Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2016 NiSource Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Randy Hulen. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, and good morning. On behalf of everyone at NiSource, I'd like welcome you to our quarterly analyst call. Joining me this morning are Joe Hamrock, Chief Executive Officer; and Donald Brown, Chief Financial Officer. The purpose of today's call is to review the NiSource financial performance for the first quarter of 2016, as well as provide an overall business update on our utility operations and growth drivers. We'll then open up the call to your questions. Just as a reminder, we will be referring to supplemental earnings slides that are available on our website. Before turning the call over to Joe, just a quick reminder that some statements made on this conference call will be forward-looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the statements. Information concerning such risks and uncertainties is included in the MD&A and Risk Factors sections of our periodic SEC filings. With all that covered, I'd like to now turn the call over to Joe. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Randy. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. As we'll detail on today's call, NiSource is off to a great start in 2016. Our first quarter results reflect the strength of our regulated business strategy and sustained track record of delivering improved service for our customers through our utility investment programs. We continue to execute on our infrastructure investment strategy, which is designed to improve safety, reliability and environmental performance for our customers and communities. NiSource also made significant progress on several regulatory initiatives supporting these investments, as well as enhanced employee training and customer programs. Today, we'll briefly cover our first quarter 2016 results before discussing specific operational and regulatory highlights. We'll also…

Thank you. And our first question comes from the line of Greg Gordon from Evercore. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Greg.

Yeah. Good morning, guys. Happy to finally be covering the stock. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Welcome to the fold.

I wish I had been quicker on the uptake and got all the outperformance the last couple of years, but so be it. So I've asked you this question before and I just wanted to ask it again. Obviously, the performance in the quarter was great and you've got $1.4 billion in capital still in the budget – vast majority of it covered by riders. And you've got this sort of 4% to 6% long-term earnings guidance drive out there, but the rate base growth guidance range is 6% to 8%. Obviously, that's very enticing because there seems like there's a lot of cushion in there. But you first gave that well before the bonus depreciation rules were extended for five years, so can you tell us about how that may have moved things around inside the guidance range? It still seems like you're well positioned to, at the minimum, hit the high end of the earnings guidance range. But maybe the rate base growth is less robust because of bonus d and what you might do to offset that? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Thanks, Greg. And it's a fairly common question, as you noted. I'll ask Donald to touch on the bonus and the relative impact on rate base and how we're navigating through that. But let me take this, sort of, the higher level question about the relationship between our outlook, our guidance and our business plan. We think and firmly believe that one of the strengths of the NiSource story is the long-term visibility, the sustained investment platform we have that we outlined as we noted a couple of years ago with the $30 billion in investment. As we look through the future and the strong support we have across…

Fantastic. Thanks, guys. Take care. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Greg.

Our next question comes from the line of Larry Liou from JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to walk through the decision process on the term loan. Was it more economically driven or was it more so of a flexibility decision when it comes to kind of call provisions on term loans? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'd say it's both. When we're looking at the need for this year and looking at what are our different options, really did want to take advantage of the low interest rate environment and the interest savings that provided, as well as making sure we've got kind of a full toolkit for financing our company going forward. So I'd say it's a little bit of both. And I think, going forward, we'll look at both the bond market, as well as taking advantage of the bank market in term loans.

Got you. And can you just remind us what are your financing needs? I know I think you paid down the rest of your 10% handle that remained outstanding. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So this year I would expect that we wouldn't have any significant financing needs. This term loan, which we took out. We haven't actually tapped into yet and won't tap into until later this year. But I don't expect anything significant this year. But certainly, we're always looking at our portfolio. We do have some higher cost debt in the portfolio and still looking for opportunities to bring down our overall cost of debt. If the market and the timing makes sense, we would do that as well.

Okay, thank you. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Larry.

Our next question comes from the line of Charles Fishman from Morningstar. Your line is now open.

Thank you. Just to follow up on that bonus depreciation question. I noticed, Joe, in your introductory comments, I believe you said CapEx for 2016 more than $1.4 billion, where I believe last quarter it was approximately $1.4 billion. Is that consistent with Donald's comments about the accelerating CapEx because of the cash flow benefit from bonus depreciation? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Thanks, Charles, and good morning. That's very perceptive. It's entirely consistent. There's not a big shift in the 2016 – Donald's comments related to the near-term years of the plan to offset the NOL issues and to help with the outer years of the plan on an earnings standpoint. But it's all around the $1.4 billion, as we've navigated through the 2016 planning cycle.

Okay. And then my next question is on the case or the settlement on the electric modernization program. Does that – are we done? Does that pretty much eliminate any of the excitement that we've seen – regulatory and legal? I mean, are you pretty confident we're on the... Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We're confident that – yes, I'm sorry. I like your term excitement. But we're confident that we've got a framework vis-à-vis the settlement that we've filed. We are still in the regulatory process. So we still have the remaining steps through the regulatory process that we would expect to resolve early in the third quarter this year, but feel very good about the position we're in and we've remained committed to making those investments. So that's all part of the framework that we've set up.

Okay, thank you. That was all I had. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Charles. Have a great day.

Our next question comes from the line of Paul Ridzon from KeyBanc. Your line is now open.

Good morning. Congratulations on another solid quarter. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Paul. Thank you.

Just with bonus depreciation, what's your current view on when you may need to come back for some equity? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We don't see any real shift at this point in our outlook relative to bonus. We continue to not see a need for equity in the near term of the plan. And as you would guess with bonus, that didn't change at all. We continue to look at our total plan, including CapEx, dividend policy and the ultimate need for equity. But at this point, not ready to change our outlook on any of those factors.

And then strategically, it seems like a lot of large cap electrics kind of want to get some gas exposure. How are you thinking about the opportunity there? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, we remain committed to our plan. As we've watched that play out, we look at our plan and don't really need M&A to drive our opportunities going forward. Very focused on. As we've talked about at length today, the capital investments and the regulatory cadence that we've set up in our plan, and certainly don't see M&A as a part of that strategy. That said, with anything that would be compelling being introduced into the mix, we'd certainly take a look at that.

Certainly you don't need the growth opportunity, but maybe there's some players out there who could use your opportunities. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I'm sure that's fine.

All right. Thank you very much. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Paul.

And our next question comes from the line of Greg Gordon from Evercore. Your line is now open.

Yeah, guys, I had a follow-up question. It's on a completely different subject. I'm looking at the NEXUS pipeline project that's being jointly built by Spectra and DTE. And in their first quarter slide deck, slide 25, they show the path of that pipeline going through your service territory in Ohio and sort of a massive amount of interest – interconnect agreements of up to 1.75 Bcf a day. And some of the names of your gas utilities are very prominent on that list. Can you talk about your needs for incremental gas supply and how likely it is that you'd be taking gas off the NEXUS pipeline and in what amounts? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Greg, that's something we keep an eye on but not something that we're actively interested in and involved in at this point, and a good position on capacity in the Midwest. More of our focus these days is in New England and Massachusetts. As you know, we have a position in the Northeast Direct Pipeline project. So a lot of focus there on how to ensure that we have what we need up there. We, though, will continue to keep an eye on the Midwest. And if we see an opportunity, we'll certainly participate.

Okay. So you're definitely interested in capacity on the pipes going into New England. And this is more of a wait-and-see situation? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, a more – that's a good way to characterize it. Again, if we see an opportunity there that makes sense, we'll certainly take advantage of that.

Okay. And what's the timeline that you would normally, seriously consider a formal interconnect agreement on a new pipe? You would wait for that pipe to be sort of firmly under construction before you would have a serious conversation with them? I'm not that familiar with the process there. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, typically there's an open season upfront. We participate in that, express interest. That usually precedes any actual construction. So we'd be ahead of that curve to help underpin the fundamentals for the project itself. But that's not always the case. Sometimes there's opportunistic second pass, third pass opportunities to take advantage of a new project. So it really varies depending on our supply/demand balance, our existing contracts and the growth opportunities in that region. So I don't think there's a precise recipe that applies in all cases.

Well, yeah, this would be a second or third pass-type deal because they did their open season, they're 65%, 66% contracted, 50% with LDCs up a bit top end of the pipe, the other 50% of that is producers. And then they've been talking about the potential for incremental interconnect agreements along the length of the pipe. So am I right to say that that would be a second or third pass-type of deal? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I want to be careful that my general comment there is not characterizing a specific project or specific interest. This is an area we continue to look at. But on that specific project, I'm not providing any specific outlook on our participation at this point.

Okay, thanks. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Greg.

Can't hurt to try. Thank you. Bye.

At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Joe Hamrock for any closing remarks. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Skyler. And let me, again, express our appreciation for your participation and interest today, and ongoing interest in the NiSource story. Please have a great day. Thank you very much.