Good morning, and welcome to Otter Tail Corporation's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded and we will hold a question and answer session after the prepared remarks. I will now turn the call over to the company for their opening comments.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Beth Eiken, and I'm Otter Tail Corporation's Manager of Investor Relations. Last night we announced our first quarter financial results. Our complete earnings release and slides accompanying this call are available on our website at ottertail.com. A recording of this 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 Todd Wahlund, Otter Tail Corporation's Vice President and CFO. Before we begin, I want to remind you that we will be making forward-looking statements during the course of this call. As noted on Slide 2, these statements represent our current views and expectations of future events. They are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those presented here. So please be advised against placing undue reliance on any of these statements. Our forward-looking statements are described in more detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which we encourage you to review. Otter Tail Corporation disclaims any duty to update or revise our forward-looking statements due to new information, future events, developments or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to Otter Tail Corporation's President and CEO, Mr. Chuck MacFarlane.

Thank you, Beth. Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter 2024 earnings call. Please refer to Slide 4 as I begin my comments on our quarterly performance. We are pleased with our overall first quarter financial results. Diluted earnings per share increased nearly 20% to $1.77 per share compared to the same time last year, driven by strong financial performance within our Plastics segment. Plastics segment earnings increased 39% from the first quarter of 2023 due to higher sales volumes driven by customer sales volume growth and strong distributor and end market domain. Electric segment earnings decreased modestly, primarily driven by weather-related headwinds. Manufacturing segment earnings decreased 23% due to lower sales volumes. Our corporate costs decreased due to returns earned on our short-term investments, driven by a larger cash balance and higher interest rates. We are increasing our 2024 earnings guidance by $1.10 per share to a range of $6.23 to $6.53 due to the stronger than expected Plastics segment performance in Q1 and our revised expectations for the remainder of the year. In a moment, Todd will provide a more detailed discussion of our first quarter financial results and our updated earnings expectations for 2024. Slide 5 shows our expected 5-year compounded annual growth rate and earnings per share with and without the impact of our Plastics segment through the end of 2024 based on the midpoint of our updated earnings guidance. Even without the impact of the extraordinary results generated by our Plastics segment over the last few years, we expect to produce a compounded annual growth rate in earnings per share from 2019 through 2024 of 8.5%. Turning to our Electric segment. Slide 7 provides an overview of our electric operations. Our regulated electric utility announced a sizable 5-year capital spending plan earlier this year…

Thank you, Chuck, and good morning, everyone. We delivered diluted earnings per share of $1.77 in the first quarter of 2024, nearly a 20% increase over the same time last year despite headwinds experienced within our Electric and Manufacturing segments. Our Plastics segment produced stronger than anticipated financial results in the first quarter of 2024. And due to this performance and our revised expectations for the remainder of the year, we have increased the midpoint of our 2024 earnings guidance by 21%. Please follow along on Slide 26 as I begin with an overview of our first quarter financial results by segment. Electric segment earnings decreased $751,000 or 3% from the first quarter of 2023, driven by the impact of unfavorable weather, higher operating and maintenance expenses primarily relating to higher labor costs and increased depreciation expense. These items were partially offset by increased rider revenue, the interim rate increase in North Dakota stemming from our general rate case filing and higher commercial and industrial sales. Quarter-over-quarter, the impact of unfavorable weather was $0.09 per share as our service territory experienced a much warmer start to the year. For example, temperatures in March were about 12 degrees warmer than in 2023. Manufacturing segment earnings decreased $1.6 million or 23% compared to the first quarter of 2023, primarily due to the lower sales volumes at both of our manufacturing businesses. The decrease in sales volumes and earnings quarter-over-quarter was largely driven by T.O. Plastics customers continuing to work through inventory previously purchased in response to supply chain related challenges. We are forecasting a rebound in sales volumes later this year as we anticipate customers being proved their destocking efforts in advance of the next seasonal purchasing period. BTD experienced a slight decrease in sales volumes quarter-over-quarter due to softening and market…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Tim Winter of Gabelli Funds.

Congratulations on another really, really good quarter. It looks like PVC continues to be strong. I'm just acquiring some of your neighboring utilities have recently spun off or partial IPO. They're non-regulated businesses that have done very well. Any consideration of such a dynamic for the Plastics division given the strength?

Yes. Tim, we're in the middle of our strategic planning -- annual strategic planning process. And so as part of that, we do evaluate our portfolio on strategic options. And currently, we view our portfolio of businesses is very solid and our growth strategy is very solid, but we do consider alternatives every year.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it over to Chuck for closing comments.

Well, thank you for joining our call and your interest in Otter Tail Corporation. If you have any questions, please reach out to our Investor Relations team, and we look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.