Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q2 2016 NiSource Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to Randy Hulen. You may begin.

Thank you, Michelle, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the NiSource quarterly investor 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 NiSource's financial performance for the second quarter of 2016 as well as provide an update on our utility operations and growth drivers. We'll then open the call up to your questions. Please note, we will be referring to supplemental earnings slides during this call. These slides are available on our website. Also on our website is a document which contains segment and financial information to accompany this presentation. Before turning the call over to Joe, just a quick reminder, some of the 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. Additionally, some statements made on this conference call relate to non-GAAP measures. For additional information on the most directly comparable GAAP measure and a reconciliation of these measures, please refer to the supplemental slides and supplemental segment and financial information available on NiSource.com. In that document, you'll also find our full financial schedules that have historically been available in our earnings release. With all that covered, I'd now like to turn the call over to Joe. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Randy. And good morning, everyone. And thanks for joining us. Let's start on page three of our supplemental slides. With 12 months of execution behind us since the separation of our interstate pipeline business, NiSource is well positioned as a premier pure-play…

Our first question comes from Chris Turnure of JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Chris.

Joe, I was hoping you could kind of give us an update to your thinking on longer-term rate base growth now that we have the final decision in the general rate case on the electric side as well as the (16:45) program there. And given the fact that you have had the confidence to up your CapEx number for 2016 at least, how has your kind of thinking and your confidence level changed, if at all, over the past, call it, six months? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: These updates for this year are unique to the momentum we've built through a fairly favorable weather conditions during the first half of the year are not intended to convey an outlook for the future years. We continue to remain committed to 4% to 6% earnings per share growth and dividend growth over the planning horizon. But very confident in our execution, as we have been, and noting the orders that you pointed out, Chris, we've continued to invest even through the regulatory execution of the (17:40) proceeding and the rate case with real commitment to making those investments over the long-term. So, if anything, just confidence in the support that we have for the investments we've long planned.

Okay. And then on the potential for customer growth, can you kind of remind us where you are year-to-date, how that is tracking versus your expectations and kind of what you're thinking for the full-year 2016? I know you're in the relatively early stages of some of your customer growth initiatives there, but that's obviously an important part of the growth going forward, so an update, I think, would be helpful. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Thank you for that, Chris. As you noted, we're at the very, very early stages of implementation of some of our enhanced growth strategies, recently having begun to implement some of our pilot programs in Indiana and Pennsylvania that represent enhanced focus on growth opportunities and outreach. So not yet seeing any measurable impact of those enhanced strategies; probably more notably, as I said, in a number of the rate case updates, our regulatory strategy has been focused in part on enhancing the ability to attract new customers with programs that support the upfront – relief on the upfront cost for new customers or conversion customers. We've seen support for that across most of the jurisdictions. Year-to-date as we stand here, we're – on a gross basis, so we often talk of attrition on the customer count as well; but on a gross base, we're running about 10% ahead of where we were at this time last year, driven predominantly by – and this varies across our territory, but by strong housing starts in certain parts of the territory, notably in Virginia, we've seen strong surges in construction and opportunities for growth there and then fuel conversion again in Massachusetts where that's been strong. Year-on-year about 10% gross, keeping in mind we have attrition that offsets that. We're just beginning to see a slight uptick in our growth rates. Too early to tell if that's going to carry on through the balance of the year, but I'm optimistic.

Great. Thank you. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Chris.

And our next question comes from Paul Ridzon of KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Good morning. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Paul.

Other taxes was down in both gas and electric operations. Kind of, what's driving that and what should we expect going forward? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yes. Donald, can answer that. Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: Yeah. We've had some property tax appeals and true-ups this quarter that's probably a couple of pennies of the adjustments. That certainly stands out this quarter.

What should we expect going forward? Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: I'd say, half of that is probably one-time, and some of that does go forward.

Got it. And then, on the transmission project, does that earn cash during construction? Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: Yes, it does.

