Good morning. My name is Lynn and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chesapeake Utilities First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Beth Cooper, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, you may begin conference.

Thank you, Lynn and good morning everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning to review our first quarter 2015 results. On the call today with me are Mike McMasters, President and CEO; and Mat Kim, Vice President and Controller. We have prepared a presentation to accompany our discussion today. This presentation can be accessed on our website at www.chpk.com under the Investors section and Events & Webcast subsection or via our IR app. Moving to slide two, before we begin, let me remind you that matters discussed in this conference call may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements section of the company's 2014 annual report on Form 10-K which provides further information on the factors that could cause such statements to differ from our actual results. Finally, please note that earnings per share data is shown on a fully diluted basis and reflects the company's three-for-two stock split effective September 8th, 2014. I am pleased to report that 2015 is off to a great start. We continue to execute on our strategic growth plan. During the first quarter we announced our acquisition of Gatherco which closed on April 1st. we are also continuing to develop and cultivate profitable growth opportunities in our natural gas and propane businesses across Delmarva and in Florida. Our regulatory initiatives such as the Florida base rate and the Florida Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program, or as we commonly refer to it as GRIP, continue to support and supplement the growth. As shown on slide three on Wednesday we announced first quarter 2015 net income of $21.1 million or $1.44 per share, an increase of $3.4 million or $0.22 per share compared to the same quarter in…

Thank you, Beth, and good morning, everyone. Turning to slide nine, on April 1, 2015 we completed the acquisition of Gatherco and merged the company into our newly formed subsidiary, Aspire Energy of Ohio, LLC. The enterprise value, net of cash, acquired was $52.8 million. Approximately 593,000 shares of Chesapeake stock were issued together co-shareholders in the transaction, which brings our total shares outstanding to approximately 15,221,000 as of April 1, 2015. Slide 10 shows an overview of Gatherco’s business. It was established in 1997 with the acquisition of Columbia Gas Transmission’s natural gas gathering assets in Ohio. Today the company operates 16 gathering systems and over 2,000 miles of pipeline in the areas in and around the Utica Shale Play and Eastern and Central Ohio. Gatherco serves more than 300 producers with gathering and liquids processing services and also delivers natural gas to two local distribution companies and serve approximately 30,000 customers. We believe that there are significant growth opportunities to add both production and distribution customers to the system. Gatherco also owns valuable rights of way that could present additional opportunities for growth. We are making good progress in the integration of Gatherco into the Chesapeake family. As we indicated when we announced the transaction we are rebranding Gatherco as Aspire Energy. Operationally we have moved some administrative functions to Chesapeake’s headquarters and have begun the implementation of our safety, environmental compliance and other programs including service excellence training for Aspire employees. We are in the process of identifying and recruiting for key positions as well as new positions to support our growth plans for this business. We believe that Aspire will be accretive to earnings in the first full year of operations. We are currently working with the team in Ohio to identify new growth projects and…

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Spencer Joyce with Hilliard Lyons.

Hi. Good morning. Congrats on an awesome quarter.

Thanks Spencer.

Thank you.

Just a quick one here. Qualitatively can you talk a little bit about the acquisition pipeline that you see maybe in the context of some of the recent malaise in the oil and gas space. I know that the upstream stuff is probably where you're looking, but perhaps that's color the conversation a little bit. And then separately, I know you all had been very controlled from a timing standpoint of when you've done acquisitions. It has been two or three all at one time. Are you still out there looking being active or can we assume maybe we'll see Gatherco anniversary before you route there kind of in the marketplace again?

Well, I guess, Spencer, actually the -- maybe just happens to be looked like it's one a year or something like that or once -- one every two years. We're constantly looking at things. As you know it's -- you look at a lot of things before you end up with one that makes sense. And so we're going to stay disciplined and that disciplined to some degree slows us down. But -- and as far as the pipeline, it's one of those things where I think if you're looking at two and you got a 5% probability or something or if you're looking at 10 and you have a 5% probability, something you don't really end up with a big pipeline, you're trying to do expected value. So, it's just really hard for us to say or give you any real predictable pattern on that.

Okay. And I guess also maybe with respect to Gatherco, I know we're still pretty early in this stages our getting in there and evaluating maybe some of the ground-level talent, but can you just talk a little bit about what you've seen maybe relative to your initial expectations, or so as far as integrating versus your initial timeline, kind of how that's going?

Okay. Well, Gatherco is a relatively small company. There's about 45 to 50 employees. So, it's not a major integration if you will. What we found when we're talking to employees is they are actually very excited about the opportunity. What's constrained their company in the past has been their access to capital and so they are very pleased. If you know we're looking to spend capital dollars and that's kind of sets them loose to accelerate their growth. And I think it's fair to say that to a person on our side, as they met Gatherco employees, they have been very pleased. So, we think it’s a good match for us and from a culture and employee perspective in addition to the financial benefits.

Thanks. That's really encouraging to hear that they are excited and that the easier access to capital could be a long-term positive. But if your prior history is any indication, we may see some upside risk here. So, I'm pretty excited about it. But that's all I have. Thanks for the color and you folks travel safe out there EGA [ph].

You too. See you there Spencer.

Thanks Spencer.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. I will now like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Mike McMasters

Thank you all again for joining our call today, and for your interest in Chesapeake Utilities. We're proud of what our team has accomplished for shareholders in the past and we're committed to working hard to deliver superior shareholder returns in the future. Thank you very much for time.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.