Good morning. My name is Brent and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the MDU Resources Group 2016 Second Quarter 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 period. This call will be available for replay beginning at 1:00 PM Eastern today through 11:59 PM Eastern on August 17th. The conference ID number for the replay is 38294454. Again, the conference ID number for the replay is 38294454. The number to dial for the replay is 1-855-859-2056 or 1-404-537-3406. I would now like to turn the conference over to Doran Schwartz, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of MDU Resources Group. Thank you. Mr. Schwartz, you may begin your conference. Doran N. Schwartz - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: Thank you, Brent, and welcome to everyone to our second quarter earnings release conference call. The conference call is being broadcast live to the public over the Internet and slides will accompany our remarks. If you'd like to view the slides, please go to our website at www.mdu.com and follow the link to the conference call. Our earnings release is also available on our website. During the course of this presentation, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although the company believes that its expectations and beliefs are based on reasonable assumptions, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of factors that may cause actual results to differ, refer to Item 1A, Risk Factors, in our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Our format today will include formal remarks by Dave Goodin, President and CEO of MDU Resources, followed by a…

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Hi. Good morning. Nice quarter. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi. Thank you, Brent. Good to talk with you this morning. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Yeah. First question I guess would be on the construction materials, you had a really nice growth here in the quarter when a lot of your peers have been kind of blaming weather for causing delays in their respective businesses. Was this just not an issue this quarter? Or is it just a function of the underlying demand being that good? David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Brent, I'm going to have Dave Barney weigh in on that, because he can't wait to tell you how Knife River's doing. David C. Barney - President & Chief Executive Officer, Knife River Corporation, MDU Resources Group, Inc.: Good morning, Brent. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Hey, Dave. David C. Barney - President & Chief Executive Officer, Knife River Corporation, MDU Resources Group, Inc.: Yeah, we did – we were impacted by weather in our Central Texas operations, but the bigger impact was that Eastern Texas operations. But I don't know, we just have so much work there, it was a good year. We're ahead of last year. They have a strong DOT budget there. I believe we're going to continue to be strong in Texas for the coming years. So, it did have an impact, but not like I guess other companies did. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Got it. Okay. And then you're holding on to the revenue outlook there. Is…

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Congrats on a nice quarter. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey. Good morning, Matt. Thanks, appreciate visiting this morning.

First question. Could you talk about overall, in the first half how the results have been tracking versus your internal expectations? Given you've left the guidance intact, should we assume that you're kind of just down the middle of the Fairway so far? And then within that, on a segment by segment basis, are there certain segments where the results and/or your expectations have been tracking positively or negatively versus your initial expectations? David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, that's – I'll try to catch part of that, Matt, because it's pretty broad based. So yes, we left the earnings guidance in place. And you think through the first half of the year, certainly Knife is off to a great start, and combined construction, a little over $40 million in earnings there. Some offsets to that, though: weather at the Utility that affected the natural gas side of the business really offset the nice pick-up we had on the electric side. When you think about – at the Pipeline & Midstream business, we didn't anticipate maybe holding basis differentials that have held wide as they've done. That's been a nice supplement, you might say, to Martin and the business over there. Clearly, when you think about the earnings, continuing operations, $1.00 to $1.15, it's pretty wide range when you think about that. There's certainly some variables when we think about the back half of the year, one being project execution. Really important that $1.3 billion at the two construction companies, much of that will be worked off in the back half of the year. So project execution, then weather and timing; so we've got weather – Mr. Barney and Mr. Thiede are hoping for a nice fall and – so they can continue to stay in the field and do a lot of work. That's actually counter-productive for Nicole in that 800,000 – 900,000 customers we've got on the natural gas side. So there's a bit of an offset, might have (25:18) hedge there. So yes, we left the guidance intact. We do like how the business performed in the first quarter and second quarter, and look forward to sharing more results here at the end of third quarter.

Thanks, Dave. That was a broad question and your response was very helpful. I wanted to ask about the Construction Services margins trending a bit lower this year, although it's nice to finally see the strong backlog growth translate into revenue. But it looks like you've also brought down your expectations for the full-year margins, so I guess was there anything specific in the second quarter that weighed on margins? And at this point, is it fair to assume that given what's in the backlog, we shouldn't really expect you to be able to hit those kind of peak 7% to 8% type margins that you saw a few years ago? Jeffrey S. Thiede - President & Chief Executive Officer, MDU Construction Services Group, Inc.: Hey, Matt. This is Jeff. Our margin pressure is really driven from our outside business lines and our equipment business. We've got slower work releases out from our customers and our backlog really has picked up, our margin looks to be stable. It has increased slightly in our backlog. And then our smaller project work also where we don't record backlog, but it is higher margin, has also been a little bit slower. So we continue to work on execution and building backlog with selected projects. We have a number of significant projects that are not reported in backlog, but we are in pre-construction. So we're looking to execute and finish out the year stronger than the first half.

Thanks, Jeff. And I guess a follow-up to that, for both Construction segments, your bookings were down a little bit year-over-year, backlog ticked down a bit sequential. Are you seeing any slowdown in terms of bidding activity or opportunities? It sounds like you're not. Or should we just chalk that up to kind of lumpiness? David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'll maybe ask Dave Barney to catch on that first, and then follow on with Jeff. David C. Barney - President & Chief Executive Officer, Knife River Corporation, MDU Resources Group, Inc.: Hey, Matt. You know, we're not concerned about our backlog. We just did quite a bit more work in the second quarter than we did last year, burned through more of our backlog, so we see the backlog out – our backlog's not a concern. You'll see it growing. Like I said, with the FAST Act coming up really into play into 2017 and beyond, we're not concerned with that. We'll be fine with our backlog. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Jeff? Jeffrey S. Thiede - President & Chief Executive Officer, MDU Construction Services Group, Inc.: Yeah. This is Jeff. So our backlog is down from the previous quarter, but you have to go back to June 2009, since we've been in that $508 million range. So we like where we're positioned in our equipment business. We have seen slower transmission and equipment rental sales, also construction side of the transmission & distribution. So we've increased our capabilities with our equipment business and when the market improves, we'll be able to capture that revenue and margin, and improve the results.

Great. Thanks, guys. And just last question from me, I believe your Utility customer growth expectations have changed from the last quarter. I believe you were saying 1.5% to 2.0% and you're now saying 1% to 2%, so if you could just comment on what's driving the change there, please? Nicole A. Kivisto - President and CEO, Montana - Dakota Utilities, Great Plains Natural Gas, Cascade Natural Gas & Intermountain Gas: Yeah, Matt. This is Nicole. Essentially, what we did is took a look at our year-over-year data and when you look June-to-June, our customer growth rate across our brands ranges from 1.3% to 1.8%. So we did decide to move that range to 1% to 2% to accommodate year-over-year fluctuations. We still feel very comfortable that as you look ahead, we're going to grow within that 1% to 2% range. And when you do compare that to the national average, what we've been seeing, that's around 0.55%. And so we still feel very comfortable that our system is growing above the national average, but we did revise that down to accommodate year-over-year changes.

Thanks, Nicole. I'll jump back in the queue. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Thank you, Matt.

Your next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D. A. Davidson. Please go ahead. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Thanks. Just a follow-up maybe more for Doran, but with a different company today, different risk profile, how are you thinking about kind of appropriate leverage ratio ranges going forward? Doran N. Schwartz - Chief Financial Officer & Vice President: Yeah, that's a good question, Brent. Here's how I would think about it. As we think about our, for example debt-to-cap ratio, I would say that over time you could expect that to move up, in part because of how we're investing at the company. As we put more of the investment, as David mentioned, $272 million at the Utility this year out of about $370 million, that does have a higher debt-to-cap target, more of a regulated target, as allowed by regulators of around 50/50. And so by definition that will allow us to use a bit more debt to fund the growth that we see at the Utility. So I would see that as we move forward and more of our debt then would be at the regulated operations which is an indication that even with the ratio moving up, that's not necessarily an indication that the balance sheet is weaker. So I think as we invest going forward with the organic plan that Dave had talked about, we'll probably be able to utilize a little bit more debt on the balance sheet, primarily at the regulated operations. I will tell you that our balance sheet is very important to us. Discipline is important to us. We like our credit rating right now at BBB+ and the access to lower-cost, both long-term and short-term debt that we have the benefits from as a result of that, and so we remain committed to that as well, but that's how I see the balance sheet going forward. Brent Edward Thielman - D.A. Davidson & Co.: Very helpful. Thank you. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Brent.

