Good morning and welcome to Otter Tail Corporation 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded and there will be a question-and-answer session after the prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to the Company for their opening remarks.

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 2015 results and issued 2016 guidance. 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'd 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?

Good morning and thanks for joining our call. During the last several years, Otter Tail Corporation has been moving toward a business model with two platforms and one common vision. Result is a focused manufacturing platform combined with a core utility platform. Our vision includes attention on growth, operational excellence, talent development. The electric platform continues to execute on a robust rate base expansion effort. Slide 5 shows our rate base expansion and a compound annual growth rate of 8%. This has been adjusted to account for the impacts the recent five-year extension to bonus depreciation and additional renewable and natural gas generation projects. During the 2016 to 2020 timeframe, Otter Tail Power plants to make $858 million capital investments. Slide 6 shows our regulatory framework, which continues to be constructive. As noted on the bottom of the slide, half of the projects are eligible for rider recovery while under construction. And the majority of the balance of the capital spend is at current depreciation levels effectively in existing base rates. Presence of our manufacturing and plastics companies continue to guide improvement in each of their businesses. And I'll discuss some of the examples in a moment. All of our operating companies focus on our long-term compound annual earnings per share growth goal of 4% to 7% as measured from 2013 earnings per share of $1.50. While we’re currently below this goal, we are confident we will be back in this range given our pipeline of rate base projects and our effort to return our companies to historic return on sales levels when the current down cycle manufacturing segment improves. Otter Tail Corporation ended 2015 with earnings per share of $1.56 from continuing operations, a return on equity of 10% and a dividend yield of 4.6%. We accomplished this by…

Good morning. Our guidance for 2015 was to be in the middle to upper half of the range of $1.50 to $1.65 a share from continuing operations. This was based on current tax law at the time the guidance was issued. We also disclosed this guidance could be reduced by $0.02 to $0.04 a share if the tax law was changed. The federal government did change the tax law on December 18, 2015. A large amount of capital we placed in service in December of 2015 combined or taking [ph] bonus depreciation put us in a consolidated net operating tax loss for the year. As a result, we weren’t able to take Section 199 deduction but did pick up the research and development credits that is now permanently placed in the tax law. And our 2015 results were negatively impacted by $0.03 a share. Without the effects of the tax law changes, our earnings per share from continuing operations would have been in the middle to upper half of the guidance range we had previously given. Please refer to slide 9 for an overview of 2015 earnings from continuing operations. Our electric segment had strong earnings in 2015 in light of milder weather. The key factors of the $4.7 million increase in net earnings were increased environmental and transmission costs recovery riders, increased conservation incentives and increased sales to pipeline customers. Year-over-year, weather negatively impacted earnings per share by $0.08. And compared to normal, weather negatively impacted earnings per share by $0.05. Lower operating and maintenance travel and administrative costs also favorably impacted earnings. For our manufacturing segment, net earnings declined between the years at BTD by $4.9 million and at T.O. Plastics by $200,000. An overview of these results by each company is as follows. BTD’s revenues declined $6.6…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Paul Ridzon with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Good morning. When do you expect Minnesota rates to kick in?

We would anticipate a filing by the end of February. There is a 60-day period within the filing complete and so interim rates would go in by May 1.

May 1? Okay. And then with the drilling slowing down, you’re forecasting higher pipeline sales, is that just the system is still backfilling with takeaway capacity?

The majority of our pipeline load is associated with Canadian oil, not directly with drilling in the Bakken and a majority of those capital processing investments in plants in Canada continue to operate.

And then what's driving higher sales to commercial customers?

Paul, we just collectively have grouped the pipeline in the commercial sales together and the increases in -- it’s mostly the pipeline.

And then, if we pro rate, I think 8.8 million that Georgia earned since September 1, that gets me about $26.4 million on an annual basis, but you’re forecasting 33. Is that business ramping, are you realizing some synergies or what drives that increase? Was it just seasonality?

Yes. Well, we’re expecting additional -- as a result of the acquisition, we’re expecting additional volumes coming from other customers that BTD was serving before the acquisition that we can now also better serve them down in the south-east.

So is it revenue synergy and cost synergies?

