Good morning, and welcome to Otter Tail Corporation’s Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded and there will be a question-and-answer session after the prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the conference over to the company.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our call. My name is Loren Hanson, and I manage the Investor Relations area at Otter Tail. Last night, we announced our second quarter 2015 results. Our complete earnings release and slides accompanying this earnings call are available on our website at www.ottertail.com. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. With me on the call today are Chuck MacFarlane, Otter Tail Corporation’s President and CEO; and Kevin Moug, Otter Tail Corporation’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and include statements regarding Otter Tail Corporation’s future financial and operating results, or other statements that are not historical facts. Please be advised that actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements, due to certain risks and uncertainties, including those described in our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Otter Tail Corporation disclaims any duty to update or revise our forward-looking statements, as a result of new information, future events, developments or otherwise. For opening remarks, I will now turn the call over to Otter Tail Corporation’s President and CEO, Mr. Chuck MacFarlane. Chuck?

Thanks Loren. Good morning and thanks for joining our call. We have good news story this quarter a $0.36 per share earnings -- earnings per share from continuing operations were stronger than flat. Last quarter I predicted improvement in performance during the remaining quarters of the year and that's what we have begun to see. In addition to continued rate base cost recovery this quarter we were able to reduce operating expenses significantly. We saw 3 million quarter-over-quarter improvement in the electric segment net income and was less than 0.5 million decreases in the manufacturing segment which is tackling challenges in the oil and gas and agricultural equipment markets. And we saw an $800,000 increase in net income in the plastics segment. In addition corporate expenses were down. Last quarter we reported that we had completed the sale of our construction companies, our last step in our narrowing to just two Otter Tail Corporation platforms; electric and manufacturing. We are now concentrating on operational excellence, talent development and growth in these more focused set of companies. And our short-term results are encouraging. We expect that we will hit the top half of our guidance this year. Before Kevin addresses the financials in greater detail, allow me to provide second quarter highlights for each of our two platforms. I will start with a few items of utility. The CapX2020 transmission line from Alexandria, Minnesota to the substation west of Fargo, North Dakota was closed in for the first time on April 2nd. This completely energized the Fargo to St. Cloud project. Otter Tail has a 13% ownership share and $81 million investment in this 345 Kv regional transmission project. Tail Power and MDU signed project agreements for the Big Stone South to Ellendale project in June. The agreements cover all aspects…

Well, good morning. Slide 9 explains the quarterly variances on earnings per share basis. Our utility net earnings increased $3 million quarter-over-quarter. The main drivers of these changes are increased revenues from environmental cost recovery riders relating to our AQCS project at Big Stone and higher MISO transmission tariff revenue from increased investments in regional transmission lines. Both the AQCS and transmission investments are a part of our rate base growth strategy. Also contributing to the quarter-over-quarter earnings improvement were lower operating expenses, primarily due to lower plant maintenance costs incurred as part of the Big Stone shut down in the second quarter of 2015. These costs were less than the additional maintenance expense incurred with the spring outage of Otter Tail at Hoot Lake plant in the second quarter of 2014. Additional items affecting the quarter-over-quarter earnings are noted in the earnings release and slide 9 of the presentation. Manufacturing segment revenues decreased $2.1 million from continued softness in sales to customers in oil and gas and markets partially offset by stronger volumes in lawn and garden and markets and the sales of horticultural products. Revenue from scrap metal sales was down due to a 40% reduction in prices compared to second quarter 2014. Our net earnings for the manufacturing segment were lower by $400,000 between the quarters primarily due to the lower revenues. And BTD continues to make marked improvements in labor costs with a 119 fewer employees on a quarter-over-quarter basis. The majority of this reduction has been in the indirect labor area. Our plastics segment's net earnings increased $800,000 due to improved operating margins this was primarily due to an approximate 9% decrease in the cost per pound sold related to decreased material cost stemming from lower resin prices as compared to the same quarter a…

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from the line of Matt Tucker of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Hey good morning guys. Congrats on a nice quarter.

Thanks Matt.

Thank you.'

With respect to the intact guidance range and your expectation you are coming towards the upper end. Could you comment on which segments you see kind of driving the results towards the high end?

Sure as we look at it, the electric and plastics segments clearly based on the performance they have had not only in the second quarter but plastics for the first half of the year are in part the reasons what's driving that middle to upper half of the range Matt.

Got it. Thanks. Then on electric, it looks like weather has been a little bit of a headwind year-to-date. Could you comment on the weather normalized sales growth that you have seen so far this year and your expectations for that going forward?

Sure, it's Chuck. Year-to-date over normal we're about $0.02 behind on weather if you do year-to-date year-over-year it's approximately $0.07.

And then I guess do you have going forward an expectation of kind of the sales growth rate you would expect to see assuming normal weather?

We assume approximately three quarters of a percent plus any of the new pipeline low which comes on in blocks but we will ultimately move that number up between 1.5% and 2% for the year.

Great. Thanks. And then also at electric, any outsize O&M expenses planned outages or anything like that we should be thinking about in the second half?

Matt this is Kevin. We are pretty well through the kind of the maintenance phase of the Big Stone plant and there isn’t a further unusual expected maintenance cost in the forecast.

Great. Thanks. And then with respect to the investments at BTD, do you expect the benefits of that to start showing up much in the second half of the year or do you think that will become more of an impact in 2016?

Hey Matt it's Kevin again. From a paint perspective as Chuck mentioned in his comments we are starting to do some first articles of paint. In a number of cases it's about a 60 day process for a number of our customers to be kind of ready to look at the test of the paint that's coming out and say okay what's goes. So any benefit we expect from paint probably won't we see until starting in the fourth quarter, late third quarter, fourth quarter.

Great. Thanks guys. Congrats again. That's all I had.

Thanks.

Thanks.

[Operator Instructions]. And I am showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Chuck MacFarlane for further remarks.

Thanks, I'll summarize by saying that strong performance lead to a better than planned earnings for second quarter. Continued rate based cost recovery of utility, improving performance of BTD and good cost management throughout the corporation confirm our guidance. We want to thank all of our employees for their hard work and we want to thank you for joining the call and for your interest in Otter Tail Corporation. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Have a great day everyone.