Thank you all for standing by for today’s conference. Your lines have been placed in listen-only mode until the question-and-answer portion of today’s conference. (Operator Instruction) Now, I’d like to turn today’s conference over to Mr. Brian Dunham. Thank you sir. You may begin.

Thank you, Sarah. Welcome to Northwest Pipe’s conference call and the announcement of earnings for the first quarter of 2009. My name is Brian Dunham; I’m the President and CEO of the Company. I am joined by Stephanie Welty, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that the statements we make in this call about our expectations for the future are forward-looking statements, and actual results could differ materially. Please refer to our most recent filing with the SEC for a discussion of risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Stephanie will now address the quarterly results.

Thank you Brian. First quarter revenues were $81.4 million compared to $94 million in the first quarter of 2008. Net income for the first quarter of 2009 was $2.6 million, while net income for the first quarter of 2008 was $5.0 million. This translates to $0.28 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2009 versus $0.54 in the first quarter of 2008. Moving on to quarterly results for the business group, Water Transmission revenue was $58.9 million in the first quarter of ‘09 compared to $63.9 million in the first quarter of ‘08. Gross profit was $11.3 million or 19.2% of revenue compared to $14.5 million or 22.6% of revenue last year in the first quarter. First quarter results in the Water Transmission group were affected by the installation of the new mill in California, weather and some unevenness in our backlog that resulted in limited production schedules in some plants. Tubular Products sales were $22.5 million in the first quarter of ’09, compared to $30.1 million in the first quarter of 2008. As expected with our volume and price decreases caused by termination of recession driven reduced demand and the impact of lower steel costs. Gross profit for Tubular Products was $1.4 million, or 6.4% of revenue compared to $3.3 million or 11.1% of revenue in the first quarter of ‘08. Gross profit in the first quarter of ‘09 was affected by sales of higher priced inventory into the market characterized by falling prices. Selling, general and administrative costs were $7.2 million in the first quarter of 2009. This is down $700,000 from the first quarter of ‘08 and down $1.7 million from the fourth quarter of ‘08. This number reflects significant reductions in variable compensation cost, outside service charges, sales commissions and travels along with the effective…

Thank you. Last quarter, we discussed the recession, the financial crisis, the changing cost of steel and finally the stimulus plan and how each of these may affect our businesses. I would like to talk through our expectations at that time, how that situation has sense develop and our current expectations for the future. As of the end of 2008, our backlog was approximately $190 million. Backlog at the end of the first quarter grew to roughly $205 million. As expected we saw Water Transmission backlog increase and Tubular Products backlog decline. The recession has had a significant negative impact on our Tubular Products business. As the recession hit, late in Q3 and early in Q4 one of the consequences was the decline in gas drilling activity and a related decline in order activity for our energy product. Throughout the fourth quarter, however we continue to supply our customers with pipe they had previously ordered in this market. This drove strong results in Q4 even as demand declined precipitously. In the first quarter of 2009, we shift the significant portion of our remaining backlog, but demand remained very weak. New bookings in this product line are virtually zero today. Other key drivers for our Tubular Products Group include highway spending, non-residential construction and agricultural spending. Last quarter, we discussed our exception and the demand in all of these areas would be down in this recessionary environment, at least through the first half of 2009. As the quarter developed we saw a magnified effect, because our customers, primarily distributors were reducing their own stocks. We are recently seeing some reversal in this trend although demand for our Tubular Products is still lower than last year. Our view of the impact of the financial crisis on our Tubular Product’s business has not…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ryan Connors - Boenning & Scattergood. Ryan Connors - Boenning & Scattergood: I just wanted to talk a little bit about the backlog. Just anecdotally it seems like your announcement of major contracts has slowed over the last couple of months. I know normally you would announce contracts I think, Brian in excess of $5 million, and so the fact that there haven’t been a whole lot of those and yet the backlog increased anyway. I guess that suggests that these are mostly smaller contracts entering the backlog. So I wonder if you could just talk about whether that is in fact the case and if so how that impacts your business in terms of profitability etc. and what it says about the state of the market in general.

