Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy's Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gille, Manager of Investor Relations at Alliant Energy. Please go ahead

Good morning. I would like to thank all of you on the call and on the webcast for joining us today. We appreciate your participation. With me here today are Pat Kampling, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Tom Hanson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Robert Durian, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer; as well as other members of the Senior Management Team. Following prepared remarks by Pat, Tom and Robert, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's third quarter 2016 earnings, and narrowed 2016 earnings guidance. This release, as well as supplemental slides that will be referenced during today's call, are available on the Investor page of our website at www.alliantenergy.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you that the remarks we make on this call and our answers to your questions include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters discussed in Alliant Energy's press release issued last night and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, this presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release, which is available on our website at www.alliantenergy.com. At this point I'll turn the call over to Pat.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. With Veterans Day just a few days away, I would like take a moment to pay tribute to the approximately 400 proud veterans that work for Alliant Energy and to those veterans that are on the call with us today. We thank you for your service to our country and for protecting the freedom of people around the world. I also want to extend my thanks and appreciation to the military families that support those on active duty as well as our veterans. Yesterday, we issued a press release, which included third quarter and year-to-date financial results, narrowed our 2016 earnings guidance range and announced the 2017 common stock dividend target. That release also provided an updated annual capital expenditure plans through 2020 and our forecast for total CapEx for 2021 through 2025. I am pleased to report that we delivered another solid quarter. Warmer than normal winter temperatures lowered first part of earnings with warmer summer increased third quarter earnings resulting in a year to date temperature impact sales being close to normal. Therefore temperature variances had virtually no impact on our year to date earnings. So with summer behind us, we are narrowing our 2016 earnings guidance with a midpoint remaining at $1.88 per share which is consistent with earnings guidance provided to the November 16 on a post-split basis. Tom will provide details for the quarter later in the call. As we previously indicated 2017 earnings guidance will 2017 earnings guidance will be issued in conjunction with our yearend call this February. However, I am reaffirming that our long term earnings growth objective remain at 5% to 7%. Yesterday we also announced a 7% increase for our targeted 2017 common dividend to $1.26 per share. 2017 dividend target…

Thank you, Pat. Good morning, everyone. We released third quarter 2016 earnings last evening with our non-GAAP earnings from continuing operations of $0.80 per share, which was $0.01 per share lower than the non-GAAP earnings in the third quarter of 2015. A summary of the quarter-over-quarter earnings drivers may be found on Slides 5, 6, and 7. The non-recurring $0.23 per share charges for the third quarter of this year relate to the asset valuation charges for the Franklin County wind farm. As Pat indicated, we plan to seek FERC approval to transfer this asset to IPL and per Iowa Administrative Code, the transfer must be made at the lower cost to market. The current value of the Franklin County wind farm as of September 30th, 2016 was determined to be approximately $33 million subject to working capital adjustments. When 2016 earnings guidance was issued in November 2015, we forecasted temperature normalized retail electric sales would increase 1% for the two utilities. Through the first three quarters of this year, temperature normalized sales increased almost 1%. IPL sales are relatively flat year-over-year, whereas WP&L sales had exceeded 1% sales growth forecast. The commercial and industrial segments continue to be the largest sales growth customer classes year-over-year in both utilities. The third quarter 2016 results included adjustment to our ATC earnings to reflect the recent FERC decision related to the first complaint and the anticipated decision related to the second complaint filed regarding the ROE levels charged by transmission owners in MISO. The reserve for the first complaint reflects an all-in ROE of 10.82% and the reserve for the second complaint reflected an anticipated all-in ROE of 10.2%. This reserve was triggered by the FERC ALJ’s initial decision on the second complaint issued in June of this year. We are expecting…

