Today's webcast by the Laclede Group entitled Third Quarter Fiscal 2014 Earnings. My name is Jameson, I'll be your web event specialist today. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the webcast over to Scott Dudley, Managing Director, Investor Relations. Scott, the floor is yours.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to the earnings conference call for our third quarter. We issued a news release this morning announcing our financial results, and you may access that release on our website at thelacledegroup.com, and you'll find that under the News Releases tab. Today's call is scheduled for an hour and we will include our results, and then a question-and-answer session will follow. Prior to opening up the call for questions, the operator will provide instructions on how to join the queue to ask your question. Presenting on our call today are Suzanne Sitherwood, President and CEO; and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Also in the room with us today are Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Distribution Operations; and Mike Spotanski, Senior Vice President and Chief Integration and Innovation Officer. Before we begin, let me cover our Safe Harbor statement and our use of non-GAAP earnings measures. Today's earnings conference call, including responses during the Q&A session, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we assume no duty to update them. Although our forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, various uncertainties and risk factors may cause future performance or results to be different than those anticipated. A description of the uncertainties and risk factors can be found in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which will be filed later today. In our comments, we will be discussing financial results in terms of net economic earnings and operating margin, which are non-GAAP measures used by management when evaluating the company's performance. Net economic earnings exclude from net income the after-tax impacts of fair value accounting and timing adjustments associated with energy-related transactions, as well as the impacts related to acquisition, divesture and restructuring activities, including one-time costs related to the integration of MGE and costs related to the acquisition of Alabama Gas Corporation. Operating margin adjusts operating income to include only those costs that are directly passed on to customers and collected through revenues, which are the wholesale cost of natural gas and propane and gross receipts taxes. A full explanation of the adjustments and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their GAAP counterparts is contained in the news release that we issued this morning. So with that, let me turn the call over to Suzanne.

Thank you, Scott. Let me add my welcome to those who have joined us this morning. I want to start out with an update on our growth strategy, including the acquisition of Alagasco and the integration of MGE. Then, Steve Rasche will follow me with a review of our operating results and an update on other financial matters in a moment. Since our last earnings call in late April, I've had the chance to speak to or meet many of you in the financial community, whether it was at the AGA Financial Forum or during our road show in early June as part of our successful equity offering to help finance the Alagasco acquisition. I must say that these conversations were positive and encouraging for me and the other members of our senior team. We were asked all the right questions and received constructive and supportive comments. It is clear that the financial community has a deep understanding of our growth strategy and trajectory. And while strategies are important, it is actions, meeting our commitments and successfully executing on our goals. That is important to me and to our company as a whole. We are pleased with the execution of our plan, including meeting our commitment to grow our Gas Utility earnings through the addition of MGE. And we're excited about the next steps in our journey as we work to meet and exceed our commitments to grow and create value for all of our stakeholders. Clearly, one of those commitments is the Alagasco acquisition. We announced the agreement to purchase Alagasco just 4 months ago today, with the goal of closing the acquisition by September 30, the end of our fiscal year. Since last quarter's call, we have worked with many parties, including the Alabama Public Service Commission and…

Thanks, Suzanne, and good morning, everyone. Let me review our operating results for our fiscal third quarter ended June 30 and give you a few other updates on key activities. Looking first at our third quarter income statement. Total operating revenues were $242 million, up 46% from last year. Operating margin, or the earnings contribution after gas costs and gross receipts tax, rose to just over $130 million, up $56 million from last year. Nearly $53 million of that increase was in the Gas Utility segment, due largely to the addition of Missouri Gas Energy, as well as higher ISRS revenues at Laclede Gas and continued modest customer growth. Gas Marketing also saw increase in operating margins of approximately $3.3 million. As you might recall, and as Suzanne just mentioned, price volatility and basis differential returned to the market in early 2014 due to the severe winter weather. And while the markets are quickly returning to prewinter levels, helped by the cooler-than-normal summer, this gradual change provided some opportunities for Laclede Energy Resources this quarter. These higher margins were offset in part by higher operating expenses at the Gas Utility. Operating and maintenance expenses of $73 million were higher, up $30.5 million over the prior year and largely consistent with the run rate from last quarter. This increase was due to 3 factors: First, $28.3 million of that increase was due to adding MGE. Secondly, approximately $1.6 million were costs associated with the lingering impacts of the severe weather, essentially bad debt costs, which rose due to higher average customer bills. And lastly, approximately $600,000 of costs related to the integration of MGE. Continuing down the rest of the income statement. Depreciation and amortization was higher by $6.9 million, of which $5.9 million is due to MGE. And similarly, taxes…

Thank you, Steve. As we hit the home stretch for fiscal 2014, I continue to be pleased with our performance and our ability to meet some pretty big milestones in support of our strategy. The integration of MGE remains on track. We are also on track to complete the permanent financing and close the Alagasco acquisition inside 5 months from the announcement. We are meeting our organic growth targets tied to investment and pipeline replacement. And in our Gas Marketing business, we continue to look for ways to optimize our assets and ensure LER is positioned to capitalize on market opportunities. And we continue to develop Spire, our natural gas vehicle fueling solutions business, by pursuing a full pipeline of potential projects. We look forward to sharing more about our next Spire station and other projects in the near future. At the same time, we are mindful of the need to effectively manage a changing and growing company. I'm pleased to note that over the last 6 months, we have added 2 very capable and experienced individuals with energy backgrounds to our Board of Directors: Mark Borer, and announced last week, Maria Fogarty. We look forward to their contributions and guidance as we continue on our path of meeting and exceeding our commitments to our shareholders and all of our stakeholders. We are now ready to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question is from the line of Sarah Akers with Wells Fargo.