There is revenue synergies and then there is cost synergies as well, but the 8.8 million just to clarify earned was, that’s revenue in 2015. And we’re forecasting approximately 33 million of revenue in 2016. So that's roughly a $24 million increase. One just now the benefit of having it owned for an entire year plus some additional growth from being able to better serve customers in the southeast that we hadn't been able to necessarily serve as a result of not having a location and then additional sales growth from some of the other customers that we’re serving there.

Got it. Thank you. And then lastly, excluding Georgia, you are looking for revenues to be up 7% at BTD. What are the end markets that’s driving that increase?

Well, a lot of the stuff that's coming is the bringing the paint line in effective here January, because we know there is additional opportunities with existing customer base as to now provide them additional product or services if you will, given that we have paint. So we would expect that that growth is coming across a number of the end markets as we’re now able to paint for egg, recreational vehicle and other lawn and garden and other end markets that we’re serving.

And you’ve got, at this point, good visibility on that business coming in?

We have, as Chuck mentioned, we’re mostly qualified for -- I think we’re expected to have remaining qualifications wrapped up by the end of the first quarter and the line [ph] is running. We were just there last Tuesday with our board and saw the line running and painting parts and so the visibility obviously, we’ve still got to go out and win the work, but we've got a line that’s operating well, it's in service and it is past a number of the qualifications for paint specs by customers.

Okay, thank you very much.

Welcome.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Mike Bates with Robert W. Baird. Your line is open.

Good morning, gentlemen. How are you? I was hoping to get a little bit more color on your upcoming rate case filing. Can you talk to us a little about the expected breakdown in your F between just rolling rider recoverable projects in to rate base and things like that as opposed to evolution of your operating expenses, changes in demand forecast, things like that?

Yes. I mean our case will continue to work, the riders will be in place and generally and at the finalizing of the case, we’ll roll some of those riders into, we would anticipate, the emissions equipment at Big Stone whatnot would be rolled into base rates. So our filing is an adjustment above what we’re getting currently in rider covered.

Mike, this is Kevin. Until the rate case is filed, there is really nothing that we can give in terms of additional detail on it. When we file the rate case, there will be an 8-K filing that we’ll go along with that and that will have more details in it.

Sure. Absolutely. And don't want to get too deep into the weeds before we have that finally in front of us. One other question though is, should investors expect to see a multi-year rate plan or would you expect it to be a more traditional single test year type of deal?

It will be more a single test year, forward-looking test year, single year case.

All right. And then any color you can offer in terms of when we might see rate cases filed in your other jurisdictions?

We will start in the middle of this year with our -- as we do every year, our cost of service studies and allocations between jurisdictions and would make a decision probably earlier in the third quarter, if there would be any additional filings this year in either of the Dakotas.

Absolutely. Okay. And just the last question before I hop off, in terms of your new generation resources we’re looking at, over the next several years, will you be required to hold a competitive RFP as we think about the likelihood of these projects being owned resources put into rate base as opposed to PPAs?

We’ll continue to lease gauss planning, we currently are not under a requirement to RFP there in any other jurisdictions.

And remind me, do you have the ability to get preapproval or predetermination for either type of resources?

We have the ability in both Minnesota and North Dakota to file for a Advance Determination of Prudence on these facilities and also incorporate those into our integrated resource plan as filed with Minnesota, that plan, an update to that is due in June of ‘16.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And we have a follow-up from Paul Ridzon with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

What was the impact of weather versus normal for the full year? Sorry, if I didn’t get that?

The impact of weather versus normal was $0.05.

So if we were to add that back to 15 results, you’re looking for a down year at the utility?

Well, I mean weather is arguably offset by the first year in this bonus depreciation.

Okay. That was $0.06

That was $0.06.

Thank you for that clarification. Thanks.

Thank you. And this does conclude today's Q&A session. I would now like to hand the call over to Mr. Chuck MacFarlane for closing remarks.

Thank you. I'll summarize by saying that we remain committed to a diversification strategy focused on two distinct platforms, manufacturing and the core utility. Our companies will continue to focus on customers and we’ll take a long term view. Our strategic objectives are to grow our businesses, achieve operational excellence and develop our talent. We thank all of our employees for their hard work and we 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 concludes the program and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.