Welcome to the ITC Holdings Corp. Third Quarter Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. (Operator instructions). As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn to the conference over to Gretchen Holloway. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for ITC’s 2011 third quarter earnings conference call. Joining me on today’s call are – Joseph Welch, Chairman, President and CEO of ITC and Cameron Bready, our Executive Vice President, Treasurer and CFO. Last night, we issued a press release summarizing our results for the third quarter and for the nine months ended September 30th, 2011. We expect to file our Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone of the cautionary language in the Safe Harbor statement, which can also be referenced on slide two for those of you participating in the webcast. Certain statements made during today’s call that are not historical facts, such as those regarding our future plans, objectives, and expected performance are considered forward-looking statements under Federal Securities Laws. While we believe these statements are reasonable, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from our projections and expectations. These risks and uncertainties are described in our reports filed with the SEC such as our periodic reports on Forms 10-Q and 10-K and our other SEC filings. You should consider these risk factors when evaluating our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update these statements except as maybe required by law. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Joe Welch.

Thanks, Gretchen, and good morning, everyone. We are once again pleased to report solid operational and financial performance. Our results for both the quarter and for the year-to-date period continued to position the company to successfully deliver on our goals and objectives for yet another year. Further, these results have once again strengthened our track record in demonstrating our capabilities as a best in class operator while also successfully executing on our financial commitments, which includes significant growth in our capital program by investing in critically-needed transmission infrastructure projects. From an operational standpoint, we are particularly pleased with how our transmission system performed during the stressed conditions of this past summer, resulting from record high peaks due to unusually warm weather and a series of severe storms that moved across the regions. These conditions serve as a critical reminder of the important of the operational strength of our system and the overall reliability of the transmission grid. The reliable service experience on our system during these months and resulting absence of issues or disruptions to our customers continue to demonstrate the value of our capital investment and answers as the differentiating factor for ITC. I would emphasize that our performance during these conditions is in no way a surprise to us as our system performed consistent with all of our expectations and design specifications. We view our operational excellence as not only critical to our core operational platform, but also as a key enabler and differentiating factor as we pursue growth through our development and other strategic initiatives. The resulting competitive advantage from our unrelenting focus on operational excellence manifest themselves by distinguishing ITC as an established and successful transmission owner, operator and developer. From our perspective, the overall landscape for transmission grid remains quite favorable as evidenced by both…

Thanks, Joe and good morning, everyone. As Joe highlighted in his opening comments, we are quite pleased with our overall financial performance for the quarter and year-to-date period. For the third quarter of 2011, ITC reported net income of $44 million or $0.85 per diluted share as compared to net income of $38.4 million or $0.75 per diluted share for the third quarter of 2010. Net income for the nine month ended September 30th, 2011 was $129 million or $2.49 per diluted share compared to $108.9 million or $2.13 per diluted share for the same period last year. The primary drivers contributing to this increase in net income include higher rate base and AFUDC at all of our operating companies resulting from our capital investments for the quarter and year-to-date period, partially offset by slightly lower revenues is associated with the expiration in May 2011 of the amortization of the ITC Transmission rate freeze deferral. Our strong financial performance for the quarter and year-to-date period is largely due to our successful execution of our capital investment plans for the year. For the nine months ended September 30, 2011, ITC invested $420.5 million in capital projects at its operating companies including $55.8 million, $103.2 million, $191.2 million and $70.3 million at ITC Transmission METC, ITC Midwest and ITC Great Plains respectively. It is also worthy to know that we increased our dividend during the third quarter. In August, we increased our quarterly dividend 5.2% to $35.25 per share or $1.41 per share on an annualized basis. This is the sixth consecutive year that ITC has raised its quarterly dividend, which underscores both our track record of delivering on our commitments along with our confidence and our ability to execute on our long-term strategy. We continue to view our dividend as an…

Thank you. (Operator instruction) Your first question is from Kevin Cole with Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Kevin Cole – Credit Suisse: Hi, good morning guys. Thank you for taking my call. Joe, as you know, I guess, we’ve been hearing a lot of concern about the Section 206 filing of the Northeast and a potential read through into risk into your ROEs given today’s low interest rates. Do you mind, I guess, sharing your thoughts about the structure of your currently allowed ROEs for your businesses and how you think your current ROEs fit within the regional range allowed by the FERC?

