Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy's Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gille, Investor Relations Manager 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 and Chief Executive Officer; John Larsen, President; and Robert Durian, Senior Vice President, CFO and Treasurer; as well as other members of the senior management team. Following prepared remarks by Pat, John and Robert, we will take time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's third quarter and year-to-date financial results, updated our 2018 earnings guidance range and announced the 2019 earnings guidance and common stock dividend target. We also provided our annual capital expenditure plan through 2022 and our current estimated total CapEx for 2023 through 2027. 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 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 references to non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation between non-GAAP and non-GAAP measures are provided in our earnings release and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which is available on our website at www.alliantenergy.com. At this point, I'll turn the call over to Pat.

Thanks, Sue. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to report that we continue to deliver solid financial and operational results. Third quarter did benefit from higher sales through the warmer weather -- the warmer than normal temperatures we enjoyed. On a year-to-date basis, our earnings per share of $1.83 included $0.05 benefit from temperature. Therefore, we are updating our earnings guidance range to $2.13 to $2.19 per share with the new midpoint of $2.16, $0.05 higher than our original guidance for the year. Based on our forecast, 2018 will mark the sixth year in a row that we've achieved at least 5% to 7% earnings per share growth. Robert will provide more details on quarterly results later on the call. Now, let's focus on 2019. The midpoint of our earnings guidance range is $2.24 per share, which is a 6% increase to our forecast of 2018 temperature-normalized non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.11 as shown on Slide 2. This is consistent with our long-term earnings growth objective of 5% to 7% per year through 2022. Additionally, you'll be pleased to know that our Board of Directors has approved a 6% increase of our targeted 2019 annual common stock dividend to $1.42 per share, consistent with our targeted dividend payout ratio of 60% to 70% of earnings. We also issued our 2018 to 2022 capital expenditure plan totaling $7 billion as shown on Slide 3. For your convenience, we provided a walk from the previous capital plan to our current plan on Slide 4. Gas and electric distribution spend did increase in all the years. I would like to point out that the gas distribution CapEx increase of $155 million in 2020 is driven mostly by several anticipated gas expansion projects in Wisconsin. The $205…

Thank you, Pat. Good morning, everyone. As Pat mentioned, we experienced warmer than normal temperatures in the third quarter. I'm pleased to report that our generating fleet operated very well, responding to the increased demand for energy. The year-to-date capacity factors at our combined cycle gas facilities have been over 55%. Efficient and responsive gas generation is a great market participant as well as a great complement for existing and future wind resources. We continue to make great progress on our generation transformation. At the end of September, Unit 4 at our Edgewater generating station was retired. This unit was a 351-megawatt coal-fired generator, which was placed in service in 1969. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the dedicated employees who operated and maintained this unit, providing nearly 50 years of reliable power for our Wisconsin customers. Retiring this unit was another step in our planned energy transformation to focus on customer cost, carbon reduction and advancing clean energy solutions. With the retirement of Edgewater 4, we have now retired or converted approximately 50% of our 2010 coal-fired generation capacity. A key part of our generation transformation includes adding efficient natural gas and renewable energy. In Wisconsin, we're making great progress on our 730-megawatt West Riverside Energy Center. This highly efficient natural gas resource is over 50% complete and is expected to go into service by the end of 2019. We are also advancing renewable energy with our proposed 150-megawatt Kossuth County wind project. We anticipate a decision on this wind resource in the first quarter of 2019. These 2 resource additions will replace the power from the Wisconsin coal facilities retired to-date and help advance clean energy for our Wisconsin customers. Moving on to Iowa generation investments. We are making great progress in our plans…

