David R. Emery
Analyst · Michael Bates with D.A
Thank you, Jerome. Good morning, everyone. For those of you following along on the webcast presentation, I'll start on Slide 3. The agenda will be similar to previous quarters. I'll go through the quarter highlights. Tony Cleberg, our Chief Financial Officer, will cover the financial update for the quarter. And then I'll give a strategic overview, kind of a forward-looking slant after that and then we'll open it up for question and answers. Starting on Slide 5, highlights of the quarter. Business environment-wise, we had a slightly colder than normal winter, which was a big change compared to the very warm winter the year before, and you'll see that in our results. And also, a significant rebound in gas prices. Henry Hub prices more than $1 higher than they were 1 year ago at the same time. Highlights for the utilities, construction commenced in early April, on our Cheyenne Prairie Generating Station, the $237 million, 132-megawatt plant we're currently building in Cheyenne, Wyoming for both Black Hills Power and Cheyenne Light. And our Colorado electric utility, we filed an Electric Resource Plan earlier in the week on April 30, with the Colorado PUC. In that plan, we identified a 40-megawatt, simple cycle gas turbine as the replacement for our retiring 42-megawatt W.N. Clark coal plant, under the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act in Colorado. And we also recommended retirement of 2 older gas-fired plants in Pueblo. Those 2 plants have a total capacity of 29 megawatts, and they were placed in service in the 1940s. In connection with the resource plan, we also filed 2 certificates of public convenience and necessity, 1 seeking approval for the new turbine and 1 for the retirement of the 2 gas-fired units in Pueblo. Also related to Colorado Electric, on April 23, we issued a request for proposals seeking bids for up to 30 megawatts of wind energy. We're still evaluating whether our nonregulated power generation sub will submit a bid into that RFP. Moving on to Slide 6, relative to the Black Hills Power rate case we filed in December of last year, we plan to implement interim rates subject to refund in the middle of June. We received a schedule from the commission and the public hearing related to that rate case as currently scheduled for October 8 through 11. Also last December, we filed a request with the South Dakota PUC seeking approval for the construction financing rider for the Cheyenne Prairie Generating Station. The commission approved us implementing that on an interim rate basis, that was done effective April 1, subject to refund. The hearing on the financing rider has been scheduled for September 16 through 20, at which time, we would expect, after that, a final decision related to that rider. Also during the quarter, our Gas Utility segment purchased 2 small municipal gas systems, 1 in Iowa, 1 in Kansas, adding about 500 retail and a couple large volume industrial customers. This just continues our trend of purchasing small municipal gas systems, really to help offset the low growth in a couple of our service territories on the natural gas side. And in the last few years, we've completed 6 or 7, I think, of these transactions. Slide 7. Highlights for our Power Generation for the quarter. We're currently in the process of reviewing options for our Gillette CT II. It's a 40-megawatt combustion turbine located in our Gillette Energy Complex. That plant is currently under contract to sell basically all of its output to Cheyenne Light on a contract we signed clear back in 2001. It expires in August of 2014. And so we're exploring options for that turbine after that time. Those include potentially recontracting with Cheyenne Light or another party or even likely selling all or a part of that unit to a third party. Moving on to Oil and Gas, we recently commenced here, just in the last couple of weeks, drilling the first of 2 wells in the Mancos Shale formation in the Piceance Basin. These wells are being drilled as part of a transaction that we did with a third-party where we will earn up to an additional 20,000 net acres of Mancos Shale leasehold in the basin from a third-party in exchange for drilling and completing the 2 wells. That agreement, not unlike a lot of agreements in the Oil and Gas business, has some pretty strict confidentiality provisions. So that agreement with that third-party not only precludes us from identifying the party, it also requires confidentiality of all the contract terms and in addition, the drilling and production information will be kept confidential for at least 6 months after the wells are completed. It may be longer depending on the concurrence of the other partners involved in those wells at that time. Now this is the change in plans. We elected to drill the 2 wells on this third-party acreage rather than our own acreage for a couple of primary reasons. First, we're still waiting on BLM approval of our drilling permits on our own acreage. That process has been ongoing for more than 18 months. We did, just yesterday, receive approval of our environmental assessment from the BLM, but we still don't have the first couple of drilling permits yet. So doing the third-party transaction allows us to get started on our drilling sooner than we would if we had to wait for our own permits. And more importantly, by drilling and completing those 2 wells and bearing the cost of that, we'll earn up to 20,000 additional net acres in the Mancos, which increases our holdings in the Mancos almost 27% from our current 74,000 acre level. On the corporate side, our Board declared a quarterly dividend of $0.38 a share, that's an annual rate, assuming we continue that rate for the following quarters, then $1.52 per share. Again, this year, marks our 43rd consecutive annual dividend increase for shareholders, one of the longest streaks in the industry. Moving on to Slide 8. During the first quarter, we earned $0.87 per share from continuing operations as adjusted compared to $0.65 last year, an improvement of 34%. The positive impacts of more normal weather, new utility rates, higher demand in our electric utility and significant decrease in interest expense was partially offset by lower oil volumes due to our asset sale in Williston Basin and lower natural gas prices. On Slide 9, it just illustrates the changes in income from continuing ops as adjusted from the first quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year. As I mentioned earlier, the improvement was primarily driven by our Utilities and our Corporate segment. Now I'll turn it over to Tony Cleberg, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide the financial update. Tony?