Yeah. The fact is that what you have out there is, of course, your cup of plate under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act and I think there’s a lot of things that everyone needs to take into account. I would be reminiscent saying that I’ve heard a lot of rhetoric about this, but actually, I haven’t lost much sleep over it because I believe it to be truly rhetoric. First of all, let’s just go down through the process and understand something that we are operating in what one recognizes that it’s not only an artificially low interest rate environment, but one more time, it is artificially held low and not there. The capital structure that we have at ITC was found and is just unreasonable and in the range of what exists today and when you go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Ccommission, under Section 206 of the Power Act, the burden approve shifts to the complainant to prove that the rates are unjust and unreasonable. And, as a matter of fact, if you look at the respondents that have now responded to the complaint, they have put forth their study that shows them within the range of just unreasonable. So I don’t see this having what I call a huge ripple effect. The other thing that I think everybody needs to get really solidly in mind – and I’ve talked with most of the investors about this at one time or another – is that when you look at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, they don’t do their work in what I call a vacuum. They don’t look just at the rate of return. They look at the cost and the benefits as they’ve stated really strongly in Order 1000 to do this, their job and…

Yeah, we would.

Yeah, Kevin, this is Cameron. I think clearly we view the rates that exist today for all of our operating companies. Not just ITC transmission, but all of the operating companies that we have in place is being just unreasonable and we believe that that would be supported by appropriate zones of reasonableness reflecting appropriate proxy groups for those operating companies in a process today. So, again, as Joe mentioned before, to demonstrate that something is unjust and unreasonable is a fairly high hurdle and a fairly high bar to achieve particularly. And I think we’ve seen this in the New England case now, the respondents who have been able to put forth a fairly good argument as to why a zone of reasonableness exists today that would clearly encompass the ROE that has been established for the New England ISO. And I think we feel confident that in our market and with our operating companies, we could do the same. Kevin Cole – Credit Suisse: Okay. Thank you for that. And I guess a question on a different topic. So it’s 5 to 18 segments for (inaudible) look to be entered in the vital stages, does that mean that they’ll qualify for your advance face bucket and we should list them to help fill out your 14, 15 rate base at the analyst day?

Kevin, this is Cameron again. We will provide an update as to our pipeline at the analyst day. I think it’s fairly safe to assume that the projects that are currently in the RGOS starter group that’s going through the MISO process today were reflected in our last pipeline. And obviously, we’ll risk adjust it appropriately given where we were in the process at the time. Certainly given that our expectation is that these projects are going to move forward through the MISO process in December to the extent that we feel good about that happening, I think it’s reasonable to expect that they would move into a more advanced stage of development and that would be reflected and will be reflected in our updates who are our five-year plan at that time and as well as our update to our development pipeline. Kevin Cole – Credit Suisse: Good. Thank you, guys. Have a good day.

Thanks, Kevin.

(Operator instruction) Our next question is from Jay Dobson of Wunderlich Securities. Your line is open. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: Hey, good morning.

Good morning, Jay. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: Hey. Joe, just a little more on this two-six, and I agree with the way that you’ve characterized it. But talk a little bit about your relationship with your customers because I think there’s a bit of a difference there as well that supports your position. But obviously, I think a lot of us worry not so much about you having a lot of risk, but just the idea that one of your customers stands up and files this because that’s what tends to impact your stock. So maybe just talk to us about your relationship with customers and sort of what you’re seeing in your individual region that probably differentiates you from what’s going on in the Northeast.

Well, the thing that I would rather than talk about directly relations with customers is what I would say is what is our operating performance and what have we done. As we have stated, if you look at our outage statistics, we are a top decile performer. When you look at our maintenance on our system, again, we are a top decile performer in performing our maintenance. When you look at what we do with the money that we get from the ROE, you’re going to find out that our payout ratios on dividend is very low compared to other utilities, and we’re taking that money and reinvesting it in the transmission, which is exactly what FERC wanted us to do and what they expect us to do with that money that we’re earning. So they’ve provided us with a pipeline to keep investing in transmission and we have done that. The customers on their side, we know for a fact that we’ve relieved congestion in this region. They need to get more access to that competitive wholesale market and hope that they do. And I think as with time goes forward, those will all work. It’s hard to point to any one point in time when you’re looking at the transmission system and say, "Man, that got fixed." But when you look at what happened this last summer that we absolutely went through record peak loads across the system, multiple systems, and our transmission systems perform flawlessly. Not everyone can say that. And so, I think customers are benefiting from that and hopefully we’ll get the economy back here in Michigan to start to get more robust and those benefits will even be greater. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: Got you. That’s helpful. But I guess where I was going was, you guys have good relationship with your customers. So a lot of the things you’re talking about are sort of well-telegraphed to those folks. And I don’t want to say that prevents any action, but I guess what I’m looking for is you feel good about your relationship with customers as sort of, whatever, some sort of an insurance policy.

I feel good about not just the customers, but we term it as all the stakeholders, because it’s a bigger bread basket than just customers. And we do reach to them. We try to explain to them everything that’s happening and take their comments and take their comments to heart as to what’s going on. The fact is, is that as we transform the electric utility business, because I believe long-term starts to look more and more like the gas business where you’ll have exempt wholesale generators and you’re going to have regional transmission lines carrying wholesale power and regulated distribution companies. There’s going to be attention that’s always going to exist, especially as you try to build that regional transmission grid. But overall, I’d say they’re good. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: That’s great. And then, maybe turning to the competitive environment, Joe. We talked a little bit about this as you are just sort of digesting Order 1000 on the second quarter call. But again, sort of looking out longer term, maybe three to five years, certainly as you guys are thinking about updating your capital forecast. What are sort of the competitive dynamics you’re seeing as certainly others want to get in to the transmission business? You obviously have some sustainable competitive advantages, but sort of how you’re seeing the competitive dynamic for development looking out a couple of years.

There are different items around the competitiveness. First of all, if you look at it, there is no other company that looks like ITC. And as a result of that, when I look at just as a company, I don’t see that competition coming from there. The competition that I think that’s going to come and happen is going to be other people trying to build development projects, such as what we’re doing with the Kansas V-Plan or the KETA plan. And I don’t believe that that competition is – I don’t think that they’re going to be as competitively footed as we are, because we have the total operation capability. It’s one thing to put a piece of wire up in the air, and that’s what most of our contractors do for us. From the point that it goes up in the air, we’re talking about the operations. We’re talking about the restoration under storm conditions. We’re talking about interconnection with other utilities and all of the things that go there from the NERC standards, the substandards that we have to do today that weren’t in existence five years ago. I don’t see that a lot of people have the capability that ITC has top to bottom, from financial performance right down to operational excellence. And I think that a lot of people are going to focus on price, but a lot of people when they buy a car focus on the price of the car. And then what you find out over the long haul is they start to migrate to those suppliers of those automobiles that give them the most reliable transportation. And that’s where we’re going to be in this business too.

