David Goodwin - President and Chief Executive Officer Jason Vollmer - Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer

Hello, my name is Shelby, and I'll be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the MDU Resources Group 2017 Third Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This call will be available for replay beginning at 5 PM Eastern Time today through 11:59 PM Eastern Time on November 16. The conference ID number for the replay is 88177171. The number to dial for the replay is 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406. I would now like to turn the call over to Jason Vollmer, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer of MDU Resources Group. Thank you. Mr. Vollmer, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Shelby. Welcome to our third quarter earnings release conference call. This conference call is being broadcast live to the public over the Internet, and slides will accompany our remarks. If you'd like to view the slides, please go to our website at www.mdu.com and follow the link to the conference call. Our earnings release is also available on our website. During the course of this presentation, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although the company believes that its expectations and beliefs are based on reasonable assumptions, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of factors that may cause actual results to differ, please refer to Item 1A, Risk Factors, in our most recent Form 10-K. For our call today, I will discuss the key financial highlights for the quarter, and then turn the presentation over to Dave Goodin, President and CEO of MDU Resources, for his formal remarks. Members of our management team who will be available to answer questions during the Q&A session today are: Dave Barney, President and CEO of Knife River Corporation; Jeff Thiede, President and CEO of MDU Construction Services Group; Nicole Kivisto, President and CEO of Cascade Natural Gas, Great Plains Natural Gas, Intermountain Gas and Montana-Dakota Utilities; Trevor Hastings, President and CEO of WBI Energy; and Stephanie Barth, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller for MDU Resources. Yesterday, we announced third quarter earnings of $89.6 million or $0.46 per common share from our continuing operations compared to $88.2 million or $0.45 per share in the third quarter of 2016. Our combined utility business reported $4.8 million for the quarter, up from $200,000 for the comparable quarter in 2016. Our electric utility segment reported earnings of $15.7 million,…

Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your interest in MDU Resources and for taking time to join us today to discuss our third quarter results. We released third quarter 2017 earnings yesterday after the market closed. We had a solid third quarter and reported a $0.01 increase in earnings per share from our continuing operations compared to 2016. Our third quarter results continue to show the strength of our two-platform business model as higher earnings at the utility and construction services businesses helped to offset the impacts of a shortened construction season at our construction materials business. Third quarter highlights for our utility companies include significantly higher earnings year-over-year due to implemented rate relief, higher electric and natural gas sales volumes as well as conservation adjustments and weather normalization. Our utility continues to seek regulatory recovery for costs associated with upgrading and expanding our facilities, so we can safely meet our growing customer demand. In the third quarter, our natural gas utility filed rate proceedings in Montana, North Dakota and Washington. On a combined basis, in January 1, our utility has received and implemented final rate increases totaling $37.3 million in revenue. In addition to these finalized rates, the utility has $15.4 million of rate relief in pending cases. Looking ahead, the utility expects its 1.1 million customer base to continue to grow by 1% to 2% annually. The natural gas utility will continue to focus on pipeline projects to enhance system reliability, safety as well as deliverability. The electric utility plans to finish construction in 2019 on our 160-mile FERC regulated 345 kv transmission line from Ellendale, North Dakota to Big Stone City, South Dakota. The electric utility is filed in 2017, our North Dakota Electric Integrated Resource Plan and its 2017 Montana IRP as…

[Operator Instructions] This call will be available for replay beginning at 5 PM Eastern Time today through 11:59 PM Eastern Time on November 16. The conference ID number for the replay is 88177171. And at this time, we have no questions in queue. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks. : :

Thank you, Shelby. And as I said earlier, our continuing operations delivered strong results for the third quarter of 2017. At MDU Resources, we're committed to building a strong America and are optimistic about our opportunities for the rest of this year as well as beyond. We appreciate your participation on the call today, and thank you for your continued interest in MDU Resources. Shelby?

This concludes today's MDU Resources Group conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.