Good day, and welcome to the NorthWestern Corporation First Quarter 2015 Financial Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Travis Meyer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Anna. Good afternoon and thank you for joining NorthWestern Corporation’s financial results conference call and webcast for the quarter ended March 31, 2015. NorthWestern’s results have been released and the release is available on our website at www.northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10-Q pre-market this morning. Presenting today are Bob Rowe, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Brian Bird, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and we also we have several different executives of management around the table with us today as well. Before I turn the call over for us to begin, please note that the Company’s press release, this presentation, comments by presenters and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. As such, I will remind you of our Safe Harbor language. During the course of this presentation, there will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance and often contain words such as expects, anticipates, intends, plans, believes, seeks or will. The information in this presentation is based upon our current expectations as of this date hereof unless otherwise noted. Our actual future business and financial performance may differ materially and adversely from our expectations expressed in any forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to revise or publicly update our forward-looking statements or this presentation for any reason. Although our expectations and beliefs are based on reasonable assumptions, actual results may differ materially. The factors that may affect our results are listed in certain of our press releases and disclosed in the Company’s Form 10-K and 10-Q along with other public filings with the SEC. Following our presentation, those who are joining us by teleconference will be able to ask questions. The archived replay of today’s webcast will be available beginning at 6:00 PM Eastern Time today and can be found on our website at northwesternenergy.com under the Our Company, Investor Relations, Presentations and Webcasts link. To access the audio replay of the call, please dial (888)-203-1112, then access code 3190257.. I’ll now turn it over to our President and CEO, Bob Rowe.

Good afternoon and thank you very much for joining us just by way of introduction a couple of comments of course, this was our board meeting and annual meeting and we’re meeting at our operation center in Huron, South Dakota which is the hub of our electric and natural gas operations in South Dakota and Nebraska. As we always do, we had a community event visit with civic leaders and customers a couple of nights ago, a memorable part of that was recognizing former NorthWestern Public Service CEO, [Hall Smith], who recently passed away. Mr. Smith had been the CEO of a very strong successful regional utility, our predecessor for 25 years, had a lot get together to remember and his family members were with us. Secondly, this is the meeting where our annual leadership NorthWestern Class spends time with the executives, with the board of directors, they attended the annual meeting today. This is a key program in developing the future leaders all across the company and in all different occupations within the company, it’s always great when they join us. Third, we’re joining you for the middle of our South Dakota operations, several days ago we had a meeting of our regional economic development group that we sponsored again in South Dakota and I believe all those meetings really impressed with the vitality of the economy in our region and to the communities that we’ve served and the commitment of the business and civic leaders to really do the right thing in the region and we’re delighted to be able to work with them to build a stronger economy in communities. Turning to significant activities we did have a very successful first quarter owning and operating, the integrated hydro system really in Montana that is now dedicated to…

Thanks Bob. Good afternoon folks. On page 5, I’ll kick off the financial results discussions. Page 5 shows the summary results for the first quarter 2015 versus 2014 and hence I’ll get into more detail on various parts of the P&L, I’ll take you right down to income before taxes. On a pre-tax basis we’ve $61.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2015 that’s a $7.8 million increase year-over-year about 15%. Net income was $51.4 million, a $5.8 million increase that’s a 15% increase, but on a diluted earnings per share set on a GAAP basis we did finish the quarter a $1.09 versus a $1.17 from the prior year an $0.08 reduction or 7%. I’ll get into more details in terms of what drove that differential and talk a little bit about on a going forward basis our expectations on EPS. Moving to page 6 on gross margin it’s a pretty simple story. Electrics up $39.2 million nearly 30%, gas was down nearly $8 million or down 11% for a gross total gross margin increase of $31.3 million up nearly 16%. Really two things are driving the quarter obviously the introduction of hydro operations on a year-over-year basis improved gross margin $42.1 million, but the extremely mild weather conditions in our service territories had a huge impact retailable gas and electric retail volumes you see those listed there combined a $11.3 million impact on a negative basis versus our gross margin. Of that $11.3 million we deemed $10.5 million of that attributed to weather and I’ll talk about that in a moment. Other thing I’d like to point out on this slide, even though gas today represents 20% of our business, electric side of our business is approximately 80%, you can see what a mild first quarter…

Speaking of South Dakota rate case, as you know we did file in December this is the first requested adjustment in electric base rates in 34 years and that's really an extraordinary accomplishment for our customers and I would say that demonstrates the real value of owned generation assets and the iterated system. You see the couple of key parts of the story first in the upper left on that page the flat fixed charge in energy portion of the bill over decade and then the adjustments made for crack related portion of the bill such as fuel and transmission. Lower left you will see that the story in both nominal and real numbers and our South Dakota customers have enjoyed really an impressive decrease in real cost over that time. As you know question of what is driving this filing at this time, 96% is associated with small number of really non-discretionary projects in particular the big stone and deal projects which were driven by compliance with federal environmental regulations as well as the South Dakota state implementation plan that’s over $15 million. The [indiscernible] in service sometime were over $7 million almost $7.5 million and then the – that we are building right now and all other it is barely over a $1 million so that's pretty of the story of what is driving the rate increase request entailed in December we have the ability to issue to implement interim rates in July and the commission has one year to act on the filing. Other key activities going back to hydro, we now do own and operate for our customers the integrated Montana hydroelectric system with facilities in two basins we have seen the benefits of that this year the facilities are now in the center [indiscernible] the…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Daniel Eggers with Credit Suisse.

Hi, good afternoon guys. Please start off maybe a little bit of South Dakota case and you filed in December, can you just give a little sense of what’s coming up so far in the case and where you are getting your potential push back or friction given the size of the rate increase?

Sure. No surprises yet. What’s interesting is that South Dakota commission typically and first of all as we discussed in a lot of experience processing cases like this for all of the other utilities that serve South Dakota including the other based on our owners. Our past experience has been that the South Dakota commission has been able to very efficiently process cases. In this case we are in the kind of queue behind several other significant rate cases as well and when we knew that at the time we filed. So at this time there has not been a procedural order issued. There has been request for intervention from some of our larger customers that is absolutely what you would expect and there has been a petition which is the part in South Dakota part of the process you can gather petitions signature requesting a global hearing. That occurred in Yankton and actually we really appreciated that. The commission has set a hearing down the road just actually just been few weeks what we did was go out and invite all the petitions signers plus other local citizens to our community meeting this last week in Yankton and later everything out talked to them about their questions and concerns we will be doing that voluntarily. We’ve let the South Dakota commission know what we were doing. They think it’s a great idea. So we will be holding on our own community meetings around our service territory. Meeting in Yankton really good, real concerned about in fact on low income customers folks on fixed incomes in particular and we shared that concern. So we had a good discussion there with some gentle customers, public sector and commercial like and again under the process we have the ability to implement an interim rate in July. Certainly we expect before then – well before then we would hope there would be a procedural schedule when we get into discoveries and those are probably the next foremost steps.

If you got to procedural schedules in the next month or so is there enough time realistically to go into the process in South Dakota at this time by December or we are going to be you are tied on time depending on when the schedule comes?

Based on the South Dakota commission performance we are very comfortable that we will receive an order within the time line, we do have the ability in the 12 months to implement the rates as requested, but I cannot ask variance in South Dakota is that they will manage the process and get to a result within the time alone.

Okay and then on the gas reserve comments, are you suggesting that you are getting closer to you are finding a proposal but the commission is happy within the gas price environment or you are talking about in the sense of you identified some properties who would make sense to buy?

I’m not going to answer to the specific question. So that’s why no comment but what I will say two things previously we discussed how we work, how the curve was essential flat and under the situation that we had in place. There are lot of – there was a clear win for customers with acquisitions of that low price, but because of the flat curve that would not have been in compliance with the stipulation. At this point the curve has more of a normalized [indiscernible] contago shape. So, we are comfortable about these and as I said probably more times in the yield. Clearly we have been kicking tires and we are certainly furiously kicking.

Are you discovering the recent activity among the owners of the reserves to perceptively sell right now. And am I guess given the low commodity price environment that’s sort of thing. Our indication was some other people were having harder time buying reserves in this price environment?

That’s a great observation I think we discussed that probably on the last call where it is certainly still some truths to that but I do believe there are opportunities out there.

Okay, very good. Thank you guys.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now move to Paul Ridzon with KeyBanc.

Good afternoon.

Hey Paul.

Can you kind of talk about the hydro condition you are seeing here in and we have heard something about snow pack pretty weak, I know you have got a fewer pass through in Montana but what are the implications for curve?

