Welcome to the Eversource Energy Third Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Brandon, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. And I will now turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Kotkin. You may begin, sir.

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I'm Jeff Kotkin, Eversource Energy's Vice President for Investor Relations. Some of the statements made during this investor call may be forward-looking as defined within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risk and uncertainty, which may cause the actual results to differ materially from forecasts and projections. Some of these factors are set forth in the news release issued yesterday. Additional information about the various factors that may cause actual results to differ can be found in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2014 and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended June 30, 2015. Additionally, our explanation of how and why we use certain non-GAAP measures is contained within our news release and the slides we posted last night on our website under Presentations and Webcasts and in our most recent 10-K and 10-Q. Speaking today will be Jim Judge, our Executive Vice President and CFO; and Lee Olivier, our Executive Vice President for Enterprise Energy Strategy and Business Development. Also joining us today are Werner Schweiger, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Phil Lembo, our Vice President and Treasurer; Jay Buth, our Vice President and Controller; and John Moreira, our Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis. Now I will turn over the call to Jim. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Jeff, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Today I will cover our third quarter financial results, which were in line with our guidance range for the full year and…

Thank you, Lee. And I'm going to turn it back to Brandon to remind you how to enter questions. Brandon?

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Brandon. First question this morning is from Julien Dumoulin-Smith from UBS. Good morning, Julien.

Morning, Jeff. Good morning, team. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Hi, there.

Yeah. So perhaps just first quick question, if you will. Obviously, with developments at Pilgrim they have ramifications. You've kind of alluded to them. I'd be specifically interested in how does it impact transmission planning at ISO New England and could we see that float through here in the next year? And then separately, could you speak to the wider procurement process and how the carbon impact could drive specifically procurement for your solution effort? How is that going to tangibly have the impact on Northern Pass? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Okay. Just on your question, I think you asked in regards to Pilgrim retiring. One of the things that we're doing now is we're doing our system modeling around the impacts of Pilgrim retiring. And understanding what that means to reliability in that region because ISO New England does this as well and we have been quite complete about. We expect that there will be some upgrades as a result of Pilgrim retiring, but we don't see those upgrades at this particular time as being significant upgrades in terms of CapEx. In regards to Northern Pass and the carbon mandate, clearly right now as a result of Pilgrim retiring and stat is that Pilgrim produced 84% of all of Massachusetts' non-carbon energy about 84%. So Massachusetts has very aggressive goals in carbon reduction, as I've sated and as you can see on the slide. And the Governor, Governor Baker has said that he intends to meet the goals that the previous administrations had put in place. And that one of the ways to do that is by having large amounts of Canadian hydropower delivered to the region, and one could assume that in the case of Massachusetts they see part of their solution being with hydropower. And of course the difference between hydropower and wind is hydropower is firm. You can book it, you can schedule it, you can add up the numbers and determine the carbon impact of that and you can clearly place those against your goal. So we think carbon will be a significant attribute on which the state will be looking for us as part of the three state RFP.

Got it. And then just quickly following up here on the developments on the EIS, just the need to re-file impacted all of your negotiations in New Hampshire or does that reset any processes as far as that's going? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: No, we think we've had a period of a couple of years of really significant outreach into the communities with key stakeholders in the state, political leaders. We think we have a route that works, that is captured in our filing. And of course, as always when you go through siting there is always some local mitigation that a siting council would put in place, but we don't feel that that would be significant or have a significant impact to the project.

But to be clear the settlement conversations with New Hampshire will continue? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: We actually have no settlement conversations with New Hampshire. We have provided our Forward New Hampshire Plan which really outlines our benefits to the state. Those have been extremely well received by everyone from the Governor to key legislative leaders and the business community. So we're not in the process of negotiating a settlement. We believe that a litigated outcome here through the process is the best outcome and is an outcome that will stand up to scrutiny post the decision.

Great. Thank you. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: You're welcome.

Thank you, Julian. Next question is from Shar Pourreza from Guggenheim. Good morning, Shar.

Good morning, Jeff. Good morning, team. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Good morning.

Just one question only on Northern Pass. Maybe we could touch on TDI's competing proposal. Obviously, Clean Power Link has a similar COD. They jumped ahead with the final EIS. But then like you touched on the prepared remarks, you're dealing with the Vermont Yankee shutdown, the recent Pilgrim decision, you've got the Clean Power Plan, obviously infrastructures issues, the Governor's bill. So should we think about these projects as mutually exclusive? Can they coexist? How should we think about that? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Well, I think in regards to the first part of your question in regards to TDI, I won't speak for them, but they'll have to line up a source of energy in which they could sell over that line. And the energy, at least from Hydro-Québec from their hydro facilities, will come through the Northern Pass line. We have a contract with them that we've worked out several years ago and they are currently in the siting process, which is actually a fairly lengthy process in Québec. It's about a three-year process. They are in that process with us to site transmission line, a major substation, a converter in Québec and are engaged in no other siting activity. So from the standpoint of TDI, their power is not coming from Hydro-Québec, they would have to find another source of power. If you look at the other various projects, there will be a number of projects that will be bid into the three-state RFP and then perhaps even including another project by Eversource that we are working on development at this point in time. So there will be a number of those projects and the states that participate in the process will have to look at those to understand what is the most beneficial net present value for customers, what projects are indeed siteable and the creditability of the counter parties that would be building them. So that's I think the rationale there.

Okay. Thanks so much.

All right. Thanks, Shar. Next question is from Dan Eggers from Credit Suisse. Morning, Dan. Daniel Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hey. Good morning, guys. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Hey, Dan. Daniel Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Just could we follow-up a little bit on this Massachusetts electric grid modernization program and just what was the genesis of these projects, the nature of what you're going to do there? And when next year do you expect to get some visibility on spending for those projects? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. I think as my comments indicated, the spending is expected to be about $430 million and there's a series of components. We filed this back in mid-August, but next-generation remote fault circuit indicators, improvements to allow management of the distribution system, predictive outage protection, that sort of thing. So a lot of focus in the industry about making the grid more modern, smarter, more capable to accommodate distributed resources. So much of the spending is along the lines to achieve that. And, again, the budget we've submitted is a $430 million number. Daniel Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): And the process for the Commission to say yes on this and set the mechanism so you get more timely recovery... James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. The... Daniel Eggers - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): ...what process are we looking at for that? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, the process came out of the generic proceeding at the Mass DPU where the utilities were encouraged to file these plans. The utilities in Massachusetts did file them…

All right, Thanks, Dan. Next question is from Ashar Khan (39:24) from Visium. Good morning, Ashar (39:25).

Hi, good morning. How are you guys doing? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Good morning.

I was just trying to – we're running LTM $2.94 and the guidance this morning has been the midpoint is, if I'm right, $2.83, so we're going to lose, as you said, in the fourth quarter around $0.11 or so. Jim, can you just tell in which buckets the earnings decline is going to come in? Is it going to be the distribution generation side where majority of the shortfall is going to happen in the fourth quarter. I was just trying to pin in my – this result, as to where should we see the shortfalls, in which segments of the business in the fourth quarter? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. If you look at the fourth quarter, the year ago, there were a couple of unusual items one had to do, I guess combined probably totaled about $0.09 and it's got to do with what we've booked related to the FERC ROE case, so that would be in the transmission space. That's probably half that number, half the $0;09 number. And the other half would be that the change that we've seen in income taxes between the two quarters, the fourth quarter a year ago, and the ones that we expect coming up. Obviously, that would be spread across each of the segments.

Okay. Okay, appreciate it. And then Jim can you just – as you have mentioned as we look into 2016 and the 6% to 8% growth rate. As you mentioned that some of the spending on the pipe because of the approval process Northern Pass will be shifted. Will that lead to kind of like to be us at the lower end of that growth rate target next year. I'm just trying to see or can we find stuff to replace that shifting of some of that transmission spending as we look into next year? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. Ashar (41:24) just to sort of calibrate where we are just this year. If you look at the range that we've provided in the release yesterday and then today, the bottom end of that range $2.80 would be about a 6% growth in earnings over last year. The high end of that range, $2.85 would be an 8% growth over where we were last year. So again very consistent with the 6% to 8% growth that we've provided long-term. Obviously, we're into the 2016 budgeting process. I do feel good about where we are, but we haven't wrapped it up yet. We tend to finish it with a board approval in early December. We would like to start the year with an approved plan. But we do have continued transmission investment. We do see O&M reduction opportunities again next year. We've got new gas distribution rates that will kick-in at NSTAR Gas effective January 1, the rate increase that I mentioned. We continue to see vibrant growth in the number of customers on the gas side. The conversion seems to be going pretty well. So those have been the factors that have been drivers for our earnings growth over the last couple of years and many of them continue into 2016.

Okay. Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Welcome.

Well, thanks, Ashar (42:46). Our next question is from Travis Miller from Morningstar. Good morning, Travis.

Good morning. Thank you. I was wondering on the electric businesses and specifically, can you give us a glide path so to speak of earned ROEs, kind of where you're starting at this year and then some of the key factors? Obviously, there's net new investment, but what would be the elements that might keep those earned returns in that allowed return range for the next two to three years without having to file rate cases? Just wondering if you could give a sense for that glide path and the variables there for the electric business? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. On the gas business, the one subsidiary that we were significantly under-earning on was NSTAR Gas and obviously the order that we received Friday improved our ability to earn there. We generally forecast pretty flat sales growth on the electric side. 0% to 0.5% is the guidance that we've given long term. A couple of our electric subsidiaries have decoupling, so sales growth is largely irrelevant. So we have an opportunity to continue to grow earnings either through some of these trackers that we're putting in place, or through continued cost cutting. And we are doing much better I would say because of the cost cutting that we've been able to implement in terms of allowed ROEs. We continued to sort of operate within the deadband or sharing mechanisms that we have in place and they continue to generally improve year in year out.

Okay, that's all I had and thanks so much.

Thanks, Travis. Our next question is from Caroline Bone of Deutsche Bank. Good morning, Caroline.

Good morning. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about this other transmission project that you guys are working on that might bid into the three state RFP and what this might look like? And when it might be eligible to come into service? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Caroline, this is Lee. At this time, I really can't disclose more on that. We're still working with our partners, trying to firm up what that partnership would be, and how that would work, but I would say that's going well. And I think once we get farther down the road on that, we will look to disclose the partners and projects, so I just can't disclose anything on it at this point in time.

Okay, that's fair. And then, I guess, just actually a specific question on the three state Clean Energy RFP. You mentioned I believe that Northern Pass is going to participate, but I didn't think that NPT could participate in this stage because I didn't think large scale hydro qualifies under the current law in Massachusetts. Has something changed there or maybe I was misunderstanding how it worked? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Yeah. The RFP has three provisions in which you can bid on. One is just doing a kind of a power purchase agreement. The second one is doing a power purchase agreement with transmission. So you could bundle them together. And the third one was called a deliverability commitment, which means that you would build transmission to an energy source and that source of energy would make a commitment to flow X amount of energy over the course of a year, so in terms of megawatt hours. And of course particularly for carbon, you would want a source of energy that's large, that is firm, that is dispatchable. So that's kind of the – that's the three ways in which the project could participate. And in the case of Connecticut, there's probably about 250 megawatts or 300 megawatts of hydro power that could be purchased by Connecticut. And then all three states have agreed to the deliverability commitment model.

All right. Thanks very much, guys. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: You're welcome.

All right. Thanks, Caroline. Next question is from Greg Gordon from Evercore ISI. Good morning, Greg.

Thanks. How are you doing, guys? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hey, Greg. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Hey, Greg.

So just going back to – I was going back through time, just looking for the last official you gave on sort of your CapEx projections through 2018 and I believe it was in your April presentation for the Spring Utility Day for some broker. And I'm just – you've given kind of an update qualitatively on what you're looking at in terms of the evolution of the CapEx plan? You have a slide on page eight where you gave an update on all the major transmission reliability projects and you talked about all those stuff? Can you just talk about like whether this $3.9 billion CapEx plan that you've last gave us, if you're basically telling us that there is an upside bias to that plan because of the things that you've identified that would enhance customers' reliability or whether there was a placeholder in that plan already for a lot of this stuff or somewhere in between? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And Greg I think what you're referencing is when we did our the end of our year call back in February 2015, we used the same numbers and CapEx projections that we then embodied in our 10-K, so that's the annual update. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. I think not to fully reconcile, but what's changed since then, I think the grid modernization plan that I mentioned earlier that's under review at the Mass DPU, the $430 million of spending associated with that. Obviously, the cost of Northern Pass has increased and we've disclosed the new price went from $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion. There are increases in the Greater Boston Reliability Solution that I alluded to in my comments as well. And Lee mentioned that there may be other transmission projects that we're looking at now that we haven't sort of quantified or disclosed at this stage, but the progress has generally been increased spending in transmission over what was provided earlier, transmission or distribution over what was provided earlier in the year.

Great. Thanks. That's pretty clear. The only reason I asked was because there is one section of those bar charts that says $968 million of other forecasted reliability projects that aren't specifically called out. But you're saying that all of the stuff that you just delineated would have been upside to what you thought you were going to spend when you put out this plan? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: That bucket tends to be many, many smaller projects, each of which are identified and estimated, but those projects are still in the plan going forward.

Okay, that's very clear. Thank you guys. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Welcome Greg.

Thanks Greg. Next question is from Michael Lapides from Goldman. Good morning, Michael. Michael J. Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hey, guys, congratulations and congrats on the run the Patriots are having up there. Real quick. When you think about the CapEx schedule, so not the total amount, but the timing for both Northern Pass and Access Northeast relative to what you had back in the K, where are you kind of schedule wise versus where you originally thought you would be 9 or 10 months ago? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Well, we really haven't disclosed, I don't think, any Northern Pass capital expenditure spending by year in the 10-K. I think from the period of the 10-K, I think now that we have a new schedule that we have a high degree of confidence and there has a been some slippage over where we were a year ago on Northern Pass. So some of the spending that we had in 2016 has shifted into 2017 and similarly some of the 2017 spending into 2018. So we intend to provide a refreshed and new capital outlook as we usually do after our year-end results are published in February. But no major changes other than I would say that the new Northern Pass timeline. Michael J. Lapides - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. And on Access Northeast, just in terms of how you're thinking about the timeline for construction year-over-year relative to what you had originally put out numbers a while ago? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Yeah. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Michael, just to be clear, we never showed numbers year-by-year for Access Northeast, though we said that that was in addition…

Thanks, Michael. Next question is from Paul Patterson from Glenrock. Good morning, Paul.

Good morning. Just quickly on Northern Pass and the forward capacity auction number. When do you think that we'll actually see it bid into the FCA? Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: That is probably not in the immediate future. It's really an HQ decision because they would bid that into the forward capacity market. So I don't think you'll see anything this year, in the next auction which I think is in February, so it's a ways out.

Okay. And the reason for that? Can you provide... Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: The reason for that is obviously you make the commitment, for instance, the 2019, 2020 timeframe, if you make that commitment, you've got to cover the commitment if for some reason that there is a delay as a result of siting or – we still have to do some work with ISO New England in the Market Monitor and so forth. So we still have some technical issues, market issues to work out through them. So you want to get farther along in those discussions, you want to have a better sense around where the siting process is before you commit to 1,100 megawatts into the marketplace and you've got to have a line to deliver it.

Okay. And then on the grid modernization project in Massachusetts, advanced meters, you mentioned it as being optional in the slide. And I was just wondering you guys have had a more conservative approach towards meters I believe in the past. What do you think the adoption rate or how much of that CapEx do you guys associate with advanced meters in that proposal that you have there? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, there is the ability to often include it in the proposal, which means that we're not suggesting that AMI should be spread around our entire customer base. I think the details of the filing are available in addition to the meters and it was also IT system changes that would be needed to accommodate time varied rates. So the detail is in our filing I believe, but I don't have the number readily available, Paul.

Okay. Sure. But would you say that you guys are still cautious it would seem, am I wrong, in terms of the benefits that advanced meters are likely to provide? Was that a fair characterization? James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, we believe that there are some people that may be interested in monitoring their usage very closely on a daily basis if need be. And for that group of people we will allow the option to give them the infrastructure to do that, but we think that it's a very small minority of our customer base overall.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Paul. Next question is from Andrew Weisel from Macquarie. Good morning, Andrew. Andrew M. Weisel - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Hey. Good morning, everyone. James J. Judge - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good morning, Andrew. Andrew M. Weisel - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: First question on some of the public hearings you've had for Northern Pass. How would you say the feedback you received from those meetings went? And how might that effect the SEC review? Media reports suggest that they weren't the most favorable conversations. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Yeah, I would say that there was a range. There were five meetings in five different locations, actually I think we did six in five locations. But clearly in the Northern part of New Hampshire, we had the most vociferous group of folks there. But at the same time, the demeanor was different. It was respectful. There was less emotion. There's always going to be the hardcore opponents to it, but I would say there was more dialog this time. I would say it was informative. We had some of the other meetings really where just a handful of people showed up because they really don't have that concern. And so it was arranged. But I will say it's markedly different from the open houses that we've had in New Hampshire before around this line, a little lot less emotion and some mutual respect between the presenters and the audience. I really think it was very, very well done. Andrew M. Weisel - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Sounds good. Thank you. Leon J. Olivier - EVP-Energy Strategy & Business Development: Yeah. Andrew M. Weisel - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc.: Next question on the Massachusetts modernization plan. It might be too…

Thank you, Andrew. That's the last question. So we want to thank you, folks, very much for joining us today. As Jim said earlier, we'll see many of you down at EEI starting on Sunday. Safe travels and we look forward to seeing you there. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.