Hello. My name is Sheryl, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the MDU Resources Group 2019 Year-End Earnings Results and 2020 Guidance Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. [Operator Instructions] This call will be available for replay beginning at 5:00 P.M. Eastern today through 11:59 P.M. Eastern on February 19, 2020. The conference ID number for the replay is 7173266. Again, the conference ID number for the replay is 7173266. The number you dial for the replay is 1-855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406. I would now like to turn the conference 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, Sheryl, and welcome to our conference call covering our 2019 earnings results and 2020 guidance. This conference call is being broadcast live to the public over the Internet and slides will accompany our remarks. If you would like to view the slides, please go to our Web site at www.mdu.com and go to the Events and Presentations page under the Investors Tab. Our earnings release is also available on our Web site. During the 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 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 and then turn the presentation over to Dave Goodin, President and CEO of MDU Resources Group for his formal remarks. After Dave's remarks, we will open the line for questions. In addition to Dave and myself, members of our management team who will be available to answer questions 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 of MDU Resources. Yesterday, we announced 2019 earnings of $335.5 million or $1.69 per share compared to 2018 earnings of $272.3 million or $1.39 per share. This is an increase of 23% year-over-year. In the fourth quarter, earnings were $95.1 million or $0.47 per share…

Thank you, Jason, and good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'm happy to report that our performance in 2019 was again at record levels in a number of areas. As we look to 2020, I am pleased with the opportunities in front of us to continue to execute on our growth strategy, with a focus on growing both organically and through strategic acquisitions. Before I dive into the details of 2019, I do want to extend a heartfelt thank you to the employees of our MDU Resources companies for another great year. Their commitment to our customers, communities, and shareholders, all while operating safely and with integrity is allowing us to provide exceptional operating results as we continue building a strong America. Together, we reported 2019 earnings of $1.69 per share compared to 2018, where we reported earnings of $1.39 per share. We're very proud of our record of consistently rewarding our shareholders with a growing dividend, while investing in our businesses to find growth opportunities across all business lines. At our utility companies were reported record earnings for 2019, driven by a nearly 10% increase in natural gas sales volumes and implemented rate relief. Throughout the year, the utility completed several organic growth projects. Natural gas service was brought to Gwinner, North Dakota, and the Big Stone South to Ellendale Transmission line was brought into service. Rate cases were filed in several states and utility was able to finalize and implement new rates in two of them. Looking at 2020, the company currently has two pending rate cases and anticipates filing additional rate requests throughout the year. On Monday of this week, a natural gas case in the state of Washington was approved with a 2.8% increase in Cascade's annual revenues, with new rates…

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from Chris Ellinghaus of Siebert Williams. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, how are you?

Hey, Chris, doing well, how are you doing?

I'm doing great, especially when you come out with the earnings like this.

Yes. Thank you, Chris.

The PerLectric acquisition, that's kind of unusual being on the East Coast, does that tell us anything about your plans, or was that just a one–off kind of get lucky?

Yes, Chris, I'll start, but then I'm going to hand this over to Jeff, who really led that acquisition. Keep in mind we already operate our construction services in some 43 or so different states already. So, we have nearly a nationwide footprint, but certainly the Mid-Atlantic were PerLectrics located is a nice addition, if you will, from a geography, and I'll have Jeff just maybe touch on the acquisition a little bit because we find it to be significant.

Thank you, Dave. Yes, PerLectric's office is less than 600 miles from another -- one of our CSG offices, ESI, in Ohio. We think they're a great fit, and we're involved in national contractor associations, and we look to find companies that have high-integrity, a really good sound management team, and excellent field people. And we found that with PerLectric, and it's not a one-off, and we'll continue to look for companies that are a fit for CSG in the Continental United States.

Well, I have you, Jeff. Do you know in your backlog sort of what proportion is Vegas right now?

If you take a look at our Vegas backlog, not getting into specifics, you take a look at Vegas or Southwest or West, in our Midwest, our backlog has broken up into thirds. So, that's a good demonstration of our diversification and balance within our operations across the country.

And it also seems like maybe the [Drew] [ph] is gaining some traction lately, and you've expressed some reservations about having capacity to maybe work on the [Drew] [ph], what do you know about the timetable there, and does it fit for you guys at all at this point?

Yes, some of our backlog burns off and that project is being pushed out. We think that we will have a part in that project, but it's confidential, and we are involved as one of the partners in that project.

Okay, great. Also, Trevor, can you give us an update on other than David said about you'll be filing their permits, and just give us a little bit of update on the North Bakken expansion and what you're seeing there?

Sure, Chris. As Dave mentioned in his opening remarks, we've increased the overall design of that project now to 350,000 Mcf a day. We have been working through the NEPA pre-filing process. We work with all stakeholders. We're in the final stages of finishing up our draft application, which we expect to file with FERC in a couple of weeks.

Okay, thanks guys, appreciate the color.

Yes, you bet. Thank you, Chris.

Your next question comes from Andrew Levi of ExodusPoint. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon guys.

Hi. Good afternoon, Andy. How are you?

I'm great, solid [technical difficulty] just a very quick question on the upper-end of the range for '20, just describe to us kind of [technical difficulty]?

Yes, I mean we provided the range, Andy, between 165 and 185, and in that range guidance, you know, we noted some factors there, normal weather, normal precipitation, normal ability to get out in the springtime with our construction activities, what we normally might expect from a fall, when the snow hits our Northern Tier areas. And so, weather would have an impact on that, certainly favorable weather, we get out early, we're sitting on 1.8 billion in backlog currently in construction, so clearly there's quite a bit of work kind of ready to go for this year. So, important for us will be how early we can get out. I would say those would be some key factors. Again, we don't -- haven't baked in any acquisition activity as part of that range as well, and so, acquisition activity could be incremental to that, but again, we will update the earnings guidance as we go throughout the year as we've done in prior years as well, but -- so those would be some of the factors I would look at.

January, weather -- [technical difficulty]

Yes, I mean it's a tale of two cities. I mean our utility business obviously does with natural gas sales, almost a million customers relies on January weather, they were normalized in, or have more fixed bill rates in six of our eight states, and so there's some normalization effect there, and with our Northern Tier exposure on the construction side, most of our ready-mix trucks are all parked from Minnesota through the Dakotas and to Montana, Wyoming, and into Idaho. So, I think it's early to tell so far, as it's early start to the year, we're just one month into it, I wouldn't opine on the weather so far, it's pretty early.

Got it. Thank you very much.

You bet. Thanks for the questions, Andy.

.: At this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you, Sheryl. 2019 was a very strong year for our businesses, which we all executed well on and including our strategies. We are committed to building a strong America along with being optimistic about our opportunities for 2020 and beyond. We appreciate everybody's participation on the call today, and again, thank you for your continued interest in MDU Resources. With that, I'll turn this back to the Operator. Sheryl?

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