Welcome to the Broadwind Energy Q3 2015 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joni Konstantelos. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Broadwind Energy's third quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Broadwind's President and CEO, Peter Duprey and Broadwind's Executive Vice President and CFO, Stephanie Kushner. This morning's earnings news release is available on our website at www.bwen.com. Before we begin today, I would like to caution you that this call will include some forward-looking statements regarding our plans and market outlook and also will reference some non-GAAP financial measures. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our SEC filings and consider the incorporated risks and uncertainties disclosed there, including our Form 8-K and the attached news release filed with the SEC this morning and our Form 10-K which will be filed later today. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information. Having said that, I will turn the call over to our President and CEO, Peter Duprey.

Good morning. Let's start on slide 3, this morning with announced our three quarter results which were in line with our previous downward revision for the quarter. It was clearly a tough quarter, our Manitowoc facility had been performing above expectations for most of the year, they experience quality issues with the supply chain and challenges in paint production. I am pleased to report that the steel quality in paint production issues have been corrected and production is flowing normally. We have implemented a remediation plan that includes performing sample testing of the quality of incoming steel plate at both production sites. Developing more detailed supplier scorecards and better integrating performance into future buying decisions. Implementing a more robust total productive maintenance program in both facilities and increasingly lead times for certain foreign source components. We enter 2015 with a sold out production capacity. We’ve learned that in order to run a full production capacity everything has to go right, leaving little to no room for production or supply chain hiccups. In a manufacturing process with a global supply chain not everything is going to go as planned. We experienced a number of challenges from the West Coast port slow down to supplier quality and delivery issues with internals. We also experienced above average unplanned equipment outages for 2015. We have increased our efforts on planning and prevention ensuring our equipment is properly maintained and planning for more frequent outages, it gives us better control over the flow of material through the plant. When an unplanned outage occurs we need to ensure that we have replacement parts on the shelf and we can get them quickly to minimize any downtime. In areas where we do have production constraints we are looking at increasing capacity in order to alleviate these bottlenecks.…

Thanks Pete, Q3 revenue of $49.8 million was down 10% from last year and in line with our revised guidance, when you adjust it to remove $3 million for services revenue. Our gross profit margin of 5.7% was impacted by the relatively lower volume, operating expense was flat with the prior year and included an $874,000 reserve addition that was for remediating the soil contamination at the curing plant that we vacated at the end of last year. Our operating loss from continuing operations was $2.1 million and our loss per share was $0.16. This brings our nine month result to a loss of $0.10 per share. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.4 million for the quarter and $7.7 million year to date. We recorded a $5.2 million loss below the line, related to the discontinued services business. This included a $4.5 million impairment estimate associated with the planned divestiture. On the next slide we recorded only $3.2 million in net orders for the towers [indiscernible] segment in the third quarter. We did have a $7 million follow on tower order with a $5 million cumulative adjustment to reduce the steel price retroactively on an order already in backlog. This is because steel prices which are a significant part of the cost of a tower have been declining. Because steel is essentially a pass through to our customers this doesn't impact our economics, but does change the reported order number. For the nine months orders are slightly above last year despite the pricing adjustment. For 2016 we have about 200 towers in our backlog and we are negotiating to close our final orders for 2016. We sold a 112 towers in the quarter, 5% more than 2014 but our sales revenue actually declined by 5% mainly because we had no four section…

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Jimmy Baker of B. Riley & Co. Please go ahead.

Just hearing about the negative mix and how that's now impacting your Abilene plant it just seems like you would have known that looking ahead at your backlog, so can you just maybe elaborate on that and what's changing there. And then separately I guess when you look at your 2016 backlog and even what you're bidding on currently. Are you bidding on towers that you're confident you can produce more profitably, you know I understand you have the supplier issue in in Q3 three but it does sound like quite a bit of this might be self-inflicted with regard to what you've been on to fill the capacity.

With respect to Abilene we've been we've been running two types of towers through that facility, two different customers. In the fourth quarter it's one customer and probably the customer with the most tight specifications and therefore it goes through a bit slower than having more of a balanced mix. So that's why the forecasts for lower through put in Abilene. And then looking forward I think we will go to a better mix and with respect to what happened in the quarter I would say the issues with steel were probably -- I think if you look at the roughly 30 towers that fell out of the quarter probably half of it was related to steel and half of it was relayed to paint issues which I think was somewhat self-inflicted. And so I mean that's really what happened in Q3.