Thank you. This marks the last call for questions. This call will be available for replay beginning at 1:00 PM Eastern today to 11:59 PM Eastern on August 17. The conference ID number for the replay is 38294454, again the conference ID number for the replay is 38294454. Your next question comes from the line of Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Just a couple follow-ups from me. It looks like the CapEx plan this year for Pipeline & Midstream went up by $20 million. Could you discuss what drove that? Martin A. Fritz - President & Chief Executive Officer, WBI Holdings, Inc., MDU Resources Group, Inc.: Yeah. Hey, Matt. It's Martin. We have a Line Section 25 expansion project that we're going to be filing with FERC here. And so we're starting off on that. And that is what is driving it. That's going to be compression at basically three locations: Charbonneau, Williston and Tioga. And so that's what's driving the capital increase.

Thanks, Martin. And then last question, another kind of broader, open-ended question: now that you've sold the Refinery and the E&P business, how do you think about MDU's overall exposure to oil prices, whether it be the Construction businesses, Utility customer growth, Midstream? How do you think about that now? David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, certainly the exit of the E&P and Refining, there's a lot less exposure directly with commodity prices. I mention to folks, I look at WTI maybe three times a week and not three times a day as I used to. But when we think about – we'll still have exposure to just kind of the general economies that surround the E&P business. I mean again, North Dakota, the Bakken is in our backyard. We enjoyed some very nice customer growth, investment opportunity at the Utility. We moved organically Knife River into that market and enjoyed some strong workloads there. And so while we have some exposure there, I'll point out – as Dave mentioned, Knife's in 17 different states, so there's some exposure there. But at the same time, it is not all eggs in one basket. And so I think it's more economic risk, it's not direct price commodity risk. And then actually there's some things up in Dave's business, he goes through a lot of diesel every year running those big, heavy equipment around. We actually see some benefit with lower commodity prices and actually asphalt oil business can be favorable in certain kind of markets like that too. So, there's certainly some exposure, probably all companies have from an economic perspective, but it's a lot less direct affected from an income statement with commodities.

Great. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate the color. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Okay. Hey thanks, Matt.

Your next question comes from the line of George Register with Register Financial. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Dave and Doran. Nice quarter. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey. Good morning, George.

As you explained earlier, Dave, that you're a fairly diversified company, really much more than just a utility, so my question is, has there been any serious consideration to restructuring MDU? And has there been any steps taken to move in that direction? I appreciate the question. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, thanks for the question, George. I would say this last quarter was pretty important strategically that we've done some of those things you just talked about. I mean the exit of the E&P and the Refining were very conscious decisions on our part. And we think strategically that makes us a much less volatile company and less exposed to commodity. And we really are centered on two platform business, that being Regulated Energy Delivery. That's through Nicole and Martin's business, along with Construction Materials & Service, Dave and Jeff's business. And so we think those are two great platforms. They can complement each other. And we think they're very core to MDU Resources.

Okay. Thank you. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yep. Thank you, George.

Thank you. This marks the last call for questions. This call will be available for replay beginning at 1:00 PM Eastern today through 11:59 PM Eastern on August 17. The conference ID number for the replay is 38294454. Again, the conference ID number for the replay is 38294454. At this time, there are no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks. David L. Goodin - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Brent. Appreciate everybody again participating on our call here this morning. As noted earlier, our continuing operations delivered strong results for the second quarter of 2016. We're committed to continue building on this momentum by focusing on those factors that we can most directly influence, those being controlling costs, expanding margins, along with growing earnings. We appreciate you being on that call here today and we thank you for your continued interest in MDU Resources. Thank you and we'll turn it back to the operator. Brent?

Thank you. This concludes today's MDU Resources Group conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.