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Yesterday, we announced third quarter non-GAAP earnings of $0.85 per share compared to $0.75 per share in the third quarter of 2017. The key drivers for the $0.10 increase were higher electric sales caused by warmer temperatures and higher electric and gas margins from increasing rate base. We provided additional details on the earnings variance drivers for the quarter on Slides 5 and 6. For the first 9 months of 2018, temperatures in our service territory have increased Alliant Energy's retail electric and gas margins by approximately $0.09 per share. Due to WPL's earnings sharing mechanism, we currently expect the majority of the higher margins resulting from the temperature impacts at -- or sorry, WPL will be given back to our Wisconsin retail customers. In addition, Alliant Energy's performance base is based on earnings. As a result, a portion of the higher earnings resulting from the temperature impacts will be offset by higher performance pay expense. Therefore, the year-to-date temperature impacts, net of reserves for WPL's earnings sharing mechanism and additional performance pay expense, are estimated to be a $0.05 per share increase in earnings. As Pat mentioned, last night, we issued our consolidated 2019 earnings guidance range of $2.17 to $2.31 per share. A walk from the midpoint of the 2018 non-GAAP temperature-normalized EPS range to the midpoint of the 2019 earnings guidance range is shown on Slide 7. The key drivers of the 6% growth in EPS are related to investments in our core utility business, including WPL's West Riverside Energy Center and IPL's wind expansion program. These investments were reflected in WPL's approved electric rates for 2019 and will be reflected in IPL's interim rates, following our anticipated retail electric rate filing early next year. We are forecasting IPL's interim electric base…

[Operator Instructions]. We will take our first question from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

So a few different things. First, just in terms of equity needs to correspond with the latest capital plan, wanted to come back to potential equity layer thickness. Obviously, you've got a 51% success in Iowa gas. If you had a similar equity layer at Iowa electric, can you quantify the equity injection needed and kind of how you think about the total quantity of equity needed across the new capital plan and any layer changes?

Yes. So Julien, yes, right now, as you indicated, we've got a settlement agreement for the gas portion of the business in Iowa that we're awaiting the Iowa Utility Board decision on. We're pretty optimistic that they'll approve that settlement given it's a unanimous settlement. And in that, it had a 51% common equity layer. We will be pursuing a similar layer for common equity with the IPL electric case, which will be filed most likely sometime in the first quarter of 2019. And we'll likely get a decision, hopefully, by the end of 2019 or early 2020. As far as the amount of additional equity needed to finance that, if we raised the common equity ratio by a couple hundred basis points, it's probably close to $50 million of additional equity that we'll need to be able to finance that.

Got it. Excellent. And then turning to the '19 guide, can you talk a little bit more about the corporate and other segment? I'm just curious what's moved around there because obviously you have other businesses that contribute earnings historically to that. So is it a shift there or is it just cost? I'm curious.

There's probably two primary drivers. I think what you're looking at is the revised guidance for 2018 is pretty flat as far as earnings for that business unit whereas the guidance that we put in the earnings release is, I think, a $0.06 to $0.08 loss range. Really, probably 2 primary things I'd point out there. One is additional interest expense. As a reminder, we went through and refinanced several different debt issuances on our nonutility side of the business in 2018 and that is going to require additional interest expense in 2019 once we get the full year impact of that. And then we also saw some additional tax benefits in the first quarter of 2018 related to our Great Western wind project that we won't see in 2019. But generally speaking, all the other businesses are performing as expected and pretty consistent with 2018.

Got it. Excellent. And then final one here just on the renewable project and the pushout of cap -- or maybe not pushout, but the reduction in 2019 for renewables. Can you elaborate a little bit more in that change? I mean, it seems like the bulk of it was tied to who's responsible for transmission interconnection and upgrade costs. Can you elaborate? Is it more of a policy? Was that more discrete-specific projects that you're working on? Any commentary?

Yes. Of that amount that's in 2019, I think roughly $60 million of it was related to the fact that we've reduced our capital expenditure plans for the belief that the transmission providers will now be able to fund that on their own. That was based on the FERC decision that came out in the third quarter and so that's why we revised the capital expenditure guidance. The vast majority though of the rest of the difference there is just moving the dollars around between years just based on finalizing the expected timing of the in-service dates for the various different wind projects. As John indicated in his presentation, we've got about 470 megawatts that we're expecting to get into service in the first quarter of 2019 and the remaining 530 megawatts for Iowa sometime in the 2020 time frame, so just finalizing those timing moved around the CapEx dollars a little bit.

[Operator Instructions]. We will now take our next question from Andrew Wiesel from Scotia Howard Weil.

First, I wanted to ask if you can elaborate a little bit on the IPL rate case in 2019? You indicated in your regulatory slide that it will be both historical test year and one or more future forecasted test periods. What might that look like? Will it be sort of one combined hybrid filing? Could it be 2 or more simultaneous filings? And what -- which expenses might be included in those forecasted periods?

Yes. So right now, the plan would be to file a test year 2018 historical filing with all of the rate base additions up through the end of the first quarter and that would incur or include all of the rate base additions for really the first half of the wind expansion programs, so think of that as the 470 megawatts of wind projects that we're expecting to put into service in the first quarter of 2019. Concurrently with that filing, we would filing -- be filing a forward-looking test period of either 1 or 2 years. It will either include 2020 and/or 2021. And that second one would likely include the 530 megawatts of wind projects that we're proposing to put into service in 2020. Those are, by far, the biggest drivers for the 2 portions of the cases there, but think of those as probably being filed concurrently. We're still finalizing some of the rules as it relates to the forward-looking test periods in Iowa, given that's just a recent legislative change that happened in May. But that's, generally speaking, what we're planning right now.

Okay. Then, on the equity, I know you haven't gotten specific on needs in 2020 and beyond, but given what you talked about with the higher CapEx level as well as your answer to the last question about equity ratios, qualitatively, should we think of it as being similar to the '19 or somewhere lower than that, given the drop-off in CapEx? Just sort of directionally, any related thoughts?

Yes. We have not indicated any information as far as the 2020 equity layers. We'll most likely have better information for you sometime towards the end of 2019. Really, your observations are correct. We are seeing additional capital expenditures in 2020 based on the latest CapEx update, but we are also targeting a higher equity layer in IPL that's going to require some additional equity. We also have the Duane Arnold PPA buyout that we're expecting to get a decision on soon that would require us to fund about $110 million of a payout in late 2020 that would drive some of our equity needs in 2020. So those are all the key factors that we'll make a decision on most likely sometime in the second half of 2019 and share that with you guys at that time.

Okay. Good. Then, on the distribution CapEx, some nice increases for both businesses. Can you describe a little bit more what drove those positive increases, particularly in 2020?

Yes, sure. I'll take that, Andrew. We're actually looking at really cost-effective ways to serve customers better. And as you put more automation on our systems, underground systems and actually standardize voltages, we're just finding out that these are really good economic investments to serve customers. So as we evaluate other alternatives for the distribution system, we'll be adjusting the CapEx as well, but we've got a really good plan right now and still really confident going forward accelerating some of the investments.

Okay. Sounds good. Then one last one. I realize I'm asking a bunch here, but any latest thoughts on the latest FERC decisions on allowed transmission ROEs and adders and can you remind us your sensitivity to the ROEs there?

Yes. I'll take that one, Andrew. Just as to thinking about this from two perspectives, one is from a customer cost perspective. Obviously, the transmission service costs are part of the billings that we make to our customers in both jurisdictions. The independents adder recent reduction from ITC based on the FERC decision will help our customer billings in Iowa. But then the other side of it is the earnings impact from our ATC investment. Right now, we've got built into our models a base ROE of 9.7% with a 50 basis point adder at ATC for 2019's earnings. As a reminder, it's not a significant impact on our earnings profile for 2019. So I wouldn't expect that to have a real material impact unless there's something significantly different from that, but generally speaking, it's right around 10.2% is what we've got built into the forecast.

And Andrew, the reason that we challenged the independents adder was that our transmission provider in Iowa we don't consider independent anymore now that they have a new owner. So that's why we went through that process to have FERC decide that, which they did relatively quickly.

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