Okay. And then just following on to that I think maybe Stephanie mentioned that you're aiming to reach a good capacity level in 2016 for the tower business. I guess just putting that with the comments about -- if I'm paraphrasing right. You know wanting to leave yourself a little bit more of a margin for [indiscernible], what level of utilization would you say is kind of your target range in towers going forward?

Yes I would say we're probably talking mid-400s for capacity on a consolidated basis.

But maybe if we do put in more paint capacity.

Yes. I alluded to it in my comments that we've got a lot of demand in Texas and probably a little less in Manitowoc, so we’re looking at paint right now is the constraint in our production so we are looking at some ways to improve paint throughput either by adding a booth or looking at some automated systems.

And just regarding the services divestiture my understanding your commentary correctly that you would expect to be able to announce a sale of the majority of that business, by the end of the year but there is a piece or pieces of it that you may operate into '16.

No I think the expectation is that business will be wound down I think there have been a series of bitters, it's hard to say exactly how it's going to wind up so I think we're couching our comments a bit. Obviously there is one bitter who is interested in the entire business, but there are folks that are interested in the piece. We're working through that right now.

Your next question comes from [indiscernible]. Please go ahead.

On the quality control and other operational improvements that you're implementing in order to trying to avoid any sort of steel or paint related issues in the future. Are there any additional costs that you anticipate either in terms of just additional time that might be required in order to screen things properly or actual dollar cost.

Yes I would say you know like to inspect steel. There is additional cost to do that and you know I think in my prepared comments I said we'll do that on a sampling basis. So you know I think we're doing that just to ensure we don't have this problem again and I think it's whatever incremental cost we have it's probably good insurance to ensure that we can identify any quality issues early.

Probably minuscule compared to all that cost we have been incurring this year to deal with these problems after the fact.

Yes what you don't want to do and which is where we ended up is you don't want to find these issues on the shop floor so after you rolled it and you put time and labor in it you don't want to find out yes deal issues so that to spend a little more money on the front end to do some tests sampling I think is a prudent thing to do right.

So going forward. What impact do you anticipate if any on margins?

Nothing significant.

And the second question. In terms of your backlog for '16 how much of the potential orders that you're looking at, the lead you have there? Do you think might be dependent on an extension of the PTC and what are your current thoughts on whether that will occur and the impact that would have in your business for next year?

Yes So the volume that we're looking at for '16 I think is not dependent on the PTC because the extension that we got in 2016 as long as you complete your project by 2016 you'll get the credit. So it's really filling up that remaining capacity and then what's our outlook on the PTC I think we're still despite all the dysfunction in Washington I think we still think that PTC will get passed as either part of a tax extenders package similar to the way it was done last year what we want is a two year extension and that is the way in the Senate Finance Committee the extension was drafted so we're really just trying to find the bill to attach it to try to get that passed.

[Operator Instructions]. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Konstantelos for any closing remarks.

I will just kind of wrap it up. You know it's a tough quarter and certainly a tough year. You know as I look back I think we've certainly strengthened the business unit leadership in towers and we've implemented a number of new process controls during the year in both facilities. I think some of these lessons have been expensive, fully understand that but I believe the organization is a lot stronger than it was 18 months ago as we transition to higher volumes in more demanding customers. And then sort of reflect on the gearing business, you know they've been navigating through a very difficult time with the slow mining and oil and gas market. But I think the way they're managing their headcount and their expenses I think they're managing through that well. So you know I think this will position us well as the overall industry becomes more stable year-over-year as long term policies are implemented and I think we're really at a kind of a tipping point here where we've got the clean power plant that’s sort of a long term incentive we've got -- we’re in the midst of an extension of the PTC so as you merge those two things together you could have a very nice stable industry for the next 15 years and we're very close to that and that's the best -- this whole market industry has been over the 13 years that I've been involved in it. So I do think we're at a transition point here. We are working hard and we are improving and I think next year will be much better than this year and I thank everyone for participating in the call.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.