Greetings and welcome to the Atmos Energy Fiscal 2013 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Susan Giles, Vice President, Investor Relations for Atmos Energy Corporation. Thank you. Ms. Giles, you may now begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone and thank you all for joining us. This call is open to the general public and media, but designed for financial analysts. Its being webcast live over the Internet. We have placed slides on our website that summarize our financial results. We'll refer to just a few of the slides during this live call, but we'll be happy to take any questions on any of them at the end of our prepared remarks. If you would like to access the webcast and slides, please visit our website at atmosenergy.com and click on the conference call link. Additionally, we plan to file the company’s Form 10-Q later today. Our speakers this morning are Kim Cocklin, President and CEO; and Bret Eckert, Senior Vice President and CFO. There are other members of our leadership team here as well to assist with questions as needed. As we review these financial results and discuss future expectations, please keep in mind that some of our discussion might contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act. Please see slide two for more information regarding the risk and uncertainties, we consider in making these forward-looking statements and where to go to get more information on such risks and uncertainties. Now, I’d like to turn the call over to Kim Cocklin. Kim?

Thank you, Susan, very much and good morning, everyone. We certainly appreciate you joining us and your interest in Atmos Energy and we are glad to be here to share some good news on our first quarter. Yesterday, we did report first quarter consolidated net income of $80 million or $0.88 per diluted share compared to $69 million or $0.75 per diluted share one year ago. However, when you exclude the unrealized gains in both periods, net income was $67 million or $0.74 per share this quarter compared to $56 million or $0.61 last year, an increase of $0.13 quarter over quarter. Regulated operations has continued to deliver stable and predictable earnings for the enterprise, and recent rate design changes in Texas allow for a much more stabilized revenue stream with an increase to the customers monthly base charge and a decrease of the commodity charge. And weather driven customer consumption continues to be even less important to us, and Bret is going to talk more about the impact of this rate design during his remarks. Our balance sheet remained very strong. Our debt capitalization ratio is 53.5% at December 31 basically flat to last year. And in January, you'll recall that we did issue $500 million of 30 year senior notes at 4.15%, which in effect replaced our $250 million senior notes, which were redeemed in August. As a result, the weighted average cost of our long-term debt has improved 5.9% and average maturities have been extended from about 12 years to over 15 years. Also during the first quarter, we continue to optimize our credit facilities to ensure adequate liquidity to fund our working capital needs. We were able to reduce our costs and now have access to over $1 billion of working capital. Our board of directors declared our 117th consecutive quarterly cash dividend and that indicated an annual dividend rate for fiscal '13 is a $1.40. Our CFO Bret Eckert will review our financial results in greater detail now and then we'll return for some closing comments and questions. Bret?

Thanks, Kim and good morning everyone. As Kim mentioned reported earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 were $80 million or $0.88 per share compared with $69 million or $0.75 one year ago. When you eliminate the positive mark of $13 million or $0.14 per share, adjusted net income was $57 million or $0.74 per share compared with $56 million or $0.61 last year. As a reminder, because we executed an agreement in August 2012 to sell our distribution assets in Georgia, the financial results for those assets on the income statement are reported as discontinued operations in the current quarter. The prior year result also includes the discontinued operations of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri service areas, which were sold in August 2012. In our Natural Gas Distribution business, we completed seven regulatory proceedings, which should result in about $64 million increase in annual operating income. A portion of this rate increases began to materialize during the first quarter and we expect to see a more significant impact beginning in the second quarter of our fiscal year. In the current quarter, gross profit in our Natural Gas Distribution segment decreased $4 million mainly driven by rate design changes granted during the quarter in our Mid-Tex division. Under the new rate design effective January 1, 2013, there was an increase in the monthly customer charge and a decrease in the consumption charge. The current quarter was impacted as revenues recorded for December gas deliveries billed in January were calculated using the new rate that are effective for bills rendered on or after January 1, 2013. We expect these decreases to be offset by increased margins in our third and fourth quarters of fiscal 2013 as I will address later on in my comments. Moving now to regulated transmission and storage,…