Starting with our financing plans, our current forecast reflects strong cash flows, given the earnings generated by the business and impacts of the extension of bonus depreciation deductions through 2019. As a result of the five-year extension of bonus depreciation, Alliant Energy currently does not expect to make any significant federal income tax payments to 2021. With additional tax payment reductions expected after 2021, due to the additional wind investments included in our plans, this forecast is based on current federal net operating losses and credit carryforward positions, as well as future amounts of bonus depreciation expected to be taken on federal income tax returns over the next two years. We believe that with our strong cash flows and financing plan, we will maintain our targeted liquidity and capitalization ratios, as well as high quality credit ratings. Our 2016 financing plan assumes we’ll issue approximately $25 million of new common equity through our shareowner direct plan. We have completed the long-term debt issuances for 2016, which included issuing long-term debt of $300 million at IPL and $500 million that are non-regulated businesses. $310 million of such proceeds were used to refinance the maturity of term loans at our parent and non-regulated businesses. Our 2017 financing plan assumes we will issue up to $150 million of new common equity, as well as long-term debt of up to $250 million at IPL and up to $300 million at WPL. We may adjust these plans as deemed prudent, if market conditions warrant and as our debt and equity needs continue to be reassessed. As we look beyond 2017, our equity needs will be driven by the Riverside expansion project and renewable investments in our capital expenditure plans. Our forecast assumes that the capital expenditures beyond 2017 will be financed by operating cash flows…

Thank you, Mr. Durian. At this time, the company will open up the call for questions from members of the investment community. Alliant Energy’s management will take as many questions as they can within the one-hour time frame for this morning's call. [Operator Instructions] And we have a question from Brian Russo with Ladenburg Thalmann.

Hi, good morning.

Good morning, Brian.

Sorry if I missed this early, but the 7% dividend growth target in ‘17, how does that kind of translate into your targeted payout ratio?

Sure, Brian. Yeah, we're still in our targeted range of 60% to 70% and you'll get more clarity on that answer when we release the earnings guidance at the year-end call in February.

Understood, so, I know - I know you're not giving ‘17 guidance, but could you put that in context? Is that at the higher or the lower end of the range or just comfortable within?

Yeah, Brian, I’ll just have to leave it where I answered it. I'm sorry.

Yeah, understood. And then in terms of the post 2017 capital needs, should we think about the timing of equity more with the timing that some of the large scale projects are commercially operational or is it just - is it more so your target capital ratios at the utilities?

Brian, I’ll let Robert to respond to that.

Yeah, good morning, Brian. Yeah, what we're doing is we're targeting capitalization ratios that are consistent with our rate case decisions for both IPL and WPL. And so, the equity needs beyond 2017 are largely going to be driven by the capital that we need for the Riverside expansion, as well as the wind investment that we're proposing. So, there will - during constructions, it will actually be towards the end of the cycle, which is in the 2019-2020 timeframe, we will need some most likely equity before that.

Got it. Okay. And you mentioned the C&I customer sales and growth. Can you just maybe elaborate on kind of which industries you're seeing strengthened?

We're seeing some across the board. What’s important here is it’s more a reflection of maybe adding a second or third shift. We're seeing some expansions relapsing and new companies coming under our service territory. But we do have the benefit of seeing some benefit across various FIC codes. But as I stated, it's more in Wisconsin than in Iowa at least for 2016.

Got it. And could you tell us what the weather impact to earnings were versus normal in the third quarter?

What we saw - this is Robert. What we saw in the third quarter is actually a $0.02 increase of our earnings as a result of weather in the third quarter and actually for the year-to-date for about a penny ahead of forecast for the first nine months.

Okay, great. Thank you very much and Tom best of luck in the future.

Thank you, Brian.

Brian, see you next week.

And Ms. Gille, there are no further questions at this time.

With no more questions, this concludes our call. A replay will be available through November 11, 2016 at 888-203-1112 for U.S. & Canada or 719-457-0820 for international. Callers should reference conference ID 8244179. In addition, an archive of the conference call and a script of the prepared remarks made on the call will be available on the Investor section of the company's website later today. We all thank you for your continued support of Alliant Energy and feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions.

Thank you. And that does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect