Welcome to the 2015 First Quarter Investor Call. My name is Cynthia, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Miss Milton Draper. Miss Draper, you may begin.

Thank you, Cynthia, and welcome, everyone. I would now like to read the statements about the use of forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures during this call. Statements made in the course of this call that state the Company's or management's hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions of the future are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those projects. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in our SEC filings including our Form 10-K, our 10-Qs and our press releases. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. We are holding this call today to review our first quarter results and to answer any questions you might have. If you have additional follow-up questions after the call, please call me at 6505899445. Joining me today is the Chief Executive Officer of Core-Mark, Thomas Perkins; and the Chief Financial Officer, Stacy Loretz-Congdon. Also in the room is Chris Miller, our Chief Accounting Officer and Greg Antholzner, our Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. Our lineup for the call today is as follows. Tom will briefly address a recent report published on us and then he will move on to discuss the state of our business and our strategy going forward. Stacy will then review the financial results for the fourth quarter - first quarter. We will then open up the call for your questions. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CEO, tom Perkins.

Good morning everyone and thanks for attending our call. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to spend a minute addressing a few points covered in a recent research report recommending to sell or short sell on our stock prior to discussing the state of our business. I will be brief, first, our story, our management, our strategies, our growth, our performance, and our industry did not change on the day prior to the report being issued and we expect no changes in the future, which leads me to point two. Regarding our valuation, that is your job, our job is to perform. Lastly, I am sure everyone knows that cigarettes have been in a secular to the decline for a few decades and this category has always been highly regulated. While facing these obstacles, we continue to grow our carton sales through market share gains, and we continue to make a higher profit on each carton of cigarettes sold. Manufacturer price increases and our core strategies are the primary drivers to the increased cigarette profits and we expect this to continue. I am as proud and excited about this company as I have ever been and I also have confidence in our investors who take the time to understand the industry and the many opportunities that lie ahead. Since we were not contacted prior to the report being issued or privy to all the information contained in the report, please feel free to contact Milton, Stacy or myself with anything I did not address. Now, back to the important stuff. This is a \very bullish time for the c-store space. The National Association for Convenience Stores recently announced that 2014 recorded the highest in-store sales in the industry's history, growing 4.6% and now representing 30.8% of the total c-store sales. Certainly, we…

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start my comments with a brief discussion of our earnings per share for the quarter and full year guidance. Diluted EPS for the first quarter was $0.24 compared to $0.10 last year. For those of you that model EPS excluding LIFO expense, this translates to $0.30 for the quarter compared to $0.17 last year, up $0.13 or 76.5%. We tightened our 2015 annual EPS guidance following a solid quarter has strengthened our belief that we will deliver annual results towards the upper-end of our original guidance. For 2015, we are now expecting an EPS range between diluted EPS was $1.83 in 2014 compared to $1.79 for 2013. We had guided to a range of $1.87 and $1.91. Key assumptions remain unchanged and include $16 million for LIFO expense, $8 million for cigarette holding gains, a 38% tax rate, and 23.4 million dilutive shares outstanding. Excluding LIFO expense, we are now expecting an EPS range of $2.29 to $2.33. This compares to $2.26 in 2014 which included approximately $0.36 per share of candy holding gains and net OTP tax items which are not expected to recur at the same levels in 2015. We did received 900,000 in net OTP tax refunds for the first quarter of 2015 and it is possible we may receive additional refunds or assessments later this year. But these events are very difficult to predict. Moving on to our first quarter results. Sales increased 6.6% to $2.5 billion compared to $2.3 billion last year. Excluding the impact of foreign currency, sales increased 8.1%. The weakness in the Canadian dollar reduced Canada’s contribution to sales by about $34 million for the quarter. First quarter is generally our softest quarter and currently represents approximately 23% of the top-end of our…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Mark Wiltamuth with Jefferies. You may begin.

And our next question comes from Andrew Wolf with BB&T Capital Markets. You may begin.

And our next question comes from Ben Brownlow with Raymond James. You may begin.

And our next question comes from John Lawrence with Stephens. You may begin.

And our next question comes from Chris McGinnis with Sidoti & Company. You may begin.

[Operator Instructions] And we are standing by for audio questions.

Okay, thank you for your participation in our conference call and for your interest in Core-Mark. We are very pleased with the first quarter results and believe the momentum we have in our business is very encouraging. We believe 2015 will be another record year for Core-Mark. If you have any additional questions, please feel free to call me Milton Draper at 650-589-9445. Thanks operator.