Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Southwest Gas Holdings 2016 Year-End 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 follow at that time. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference Mr. Ken Kenny, Vice President of Finance and Treasurer. You may begin.

Thank you, Sandra. Welcome to the Southwest Gas Corporation 2016 earnings conference call. As Sandra stated, my name is Ken Kenny, and I am the Vice President and Treasurer. Our conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet. For those of you who would like to access our webcast, please visit our website at www.swgas.com, and click on the conference call link. We will have slides on the Internet, which can be accessed to follow our presentation. Today, we have Mr. John P. Hester, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Roy R. Centrella, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Justin L. Brown, Vice President Regulation and Public Affairs; and other members of senior management to provide a brief overview of 2016 earnings and an outlook for 2017. Our general practice is not to provide earnings projections therefore, no attempt will be made to project earnings for 2017. Rather, the company will address factors that may impact those coming year’s earnings. Further, our lawyers have asked me to remind you that some of the information that will be discussed contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management’s assumptions, which may or may not come true, and you should refer to the language in the press release, our SEC filings, and also slide number 2 presented today for a description of the factors that may cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we assume no obligation to update any such statements. With that said, I’d like to turn the time over to John.

Alright, thanks Ken. Turning to slide 4, 2016 was a very successful and exciting year for Southwest Gas and its shareholders. Our Board of Directors authorized an increase in our dividend for the eleventh straight year. The increase approved by the Board just this last week increases our annual dividend from $1.80 to $1.98 per share. The dividend is an important component of the 42.5% total shareholder return earned by our shareholders this past year. Consolidated earnings reached a record $3.20 per share and our new holding company reorganization was effective at the beginning of this year. On the regulated side of our business we reached a proposed settlement in the Arizona rate case that we filed in May of last year. Justin Brown will provide an update on that resolution later in the call. Operating margin totaled $924 million. We added 28,000 new customers as the regional economies we serve continued to experience growth and we invested $457 million in our gas systems to improve safety and reliability and serve new customers. Finally for 2016 on the construction side of the business, Paul Daily joined our team as the CEO of the Centuri Construction Group. The construction business contributed a record $32.6 million of net income representing the fourth consecutive year of increased earnings. And the construction business is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Turning to slide 5, as I previously mentioned our new holding company structure took effect at the beginning of the year. The new structure will provide further legal separation between our regulated and non regulated business entities and provide additional future financing flexibility. Moving to slide 6, for today's call Roy Centrella will provide an update on year-end consolidated earnings as well as additional detail on both our utility and construction services subsidiaries. Justin Brown will provide an overview on a variety of regulatory activities that the utility segment has been pursuing and then I'll wrap up the call with the regional economic overview, planned capital expenditures, growth in our dividend, and our expectations for 2017. With that I’ll turn the call over to Roy.

Thank you, John. I’m going to spend a few minutes providing a high level review of 2016 consolidated and business segment operating results including explanations for significant changes between years. I would point out that there's additional detailed information that can be found in the appendix. So let's start with slide 7. In 2016 we earned $3.20 per basic share, an improvement of $0.26 from the $2.94 earned during 2015. Net income grew to $152 million from $138 million and both business segments have improved results. Moving to slide 8, you can see that net income increased $13.7 million between periods and $7.8 million of the improvement came from our natural gas operations segment. While $5.9 million came from construction services. Next we'll look at each business segment starting with gas operations on slide 9. This slide summarizes 2016 and more recent highlights which influence our current year operating results or will impact 2017 and beyond. John touched on several of these earlier so I’ll bring your attention to few others starting with company owned life insurance or COLI income which was very strong at $7.4 million in 2016 versus the small loss in 2015. We completed a $300 million 30 year financing in September of 2016 at a very favorable interest rate of 3.8%. This supported our capital expenditures in the last couple of years and also replaced some higher cost debt that we were able to call at par. And lastly we received approval to spend $57 million on accelerated pipe replacement work in Nevada during 2017 under our gas infrastructure recovery mechanism. Justin will speak more to this later. Turning to slide 10, this waterfall chart identifies a major line item changes for the gas operations segment income statement. We had strong growth in operating margin totaling…

Thanks Roy. Slide 13 highlights several key areas that will be the focus of my comments today starting with rate release namely our Arizona rate case, infrastructure replacement program specifically our Arizona COYL program and our Nevada GIR program, and an update on two expansion projects. Turning to slide 14, just a mere nine months ago we started the process to update rates in Arizona to reflect our current cost providing service. This filing marked the end of our five year rate case moratorium that was agreed to as part of our last general rate case. Since that time we have worked closely with all the parties and have reached a settlement agreement that is currently pending Commission approval. Slide 14 highlights several key outcomes from that proposed settlement agreement including a revenue increase of 16 million and a depreciation expense reduction of 45 million. In addition the settling parties agreed to either continue or implement certain key regulatory mechanisms including full revenue decoupling, expansion of our existing customer owned yard line program which will help us accelerate the replacement of approximately 80,000 COYLs remaining in our system. In addition the parties agreed to implement a new infrastructure replacement program targeting the nearly 6000 miles of pre-1970 vintage steel pipe we have in Arizona service territory and to implement a property tax tracker whereby we will be tracking changes in our property tax expense back to the amount that is embedded in base rates. The difference will be deferred and amortized as part of the future rate case. We're also able to reach agreement with the parties on a cost recovery methodology for our LNG project. I will discuss this in more detail later in the presentation when I provide an update on our project. And lastly the settling parties…

Thanks Justin. Turning to slide 22, as I mentioned at the outset of the call we added 28,000 customers this past year bringing our total customer count to 1,984,000 customers. We’re really excited about the expectation that we will serve over 2 million customers later this year and expect our growth rate over the next three years to approximate to 1.5%. Moving to slide 23, the regional economic picture continues to improve across our service territories, unemployment rate is down across the board. Employment growth rates are slightly mixed year-on-year with the overall picture being one of continued job growth in the areas to which we provide natural gas service to customers. On slide 24 as we continued to serve our growing customer base and invest in the safety and reliability of our distribution system, we've seen our gas utility plant grow as well. Over the past four years the compounded annual growth rate of our gas utility plant has been approximately 6%. On slide 25, we have a bar chart illustrating the experience and planned capital expenditures for years 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Each year has segmented data to detail how much of our capital is considered general plant, growth related, code required, and the portion covered by tracking mechanisms. Over the coming three year period we anticipate investing upwards of $1.8 billion to serve these varying needs. Moving to slide 26 as I mentioned at the outset of the call, just this past week our Board authorized moving our annual dividend from $1.80 to $1.98 per share, an increase of 10%. We believe we've been one of the leaders in the industry over the past several years with a five year compounded annual growth rate in our dividend of just under 11%. Turning to slide 27, looking…

Thanks John. That concludes our prepared presentation. For those who have accessed our slides we have also provided an appendix of slides which include other pertinent information about Southwest Gas Holdings and its two business segments Southwest Gas Utility and Centuri. And this can be reviewed at your convenience. Our operator Sandra will now explain the process for asking questions.

Thank you Sandra. This concludes our conference call and we appreciate your participation and interest in Southwest Gas Corporation. Thank you and have a good day.