Good morning. Welcome to Otter Tail Corporation’s First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded and there will be a question-and-answer session after the prepared 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 first quarter 2016 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 is Chuck MacFarlane, Otter Tail Corporation’s President and CEO and Kevin Moug, Otter Tail Corporation’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who by the way is also celebrating his birthday today. 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 Corp revise our forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future developments, events, or otherwise. For opening remarks, I would now like to 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. For the quarter net income was $14.5 million or $0.38 per share. This is in line with our expectations with the exception of warmer than normal weather. The warm weather impacted Otter Tail Powers first-quarter earnings per share by $0.04 compared to the normal. But this was partially mitigated by improved margins in our manufacturing platform. Our business model continues to combine a strong regulated electric utility for the portfolio manufacturing businesses intended to enhance long-term returns. A key component of these two platform strategies are planned to grow the utility business. My remarks today will focus on our strategy to grow rate base and a recently filed rate case. I will also update you on efforts within our manufacturing platform to improve our competitive position. Slide 5, shows our utility rate base expansion, which will drive earnings per share growth for the next five years. We plan to invest 858 million in Otter Tail Power during this time frame. This will result a compound average annual growth rate in rate base of more than 8% from 2016 to 2020 - natural gas generation and renewable generation projects will account for the majority of this rate base expansion. With most eligible for construction cost recovery during construction, this is noted on the bottom of the Slide 6, which shows our regulatory framework. As we’ve discussed on prior calls, we’re investing in two 345-kv transmission line within Otter Tail Power services area that the mid-continent independent system operator has deemed multi-value projects. The cost of these projects will be allocated across all customers in my source 12 state upper mid-west footprint. One line will run from Brookings, South Dakota, 70 miles north to a new substation near Big Stone Plant. It’s…

Good morning. Please refer to Slide 10, as I discuss our first quarter results. The utility net earnings decreased $640,000 quarter-over-quarter. The decline is due to; one, milder weather in first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter last year. Heating degree days were down by 16%. As a result weather negatively impacted earnings per share by approximately $0.04 quarter-over-quarter and compared to normal; two, higher operating and maintaining expenses; and three, higher depreciation expense due to increased rate based investments. These items were offset in part by increased environmental and transmission cost recovery writers and increased sales by client customers. Our manufacturing segment earnings increased $669,000 quarter-over-quarter primarily due to the BTDs performance. Revenues increased quarter-over-quarter for BTD by $3.9 million. The components of this increase are as follows, our Minnesota locations revenues were down $5.6 million due to softening demand from the agriculture, oil and gas and recreational vehicle end markets. Our Illinois location had an increase in revenues of $1.7 million driven by strong demand for wind tower components. And our Georgia facility accounted for $7.8 million in new revenues. We acquired the Georgia facility in September 2015. The higher net income at BTD is due to improved productivity relating to lower cost and expedited trade, manufacturing consumables, cost and quality and lower labor and benefit cost. Our plastic segment revenues increased between the quarters as a result of 18.5% increase in the amount of pounds sold, despite 13.3% decrease in the price per pound sold. Increased sales came primarily from the South-West and Central regions in the United States where construction activities remained strong. And our earnings were basically flat between the quarters due to margin compression that occurred with large drop in PVC pipe selling prices. And our corporate expenses decreased $648,000 quarter-over-quarter primarily…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question or comment comes from the line of Paul Ridzon with KeyBanc. Your line is now open.

Good morning. How are you?

Good Paul and you?

Well, thank you. Just one quick question, you mentioned a ten-week outage, was that cost to be capitalized or will soon that hit O&M?

Paul, that the majority of those are capitalized. I believe the entire project has approximately $2 million in operating costs and the remainder is capital.

Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] And at this time I’m showing no further questions or comments. So with that I would like to turn the conference back over to President and CEO, Mr. Chuck MacFarlane for closing remarks.

Thank you. To summarize net earnings increased quarter-over-quarter from continued operations. Our manufacturing segment has improving performance including increased margins associated with improved operations. Otter Tail Power filed the first rate increase request in Minnesota in five years and received approval for interim rates which began in April. And we reaffirmed our 2016 earnings guidance of $1.50 to $1.65 per share. Thank you for joining our 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, you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.