And then, Joe, we've seen a lot of, I guess, re-ignition of the convergence scene that hit the late 1990s with a lot of these electrics buying gas companies. Kind of, what are your thoughts around consolidation? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I won't comment, Paul, on other people's deals or strategies or speculate on M&A. We're very focused on executing our plan, which, as you know, is not based on transaction but on executing – on serving our customers and our deep inventory of – and backlog of investments that we've identified – $30 billion, noting none of that has any premiums on it. So I'm very focused on execution there, continue to monitor the trends in the marketplace, but not in focus for us.

Got it. And then you upped your CapEx for cash by $100 million. Is that – should we think about that as pulling some 2017 spendings forward or just an acceleration of the whole program? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I wouldn't think of it as pulling any 2017 spending forward. As you think about – and that's predominantly on the gas side of the business – as you think about the $20 billion of identified investments on the gas side, we generally have flexibility within our regulatory programs to execute on that, as conditions are favorable. I'd noted that we had favorable weather conditions during the first half of this year, meaning the ground wasn't frozen, and we could continue working through the early part of the year. So just continuing to work through that backlog of identified investments, not specifically pulling anything forward from next year into this year.

Okay. Thank you very much, and congrats on a solid quarter. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you. Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: Thanks, Paul.

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

Thank you. Joe, Reynolds Topeka went up quite a bit on the CapEx forecast. What drove that? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: The best way to think about that, Charles, is the early estimates were very much the high level estimates, and as we came into this year, we updated with our refined detailed estimates on that project, reflected changes in design – very prudent changes in design relative to the type of construction, the tower sizes and the spans on the construction, all very consistent with other designs that we've made in other projects and have seen in the marketplace. So, really not even inflationary; just an update to the design.

So remind me: do you have a partner on that one? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Not on that one.

Okay. And then, so the increase really – since it was just a very early estimate, there's no issues with the FERC recovery or anything like that, correct? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We don't expect any.

Okay. And then when you said the 2016 represents the base going forward, even though you have this higher dividend increase in May than we anticipated, that would be the new base for dividend increases, what we're at right now for the 4% to 6%? Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: Yeah. That's correct. We're looking at both earnings and dividends as the base for this year.

Okay. That's all I had. Thank you. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Charles.

Our next question comes from Gregg Orrill of Barclays. Your line is open.

Yes. Thank you. Is there anywhere that you feel that you're not earning your allowed returns or there is some lag even within the mechanisms that you have? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: At any point in time, Gregg, we look at all the jurisdictions, we try to ensure that our regulatory strategy maintains pace with our investment strategy> that's a mix of base rate cases as well as the tracker programs that are up and running across electric and gas. In general, the earnings profile ebbs and flows around 10% across the NiSource – ROE across the NiSource portfolio, and pretty close to allowed in most cases, so no significant concerns about under-earnings in a specific jurisdiction.

Okay. And are you able to confirm CapEx spending for years beyond 2016? Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We are not updating previous guidance on outlook beyond 2016. We're updating 2016, again, based on strong momentum this year and an opportunity to work through favorable weather conditions. We continue to have reaffirmed the guidance of 4% to 6% EPS and dividend growth on notionally a $1.4 billion annual CapEx program.

Okay. And what are your thoughts on – timing coming to the equity markets, do you need any funding there? Donald E. Brown - Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer: Hi. This is Donald. No, at this point, we're still in great shape from balance sheet standpoint in the credit metrics; and as we reported, Fitch did upgrade us this last month or in June to BBB and stable. So, we feel really confident about the balance sheet and don't see any immediate need for equity.

Great. Thanks for the time. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Gregg.

Our next question comes from Joe Zhou of Avon Capital. Your line is open.

Hey, it's Andy Levi. We're all set. Thank you. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi. Good morning, Andy.

I'm sorry. I don't know if you heard me. I said we're all set. Thank you very much. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, yeah, very good.

There are no further questions. I'd like to turn the call back over to Joe Hamrock for any closing remarks. Joseph J. Hamrock - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you, Michelle. Again, I appreciate the interest and the support, and for joining us today. Hopefully, you see continued execution and continued momentum of the NiSource story as we reported our results on the second quarter. We look forward to sharing continued updates on our progress in the months ahead. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.