Just a question on the balance sheet, and sorry if I missed this, but can you go over again the specific drivers that -- versus your original expectations that are causing your debt capitalization pro forma to be a little bit better than originally expected?

Yes. Sarah, I think I can cover that. This is Steve. Clearly, the biggest driver is the successful equity offering on both sides -- both the common offering, as well as the equity units offering, which was significantly well-received. And as you know, we got better pricing than we had anticipated and also better terms. And that was clearly the biggest driver that moved us from the middle of the range that we had originally guided, which was between 51% and 53%, so if we start at 52% and kind of work down from there, that was the biggest single piece that got us there. We've also -- as we have been historically, and we have a history of doing this, we manage our cash very tightly and we've been able to overachieve our internal expectations as we've managed our legacy business, if you want call it that, Laclede and MGE, to generate some additional cash. Our working capital balances are lower than we had thought they would be and sort of allows us to think a little bit more sharply about how we want to do our long-term versus our short-term capitalization. But in all things, I mean, we're looking for the long term, and we're very comfortable with where we ended up or where we expect to end up with our capitalization with our debt offering. And I think it gives us plenty of flexibility to continue to invest in the business to grow and all the areas that we would expect to grow to deliver on our commitments.

Great. And then you mentioned that excluding weather, you still expect flat results in '14. With MGE synergies trending a little bit better than originally planned, why isn't that expectation a little bit better here?

Yes. The synergies are trending a little bit better than planned, but ultimately, that gives us the opportunity to think smartly about how we're investing in the business to set ourselves up for the longer term. And as I mentioned, the operating expenses associated with the winter have been a little bit higher at the Gas Utility than we had expected, and which is why that all-in winter weather impact is now $0.17. It was $0.17 to $0.20 last quarter. So we're taking a really hard to look at our run rate on expenses. So I think ultimately, we're a little bit ahead on the synergies, but it wouldn't be enough to significantly move the needle. I think that the key you need to take away and the rest of the investors need to take away is that we're hitting our plan, and that's a multi-year plan. We like being out in front of it as all of us would be in all the plans that we set. But we've got work to do over the full 3 years because when we talk about that $25 million to $34 million, that's a year 3 run rate. So we've got some work to do, but we're confident that we'll be able to achieve or overachieve that.

Got it. And then one modeling question. For the July ISRS requests at MGE and Laclede, when would those become effective?

Great question. If you look at the typical review period for the Public Service Commission and the staff on those orders, it would put those becoming effective right at the end of our fiscal year. So from your modeling prospective, I think you should think about that as a full impact for fiscal '15 and probably little, if any, impact this year.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question is from the line of Brian Brungardt with Stifel. Brian Brungardt - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division: So as it relates to the MGE integration in the future, rate recoveries for the one-time charges, how much longer should we be looking for those charges? And what do you envision the total size to be when they're completed?

Yes. It's a two-part question, and I'll start with the second part as to what we expect those to be. We have not guided on that number. I can tell you, we took a conservative approach in our modeling and that's why I mentioned that we expect the Alagasco transaction to meet our target. What we did is we've used precedent transactions using Booz as a partner much like we did in the past, and we looked at those prior transactions and ranges of synergies. So in our model, we built in a conservative estimate for that. And as I also mentioned in my opening comments, we've stayed focused on day 1 integration because of the short time period between announcement and close -- that 4 months that I referenced. And so we're using the same process, but the focus has been on day 1 and it will -- as we get further into it, enable to engage at a higher level with our Energen partners. Our teams will start defining what those synergy numbers look like. So that was the synergy piece. And I'm sorry, what was the first part of your question? Brian Brungardt - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division: For the MGE integration, how much longer should we be looking for kind of one-time charges on -- for recoveries to be continuing to flow?

Yes. Alagasco has a what we call a nontraditional rate-making process. It's a rate stabilization process, and we file annual budgets before that year. And so in terms of the timing and so forth, it's all modeled into that rate stabilization mechanism.

Yes. And Brian, this is Steve. I would add that if you think about MGE, the other deal that we're in the process of integrating, we have the ability from the regulatory recovery mechanism to accumulate integration costs for up to 5 years. I suspect, and our plan is that you'll see a vast majority of those costs in the first 3 years and really heavily weighted to the first 2 years as you would expect. Just from a logistical standpoint, we're making those integration decisions now. And so those costs, which are generally associated with facilities and all the other things that are associated with integrating a business usually happen inside the first 3-year or 2-year window. So that's how I would tend to think about it as you're looking forward into '15 and beyond. Brian Brungardt - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated, Research Division: And then lastly, on the heels of the success with both the MGE and Alagasco, just curious on your thoughts on the current acquisition market. Have you continued to evaluate potential assets? And kind of where do you guys think valuations are today?

Yes. As far as other acquisitions, I've shared with everyone, we do have a market development team, and they're constantly analyzing what's in the market based on market data. But where we are right now is everything that we just talked to you about on this call, is making sure that we're executing on our plans, both with MGE and Alagasco, as well as LER and Spire and so forth. So that's where we're focused right now. But we do say -- in terms of the market department group, we are looking at data constantly just to stay smart about the market.

[Operator Instructions] At this time, there are no further questions.

Okay, great. Well, thank you all for joining us today. We'll be available throughout the day for any follow-ups. So we'll look forward to that. Thanks, again.

Thanks to all of our participants for joining us today. We hope you found this webcast presentation informative. This concludes the webcast. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.