changes at this point. We were going to continue to evaluate what the regulatory decisions are. At this point, we're expecting a decision from both of the two major jurisdictions probably sometime in the second quarter following that, as well as any additional information we learn about our capital expenditure plan through the decision we're waiting for the wind plan. We'll probably have some information I would guess in a month or two to give you some more clarity as to what our equity needs look like beyond that at that frame.

Got it. Thanks so much. See you next week.

Bye Nick.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our next question from Andy Levy with Avon Capital Please go ahead.

How are you doing?

Hi, Andy. How are you?

Good morning.

I'm doing fine, thank you very much. The equity, when you will update us on that? I missed that.

Probably sometime later this year, Andy. We obviously need some additional information regarding what the regulators are going to decide on the Tax Reform benefits from the timing and method which they are going to go back to the customers. And then also, we want to have more clarity on the capital expenditure plan which we're hoping to get here in the next few weeks regarding the second 500 megawatts of the wind in Iowa.

But, Andy, we don't expect any changes for 2018 financing plan. This will be post 2018.

Right. And obviously we're in effective growth rate longer term as well?

That is correct. Yeah, right now as we disclosed on slide six of the supplemental slides, we see some I would say modestly accretive impact of Tax Reform on our earnings, but not enough for us to change the 5% to 7% through 2021. And that's largely centered around, we do like most utilities we're going to see some additional rate base growth, but we also see some additional equity needs and therefore they offset each other.

Got it. And then the other question is, I noticed there was about a month ago, you guys changed your bylaws, could you just go over the thinking on that?

Sure. What we did, Andy, was we redeemed our posion pill. We've been receiving some criticism on our governance scores over the last couple of years, because we still had a poison pill out there that was not approved by share owners and of course is not in favor. So that's what we did. We just redeemed the poison pill, just to get in line with other S&P 500 companies. We were an outlier on that one.

Okay. That was my question. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] And we'll take our next question from Gregg Orrill from UBS. Please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you.

Good morning, Greg.

Good morning. Two questions. One, what is it that you're looking to learn that would modify your CapEx plan with regard to Iowa wind decision? And then what is the process that you're looking at in Wisconsin to transfer the wind into the utility?

Sure, so two questions. First, we just want to get the official RPU docket approved. So our CapEx plan assumes that will be approved, so that's our assumption. We'll expect to know, we believe in a couple of weeks. So we don't believe there is going to be any changes, we just want to make sure that's final before we communicate more on the financing plan post 2018. And the docket in Wisconsin for the - wind farm is actually in process. And we should expect approval of that in a couple of weeks. Bob, you want to add something?

No.

Did that answer your question?

Yeah, I think it did, yep, appreciate it.

Okay, okay.

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

With no more questions, this concludes our call. A replay will be available through March 2, 2018 at 888-203-1112 for US and Canada or 719-457-0820 for international. Callers should reference conference ID 4175543 and PIN 9578. In addition, an archive of the conference call and a script of the prepared remarks made on the call will be available on the Investor Section of our company's website later today. We all thank you for your continued support of Alliant Energy and feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions.

This concludes today's presentation. We thank you for your participation, you may now disconnect.