Thank you for holding. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Alliant Energy First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Susan Gille, Manager of Investor Relations at Alliant Energy.

Good morning. I would like to thank you 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; and Robert Durian, Vice President, CFO and Treasurer; as well as other members of the senior management team. Following prepared remarks by Pat and Robert, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy's first quarter 2017 earnings. 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. A reconciliation between the non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in our first quarter 2017 and year end 2016 earnings release, which are 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, I'm pleased to share with you our first quarter 2017 results and I will also share several major milestones that occurred in April. Next, Robert will provide the details on our results as well as review our regulatory schedule. Like other utilities in the region we enjoyed a mild winter, but it did lower our first quarter results by $0.04 per share. This winter was even warmer than last year, in which we realized $0.02 per share lower earnings when compared to normal temperatures. Therefore, mild temperatures led to a negative first quarter variance from last year of $0.02 per share. Despite the mild temperatures, we achieved solid earnings this quarter of $0.43 per share, which was the same as the first quarter of 2016. With the exception of the mild weather these results were in line with our expectations. Robert will provide more details regarding the quarter's results a bit later. And with these financial results, we reaffirm our 2017 earnings guidance range of $1.92 to $2.06 per share. Earnings growth objective remains at 5% to 7% annually through 2020 based on non-GAAP 2016 earnings per share of $1.88. This long-term growth objective continues to be supported by the utilities' robust capital expenditure plans, modest sales growth and constructive regulatory outcomes. We achieved several milestones and advanced our strategy in early April. First, Marshalltown Generating Station began commercial operations on April 1. Second, the Franklin County Wind Farm was transferred to IPL also on April 1. And third, IPL filed an electric rate review on April 3, and interim rates went into effect on April 13. Marshalltown was completed on time and below budget, with a full load testing heat rate of 6,610 Btu per kilowatt hour, better than the…

Good morning, everyone. We released first quarter 2017 earnings last evening, with our earnings from continuing operations of $0.43 per share, which is the same as the earnings for the first quarter 2016. Our summary of the year-over-year earnings drivers can be found on Slides 2 and 3. New WPL retail electric and gas base rates, which went in effect January 1, contributed to higher earnings in the first quarter of 2017. These increased earnings were offset by the negative impacts of mild temperatures, higher fuel expense and higher depreciation expense from rate base additions. Excluding the impacts of temperatures and the extra day in 2016 for leap year, retail electric sales between the first quarters of 2017 and 2016 increased more than 1%. Now let's briefly review our 2017 guidance. Last evening, we shared our updated view of our earnings walk comparing 2016 non-GAAP EPS to the midpoint of the 2017 EPS guidance range on Slide 4. The update quantifies the impacts of higher IPL and WPL revenues due to the retail base rate increases as separate drivers in the earnings walk. As shown on this slide, the 6% growth in earnings is primarily driven by infrastructure investments reflected in WPL's recently approved retail electric and gas base rates and IPL's interim electric base rates that went into effect April 13. The 2017 guidance range assumes normal temperatures and continued retail sales growth of approximately 1% when compared to 2016. Please note that when comparing 2016 to 2017, we expect most of the sales growth to come from commercial and industrial classes. During the past seven years, we have been able to earn on our increasing IPL rate base while keeping base rate flat. The recent rate base additions, which include grid modernization investments, the Marshalltown Generating Station and…

[Operator Instructions] It appears our first question comes from Julien Dumoulin-Smith with UBS.

This is actually Nick Campanella on for Julien. I was just curious, as we include the extra 200 megawatt wind at IPL into the CapEx plan going forward, how should we be thinking about any additional opportunities at the backfill post 2020, keeping with the long-term EPS growth profile. Just trying to get a sense of kind of what direction you're looking at initially just as PTC opportunities decline.

Sure. Thanks for the question, Nick. Now this is still an evolving story as we look for acquiring additional sites in Iowa. So it's a pretty active process that we're going through right now. Although we're very pleased that we do have the additional capacity to increase the wind filing in Iowa, I wouldn't assume that there'll be more after that. But again, if we do find that, we'll definitely let you know. But we'll probably update the CapEx plan in November again with the EEI deck. This is all still a bit preliminary until we make our regulatory filings.

Got it. Okay. And then is there any specific reason to do more at IPL rather than WPL in this case?

We're actually finding really good sites in Iowa for Iowa customers, and the Iowa regulatory climate, is very supportive of additional wind. As you recall from our last docket, when we got the 500 megawatts approved, we were encouraged to come back and do more, so really just following up on the last docket that we had in Iowa.

Got it. Okay, thank you so much.

[Operator Instructions] Ms. Gille, there are no further questions at this time.

With no more questions, this concludes our call. A replay will be available through May 11, 2017, at 888-203-1112 for US and 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 Investors section of the company's website later today.