Well, I really don’t think there is a lot to conclude from that. Obviously it’s a project oriented business and projects are uneven, which is one of the challenges we have. We have a huge proportion of our projects that are less than $5 million. It’s still relatively rare to have those larger than that. I think our average project size Ryan, is about $1.5 million at this point. So there is enough lot of projects anyway that are under $5 million and it just happens that as the proponents of the work that was booked in the first quarter. Ryan Connors - Boenning & Scattergood: Okay. So in terms of the mix of projects, there is nothing to conclude there that there is going to be a shift toward the next couple of quarters, towards smaller projects given that few of these large ones seems to be coming through?

No, I don’t think so, and in some cases as well it’s important to understand that just because we don’t have large projects, doesn’t mean that there aren’t large projects being done. The agencies often break large project up into smaller pieces. So they might have a $20 million project, they might break it into four different sections. Ryan Connors - Boenning & Scattergood: Then Stephanie, at the outset there you mentioned the California plant coming online as being an impact on the Water Transmission result. Is there any way you can roughly quantify that for us?

That would be very difficult. I would say that it came online mid quarter.

It is our largest plant and so destruction and production there is obviously more of an impact than any other facility, and it was out for about half a quarter. Ryan Connors - Boenning & Scattergood: Okay. Well, your prepared remarks were detailed, so that’s all I have. Thanks again.

Our next question comes from Brendan Watkins - D.A. Davidson.

I have a few quick questions, I was wondering if your Tubular Products segment. You said you can work through your inventory kind of fact and I was wondering if there is still some higher cost inventory in there that’s kind of overhanging on margins. I was trying to get an idea of what it would take for you guys to get back to double digit gross margin in that segment?

There certainly still is higher cost inventory hanging around and probably because steel prices have continued to decline. So, there is still obviously an inventory lag and as prices continue to decline, you are going to have higher cost inventory. So, as we see that settle down we will work through that relatively quickly, but we are not through it, yet.

Okay, excellent. Then next about your backlogs, in your commentary you guys said you expected to be higher in Q2 and I’m assuming you meant sequentially, but I just wanted to double check that.

That’s correct.

Then last question, you guys talked about paying down debt, the lower interest rates have lowered your interest expense. It sounds like we can expect going forward about the $1.2 million, $1.3 million a quarter is that fair? And then kind of paying off that is your kind of priority in allocation of capital continues paying down some debt or the acquisitions are potential build out. Is that more of your priority in your allocation of capital?

Well, our priority on capital. We always want to reduce costs where we can, so we’ll pay down where that makes sense, but again certainly if there were an accretive opportunity we certainly would take on more debt. We’ve got a lot of capacity available. So, it really depends upon the circumstances that present themselves. Remind me the first part of that question.

Just with the interest rates coming down and lowering your debt level, sequentially I guess I’m just curious if we can expect that kind of run rate s $1.2 million, $1.3 million a quarter on interest expense?

That’s probably a good expectation borrowing as a significant event such as a steep increase in steel cost, because that would drive working capital up, could drive that up and of course in acquisition, but all other things being equal that would be a reasonable expectation. We do expect interest rates to come up at some point, but probably not in the near term.

(Operator Instruction). Your last question comes from Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Company Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Co.: Just a couple of quick housekeeping items here. You said CapEx in that quarter was about 4.5, is the run rate supposed to still be around $10 million to $12 million?

Yes, outside of what we are doing with Bossier City. Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Company: Okay and D&A in the quarter?

I’m sorry. Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Company: Depreciation?

Depreciation that was 1.2 Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Company: Then we can still look for a tax rate at these current levels 38.3%, 38% something like that?

In that territory. We execute a little bit when the earnings come down due to the relative significance of the discrete items. Sharad Patel - Jeffery’s & Company: Then moving on to just one last piece here, as we look at the Water Transmission business last quarter you had commented that there was a $100 million in postponed bidding activity in the fourth quarter that you expected to happen within the next six months. Can you give us a feel for what do you see with that currently? Is that still next six months, have you seen some of that activity start to pickup in the first quarter?

Yes, I think we are expecting pretty strong in the second quarter. Our first quarter wasn’t too bad obviously and a strong second quarter as well.

I’m showing no further questions from the phone line.

If there are no further questions, then this will be the end of the conference call for the first quarter of 2009. Thank you for your interest in Northwest Pipe. Good bye.

This does conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect at this time. Again, thank you for your participation.