Actually John Hines has this figure on that Paul, he is our Supply Vice President he can speak specifically to curve. We are actively monitoring that over the year. What I would say is some of the hydro conditions, first of all we are seeing the benefit of the diversity on the system being in two basins and snow pack is actually again we talked about we had much warmer temperatures in the most of you’ve enjoyed over the last few months, but it seems like perhaps most of the snow that fall in the western United States has fallen in South Western Montana.

Okay. Just a couple of points to augment Bob’s statements. For Q1 our actual hydro output was around 20% higher than what we budgeted. We are expecting, assuming the average weather for Q2 it will be approximately equal to budget and Q3 given the volatility in weather it’s unsure where we will end up with that. Regarding current we are expecting to see as Bob noted western Montana received better snow pack than normal and we expect to exceed the commissions cost benefit analysis by a substantial amount.

Great. Great. Thank you for your update.

And we will now take the question from Brian Russo with Ladenburg.

Good afternoon. You mentioned exploring the gas reserve opportunities in South Dakota and Nebraska could you quantify the amount in terms of the dollar amount or size of the potential opportunities?

First clarification would be not opportunities in South Dakota and Nebraska but opportunities to acquire gas dedicated to serve South Dakota and Nebraska but transfer will be a piece of that. This is we did in Montana we would likely start very small and spend time with the South Dakota and Nebraska commissioner explaining the strategy we have discussed particularly in south Dakota we have discussed it with the commission there previously and I think they are interested in the possibilities.

And on interim rates that you expect to file in July in South Dakota I mean would the interim rates be comparable to the revenue request or would it be a fraction of that?

Likely we would file interim rates consistent with the request.

Okay and any update on the Montana general rate case strategy?

No. as you know we evaluate that on an annual basis and we will be doing that again in anticipation of next year.

Okay and I am sorry if I missed this, what was the EPS impact from delusion in this first quarter?

$0.20 for the first quarter Brian. We show on our full year $0.61 to $0.63 is my recollection much like what I discussed earlier but how the quarters play out I would expect $0.20 in the first quarter, $0.20 in the fourth quarter and the remaining $0.20 to be split between the second the third quarters.

Got it. Thank you very much.

On numbers

[Operator Instructions] we will now move to Brian Shin with Merrill Lynch.

Good afternoon.

Hi Brian.

Just on the reaffirmation of the 2015 guidance clearly you guys still see a lot of constructive developments in the remainder of the year just given how the abnormal weather for first quarter played out should we be thinking about all things being equal that we should look at the guidance sort of the bottom half of the 2015 guidance or is that not the right way to think about things.

That's right. That's a good question Brian but I we don't give guidance on our guidance if you will. We are reaffirming our guidance at the range of 310 to 330.

Fair enough. That was worth a shot, thanks lot you guys.

Thanks Brian.

[Operator Instructions] we will now move to Chris Ellinghaus with William Capital.

Hey guys how are you?

Hey Chris.

Brian you were talking at one point something about 10.5 million and $0.14 and I didn't catch what you were talking about there?

Yes, what I was talking about is one way to do it unfortunately the slide might not have been in front of your screen but if you looked at page 13 back to that adjusted earning slide, if you took a look at the revenue in the 2015 we had $7.1 million difference between unfavorable weather versus normal in 2015 and last year we had a $3.4 million favorable weather. You add those two numbers together you get $10.5 million and so on a year-over-year basis 2015 versus 2014 its $10.5 million and as I talked about on the slide that shows the weather patterns that $10.5 million equated to $0.14 is our calculation.

Okay. And in a normal I know you were giving the illustrative example about the hydro on one of the yes, on page 14 I guess given the weather does that have any impact at all on how hydro performed in any way?

It did. It did not necessarily how it performed I think John was talking about how snow pack would impact the flow that hydrology has more of an impact than the temperature if you will but we think, I would say the weather in general had impact on volume metrics and that has an impact of course on hydro performance.

Sure. Alright, thanks guys. I appreciate that.

Thank you Chris.

And at this time there are no further questions.

No further questions, well again thank you for your interest and support over the quarter I know we’ll be seeing couple of you over the coming weeks and months and we will talk to hopefully all of you next quarter.

Thanks everybody.

And once again that does conclude today’s conference and we thank you all for your participation.