Hey, Jay, this is Cameron. I think that point that Joe has made is one of the thoughts that are underappreciated, particularly as it relates to our development capabilities, because you go in to this new markets, the stakeholders within those markets, be it legislators, regulators, coops, municipalities, they all have a very strong voice in, ultimately, who is in those markets and operating in those markets and pursuing these projects. And I think one of the advantages that we clearly have is our ability as an operator and our best-in-class operations track record, which as I’d like to say it’s the calling card we utilize any time we try to expand our business in a new market. And that really resonates with people, because it’s one thing, as Joe said, to be able to go in and contract for someone to build a line. It’s quite another thing to be able to operate that line effectively to meet all the NERC compliance standards, the cyber security standards that we have today to be well-positioned, to be able to put that line back up in the event of a storm or something of that nature. So, having the total package that we do, I think, really does create – and you highlighted it in your question – a competitive advantage for us that we still feel like we’ll play a meaningful role in our ability to be successful from the development perspective going forward.

And let me add to what Cameron said also is that the fact that we’re an independent transmission company. Meaning, we’re not in the generation business and we’re not in the distribution business. And so, actually, we don’t pose a threat to any of those people there who are in those markets. Our job is to build transmission and own and operate it. We’re not here to unload some of our excess capacity capabilities or to expand our utility foot print other than for transmission. So, I think we have a lot of competitive advantages and we’ll utilize them to the best of our ability. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: No, that’s great. Thanks, Joe, and thanks, Cameron. Cameron, one more. On the income tax rate, I saw that was lower and you sort of highlighted it sort of identifying lower state income tax. Give us an idea what’s sort of going on there and if this is something that’s going forward we should be thinking about on an ongoing basis or just give me a little more granularity there.

Yes, sure. I mean, just given the size of our business, the actual impact wasn’t that large. But it really relates to some clean up around our Iowa State tax position and reduction or elimination of evaluation allowance with respect to some state NOLs that we have in Iowa that we expect to be able to utilize given our long term forecast now in Iowa. So, as we wrapped up our planning process through the summer and also finalize our tax positions for the end of 2010, we were able to refined our tax planning around Iowa a little bit to free up some of that, which was the reason that you see a little bit lower effective tax rate for the quarter. But it’s not a sort of ongoing, I think, expectation that would be at that level. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: Okay. Got you. And I agree with your characterization. It’s a small item. But if we’re modeling out 12, we don’t allow that to snap back for 12 and then on an ongoing basis.

Yes. I mean, I still would view sort of our effective tax rate on average over time sort of in that 37% range. Jay Dobson – Wunderlich Securities: Okay, that’s great. Thanks so much for the comments.

Thanks, Jay.

Thank you. Our next question is from Neil Kalton of Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is open. Neil Kalton – Wells Fargo Securities: Hi. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Neil. Neil Kalton – Wells Fargo Securities: Just as a question on the pending SPP ITP 10. It looks like they’ve come out with some new plans there. And I’m wondering if you’re seeing any new opportunities for you guys in SPP as a result of this ITP 10?

Yes, Neil. This is Cameron. We’ve obviously been actively engaged in the planning process in SPP, including what is currently being reflected in ITP 10. I will note – and I think you’ve sort of touched on this, while it is still, I think, a fluid situation as to what ultimately will be refined and improved through ITP 10. But clearly, there are components of ITP 10 that we have been actively working on with our partners in that market. And I think we remain hopeful as we sit here today that many of those or some of those opportunities will ultimately be promoted through ITP 10. As part of the reason we’re having our analyst day, investor day a little later this year is we’re hoping to have a little more clarity on some of these development initiatives, so we can provide a fulsome and, I think, more complete assessment of the development pipeline based on how some of these things progress here over the next couple of months, which we do view as critical as it relates to both what MISO is doing around the MVP projects, as well as what SPP is doing around ITP 10. Neil Kalton – Wells Fargo Securities: That’s perfect. Thanks.

Thank you. (Operator instructions) There are no further questions at this time. This concludes the question-and-answer portion of our call. Anyone wishing to hear the conference call replay available through Tuesday, November 1st, should dial toll free, 855-859-2056 or 404-537-3406. The pass code is 18425589. The webcast of this event will also be archived on the ITC website at itc-holdings.com. Thanks everyone for joining us and have a great day. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference, you may now disconnect. Good day.