Good morning and welcome to the Otter Tail Corporation’s First Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded and there will be a question-and-answer session after the prepared remarks. I would now like to turn the call over Mr. Loren Hanson. Mr. Hanson, you may begin.

Good morning everyone and welcome to our call. My name is Loren Hanson and I manage the Investor Relations area at Otter Tail. Last night, we announced our first quarter 2014 results. Our complete earnings release and slides accompanying this earnings call are available on our website at www.ottertail.com. A replay of the call will be available on our website later today. With me on the call today is Jim McIntyre, Otter Tail Corporation’s President and CEO; Chuck MacFarlane, Otter Tail Corporation’s President and Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Moug, Otter Tail Corporation’s Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that during the course of this call, we will be making forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and includes statements regarding Otter Tail Corporation’s future financial and operating results, or other statements that are not historical facts. Please be advised that actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements, due to certain risks and uncertainties, including those described in our most recent Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Otter Tail Corporation disclaims any duty to update or revise our forward-looking statements, as a result of new information, future events, developments or otherwise. For opening remarks, I would now like to turn the call over to Otter Tail Corporation’s CEO, Mr. Jim McIntyre. Jim.

Good morning and thanks for joining our call today. As we said in our news release yesterday, with consolidated net income from continuing operations up over 40% compared with the first quarter last year, we are more than pleased with our 2014 first quarter results. Our strategy to grow the utilities rate base and to improve the operational financial performance, all the manufacturing infrastructure companies under Varistar is pay off. I’ll leave it to our new President and Chief Opertaing Officer Chuck MacFarlane and to our CFO Kevin Moug, to provide some detail on that. What I want to emphasize is that we’ve done a much better job in the last few years of developing and executing our strategy. And we’ve done a better job of creating alignment among the board of directors, the executive management team and our respective operating companies. As a result we see a commitment among employees at all companies to continuously drive performance and to move [durables] (ph) even as they encounter challenges. We see it in the utility safety and customer satisfaction records, the pipe companies growing market share, the manufacturing company’s partnerships with their customers and the construction companies returned profitability. At our recent annual meeting of shareholders, I talked about our critical; our employees are in executing our strategies. Improved alignment is helping our employees see themselves as critical to their company’s successes. It’s helping them see their company’s successes as critical to the corporation success and vice versa, that level of employee understanding and engagement make strategy more fruitful. Thanks to employee efforts and all front, I can summarize the corporation strategic outlook like this. We have high performing electric utility with the approved rate base grown for at least five years, support of regulatory treatment, solid management in place and…

Thanks Jim. Its privilege to step into this corporate role, we have high performing team, and we’ve made headway on the strategy as Jim discussed. For example, the 40% increase and earnings at the utility this quarter compared to last year is primarily a result of the cost recovery mechanism that took effect in January of this year. They allow us to earn return during the construction of our environmental upgrade at Big Stone Plant a project that will meet environmental standards and help us to continue to server our customers with low cost energy. We are also earnings our return during development construction of the MISO and multi-value projects and CapX2020 transmission projects. These projects are providing necessary regional infrastructure to support electrical system reliability and enable additional renewable energy develop. There are also opportunities to grow the utilities rate basis we’ve been discussing with you on previous call. The majority of these projects will be completed between 2016 and 2019 and although the utility of several other rate based projects coming up, which I’ll discuss in a moment. The corporations will look to the manufacturing infrastructure companies under Varistar to provide incremental growth, that’s why we continue to hold and plan to develop these companies. It’s also why I in my new role at corporation and in addition to keeping an eye on the large utility projects. One of my first priorities is to expand my understanding of each of our operating companies. They remain important to our overall strategy. My other priority is during the first six months are to work on the leadership transition with Jim, build relationship with investors and analysts and onboard of the new Utility President. As you’re probably aware Tim Rogelstad replaced me as President of Otter Tail Power and Senior Vice…

Well good morning. As I discuss our first quarter results. Our Electric segment had a strong first quarter with revenues up nearly 18% and net income up 40% compared to the first quarter a year ago. These results are consistent with our earnings expectations from this segment. The increase is earnings were primarily a result of our rate based investment strategy as we are seeing the impact on our financial results from environmental and transmission cost recovery riders as the utility continues to build out infrastructure projects as Chuck previously discussed. The impact from the colder than normal weather in the first quarter was $0.03 a share. Our Manufacturing segment earnings were down slightly from first quarter 2013, primarily due to increased material cost, support wages and product handling costs anticipated sales growth in 2014 at BTD and lower revenue into the T.O. Plastics due to an expected reduction in revenues to a product a customer began producing on its own in 2014. Our Plastic segments earnings decreased 400,000 between the quarters, mainly attributable to lower margins from increased costs of PVC resin and slightly higher operating cost. Our Construction segment continues to improve their profitability despite slightly lower revenues compared to first quarter in 2013. Foley’s improved earnings directly attributable to a more select bidding process as well as improved cost controls which have enhanced their margins. Aevenia’s improved earnings between the quarters is due to the sale of its data communication business in January 2014 resulting in $200,000 after-tax gain. Our corporate expenses decreased $1.8 million, mainly as a result of lower interest expenses related to their earlier redemption of the $48 million, 9% notes lower employee benefit costs and $0.5 million after tax gain on the sale of an investment in low income housing property. On May…

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First question on the sale of Aevenia's data communication business, I guess can you just provide a little color on the rationale for the sale and if possible – if you can given us any sense of kind of what that’s business has been contributing in terms of revenue and your earnings?

Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Got it. Thanks and then just on the low income housing sale. How much if any legacy real estate assets or like that do you still have left on the books and if there are any, does this sale encourage you in terms of the prospects for – I’m noting the rest of that in the near-term.

Yes we still have, I think its some where about five and seven investments in the low income housing on the book, so we’ve written those investments down to zero by now, so to the extent that there are potential to sell those in the future and there is opportunities for some gains there. Clearly this one was – the sale of this was a little more healthy from a sales price and what we’ve seen in the past, and as we look forward we can at Otters, I can say with these five and seven that are left and we don’t really expect there is going to be significant amounts of earnings that get generated from these, it will certainly help, but this was a little over penny of share. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Got it, thanks. And just one last on if may. On the Hoot Lake replacement clearly that ways out in terms of timing, but can you give us a sense of when we could expect more detail on your choice for the type of replacement or just kind of the timeline for how that process will unfold?

Yes, Matt. This is Chuck. We are in Minnesota, we file integrated resource plan our last plan that went in 2013 essentially specified a certain number of megawatts, but did not define a location or combustion cycle versus CT and those types of things. That’s under review now before the Minnesota DOC, upon completion of that we anticipate that they will approve the amount, but will not be specified a location or anything are following IRT which is due in another year and half would have the details where we would, provide a location and if we are going to partner and those types of things. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Got it. Thanks, guys. I will jump back on the queue.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And it looks like we have a follow up from Matt Tucker with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Hey guys, just a few more here. At the utility, it looks like O&M was up quite bit year-over-year. I guess how much of that was attributable to the extreme weather. Should we expect similar increase throughout the rest of the year or again I guess the sum of that is just attributable to the weather?

This is Chuck. Very little of the O&M would be attributable to the weather, the major differentiator is we had not had a plant outage, we have a very significant plant overall going at Hoot Lake, probably the last one that it will have and that is driving the major O&M increase year-over-year. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Got it, thanks. And then the Plastic segment, you guys mentioned pricing per pound was down a bit in the quarter cost per pound was up a bit. Could you comment on how those metrics have trended now here into the second quarter, but we see them going for the rest of the year I guess.

Yes, Matt this is Kevin; there was in the first quarter our resin suppliers had announced about $0.09 of price increases that they were looking to get from raw materials. A majority of that held and there weren’t a lot of – weren’t able to pass those Foley resin price increases through to the customers. And their as we look we currently we are still expect to similar type view through the rest of – what was the guidance here for the rest of the year but we still continue to see the market where the resin manufactures are looking to get some higher prices from the resin and its becoming a little more difficult right now to get some of those all those prices pass on through the end customer. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Got it so it would be fair to say that your outlook for quarters two to four how its really changed in the guidance revision really – mostly reflects the first quarter come in about your expectations.

That’s correct. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Thank you. And then it manufacturing its specifically T.O. Plastics do you see opportunities for them to replace the business thing lost with the customer to decide in source or do you proceed that being kind of continued headwinds for the reminder of the year.

They are looking to replace that revenue, we mentioned I believe in the third and fourth quarter, earnings call that T.O. was now looking to enter into the food packaging markets. And so there, they continue to make inroads into that food packaging market, but we don’t expect to see that fully offset in 2014 as they continue to build in those food packaging markets that we fully expect its going taken you know a year so to ramp up and develop relationships with customers there. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Thank you. And sorry for jumping around here, but on the transmission projects, the Big Stone projects. I believe you mentioned you’re still waiting for a permit on the second one the Avondale project. Any other hurdles that you can see to starting construction on either of these projects or is it essentially just that one permit you need for the second project to move forward?

Hi, Matt. This is Chuck. We need North Dakota and so there is a small part of the second line in North Dakota. We anticipate because we have essentially settled with all the land owners in North Dakota, a fairly smooth permitting process there, but the major hurdle on the second line is the South Dakota permitting process and we are continuing to work with land owners on that. And we’ll have hearings and whatnot before the South Dakota Commission I believe in June and we would expect in order on the permit before the end of 2014. Matt Tucker – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Okay, great. Thanks Chuck and thanks Kevin. That’s all I had.

Thanks Matt.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) I’m not showing any further questions; please proceed with any closing remarks.

Thank you. Our first quarter performance in our outlook for 2014 reflects the increased transparency of the Utility capital project’s pipeline, and related cost recovery through various approved Riders. Additionally, the improved operational ad financial performance of our manufacturing and infrastructure companies under Varistar contribute to our overall strategy. We believe our strong first quarter results are evidence that we’re delivering on our strategy and in it has better positioned us to deliver increased earnings for 2014 and beyond. Thank you for joining our call and for your interest in Otter Tail Corporation. We look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude the call. And you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.