Thank you very much Bret for that good report. We have reported a very solid start to fiscal 2013 and are encouraged with what we anticipate will be another good year. So far during fiscal 13, we have completed several rate proceeding as Bret indicated, which when combined with regulatory expense deferrals result in an increase of about $78 million in annual operating income. These cases include results from several jurisdiction with the largest on in our mid Mid-Tex Division, where the Texas Railroad Commission issued a final order in early December authorizing a net increase to annual operating income of $42.6 million, which results from the rate increase of about $30 million spread out more ratably throughout the year, plus a decrease in depreciation rates of $13 million. With the lower depreciation expense obviously we preserve rate base longer and there is a reduction of the customer bill. Also in Texas, our West Texas Division achieved the rate settlement, which was approved by the Railroad Commission for $6.6 million and we were also granted system wide rates in that case. Like the Mid-Tex case, there was a shift between the consumption charge and the customer charge but to a lesser degree. New rates were reflected on customer bills beginning, October 1. Currently, we have four cases pending requesting increases of about $8 million in other jurisdictions and we anticipate filing another 10 to 15 cases this fiscal period requesting increases totaling between $60 million and $70 million. Slide 15 to 22 of our presentation provides more details on the rate case. On our Regulated Texas intrastate pipeline, we continue to invest capital to increase capacity, secure long-term gas supply and enhance the reliability of our service to Mid-Tex Division in certain necessary critical locations and those capital expenses are…

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Thank you. Our first question today is from the line of Andy Bischof of Morningstar. Please proceed with your question.

Just one question for you this morning, for [Robusta] refinancing opportunities you said $500 million and you're forwarding straight swaps, is there any other of Energy's see every time taking of that and roll those opportunities out there?

Well, the few swaps we've put there on the 2015 issuances we've lost that and it's roughly 3.129% and the $250 million in the fiscal year '17 has been effectively fixed at 3.3668%. Right now, we've only focused on putting our interest rate swaps on expiring issuances and feel comfortable with the positions we've taken there.

(Operator Instructions). The next question is from the line of Faisel Khan with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

It's Amit Marwaha filling in for Faisel.

That other Faisel.

Yeah, you got me Kim. Just a quick question, good quarter. Just wanted to get an idea with the adjustments with respect to the Mid-Tex rate case, could you give us a better idea on a percentage basis what the shaping of the EPS will look like throughout the year?

Shaping?

Yes, if you were to shape it, would you say that first half is going to be 60% of the overall -- represent 60% of the overall EPS? So, could you give us an idea of how it might look?

We've to look at it -- we could take a look. I think the challenge we've is we're highlighting the change regarding Mid-Tex and obviously with the shift to the customer charge and ways from the commodity consumption charge it is going to make those earning more ratable. We're going to be much, much reliant on the customer consumption fees. But we'll not take a look at first we're going to improve that for the Mid-Tex customer that it serves, but across the rest of our jurisdictions, we'll have to take a look at how that plays out from our overall EPS standpoint.

Amit, I mean the overall increase is $42.6 million.

Yeah, I'm with you there, I just want to get an idea.

So, I mean, you've in your model, whatever you add for the total cost of service for Mid-Tex, about less than 40% of that was previously -- the previous rates were collected in the demand charge now about 84%. If you add 42.6% to your model for revenues and adjust the recovery on a demand charge basis to 40% to 85%, 84% I mean the closest we can get is what Bret said I mean we're going to probably reduce revenues the reduction from last year about $25 million in quarter two, but that will increase by $25 million to $30 million in quarters three and four in the Mid-Tex division. Susan can probably help you to model that.

Yeah, I can maybe answer, absolutely.

Second question. I missed the details around the rate cases that you've filed to-date and what the backlog is sort of balance of the year?

Well, right now we've got cases -- four cases standing or requesting increases of about $8 million and we're going to file another $10 million to $15 million bring in about, requesting $60 million to $70 million. The lion's share I think if you look on $15 million to $22 million we've got GRIP filings in Texas for both Mid-Tex and the pipeline. The pipeline will be filed this month about the middle of the month and then we anticipate filing a GRIP case for the Mid-Tex division around April 1. I mean overall, right now we've collected about $78 million or generated new revenue from rate outcomes plus REG asset treatment. And we do expect to achieve the $90 million to $110 million estimate for rate outcomes that we've earlier had identified in assumptions for how we were going to get to the higher end of our earnings guidance range this year.

(Operator Instructions) Ms. Giles, there are no further questions at the time. I would like to turn the floor back over to you for closing comments.

Great. Thank you, Rob. I just want to remind everyone that there is a recording of this call available for replay on the website through May, the 2nd. Again we appreciate your interest in Atmos Energy and thank you for joining us this morning. Good bye.

Thank you.