Good day, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Second Quarter 2013 Unitil Corporation's Earnings Conference Call. My name is Lisa, and I’ll be your coordinator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will facilitate a question-and-answer session toward the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today, Mr. David Chong, Director of Finance. Please proceed.

Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's second quarter 2013 financial results. With me today are Bob Schoenberger, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Collin, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; Tom Meissner, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; and Larry Bach, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. We will discuss financial and other information about our second quarter on this call. As we mentioned in the press release announcing the call, we have posted that information, including a presentation to the Investor section of our website at www.unitil.com. We will refer to that information during this call. Before we start, please note that comments made on this conference call may contain statements that are commonly referred to as forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding the company's financial condition, results of operations, capital expenditures and other expenses, regulatory environment, strategy, market opportunities and other plans and objectives. In some cases forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as may, will, should, estimate, expect or belief, the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve risks and uncertainties, and the company's actual results could differ materially. Those risks and uncertainties include those listed to, listed or referred to on slide one of the presentation and those detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012. Forward-looking statements speak only as of date they are made. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. With that said, I'll now turn the call over to Bob.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin by discussing the highlights of our past quarter. You turn to slide four of our presentation. This morning we reported Unitil's earnings of $10.7 million or a 24% increase over the same period last year. Our earnings continue to reflect the strong growth in our gas customer base as more and more household and businesses in the areas we serve are choosing natural gas as their preferred choice of energy. Natural gas offers our customers the best choice of value in terms of its superior efficiency, convenience and low cost compared to computing -- competing fuels such as oil and propane. In addition, our gas and electric sales' margins are up over last year reflecting the improving economy and more normal weather this year compared to last. We continue to execute on our core strategies to grow our business including the rapid expansion of our natural gas distribution system and the ongoing customer service and reliability investments in our electric distribution system. We have several base rate case filings in process, one base rate case in each of our three jurisdictions in the two states in which we operate. In addition, we are experiencing steady growth in our non-regulated energy brokering subsidiary Usource. We believe that the combination of our growth strategies offers our shareholders a utility growth investment opportunity while at the same time, having confidence in the income generated by our above industry average dividend yield. We have the unique opportunity to double our gas business in the next few years. If you turn to slide which shows the price advantage of natural gas. Natural gas prices continue to offer a significant price advantage to our customers. We estimate that by switching to natural gas from fuel oil, our customers here in New…

Thanks, Bob, and good afternoon. This morning we reported that our net income increased $0.3 million for the second quarter and $2.1 million for the year-to-date periods, compared to prior year. On a per share basis earnings increased $0.02 for the second quarter and $0.04 for the year-to-date periods, compared to prior year. As Bob just discussed, for the six-month period earnings applicable to common shareholders were $10.7 million or $0.78 per share up 24% compared to same six-month period last year. As a reminder, the 2013 per share results reflect a higher number of average shares outstanding period-over-period from the $70 million common stock offering we completed in May 2012. Our results for the second quarter and year-to-date period were driven primarily by increases in natural gas and electric sales margins, and lower borrowing costs, partially offset by higher utility operating cost. Now turning to slide 10, natural gas margins were $13.4 million and $43.9 million for the second quarter and the six-month periods, reflecting increases of $0.8 million and $4 million compared to prior year. Natural gas sales margins in the 2013 periods were positively affected by higher therm unit sales, a growing customer base and higher gas base distribution rates. Therm sales of natural gas were up over 12% in both the second quarter and six month periods compared to prior year, driven by the effect of colder winter weather in 2013 coupled with the strong growth in the number of new residential and C&I customers. There were 15% more heating degree days in the first six months of 2013 compared to same period in 2012. Excluding the effect of weather on sale weather normalized gas therm sales are estimated be up about 5% for the first half of this year compared to last year, reflecting a…

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Liam Burke with Janney Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Yeah. Thank you. Good morning Bob.

Good morning. How are you doing, Mr. Burke?

I’m doing fine. Thank you. Mark, you touched on the rate cases in the electrical utility businesses. Are there any potential increases in rate cases in anticipation of a hardening the network for storm prevention rather than anticipation of damage done on the storm?

Yeah. In both, in Unitil Energy where we have the capital cost tracker, we actually have as a component of that tracker or mechanism that allows us to recover incremental spending on both reliability investments from a capital perspective as well as increases in reliability that is O&M related. In addition to that, we also have been successful at getting recovery of expanded vegetation management through that tracker. So on that for our electric business in New Hampshire, we’ve got very good recovery of additional spend in both of those, the reliability spending and the vegetation are intended to be preventive measures for damages of storms and improve the system for resiliency from storms. In Fitchburg, as I just indicated, we just recently filed our case there and a component of that case also has additional spending on vegetation management as well as our proposal to allow us to recover additional capital spending, much of which will be related and focused on reliability improvements in system hardening improvements, in particular in Massachusetts, they just completed a process looking at grid modernization and has been a report issued on that and there is still more to be done in that area. We expect the department to continue to work in that area and come out with some policy changes relative to grid modernization. But we’ve made proposals relative to future implementation of grid modernization investments and recovery of that as well in our Fitchburg case.

Okay. Just to summarize, Mark, this seems to be a trend that’s continuing to move upward in terms of upgrading the network in -- or hardening if you would more now than in the past?

Yeah. I think there is an increased focus of finding ways to -- the term you used hardening the network for storm resiliency. I think one of the key findings that we’ve had in one of our focuses is that significant area of focus should be the vegetation management and the increase spending on vegetation management that that area probably has the most bang for the buck in terms of increasing or hardening the system from your typical storms are even more major storms.

Liam, I hope we don’t jinks ourselves by saying this, but through mid-year we are experiencing the best electric reliability in the company’s history and I think this is probably largely because of the investments we’ve made particularly in vegetation management.

Okay. Great. Usource, it looks like business is building nicely, there is tremendous upside leveraged any type of increase in revenue. Without getting ahead of yourselves, do you see that as a continued ramp or how should we think, I mean we saw a little bit of growth year-over-year this year. Do you -- are you looking at that trend to continue more consistently?

Yeah. I do. I mean, clearly, what we’re beginning to see this year is the impact of the expansion of our sales force that is bringing an additional business. So our overall objective of growing the business 10% to 15% a year, I think is well in place and I think you’ll see by the end of the year we’ll be the upper range of that forecast. As well as the forward book which to me is really where it really shows you, you’re building that future annuity. I think as you’ve seen already, we -- our forward book at the end of June was $10.3 million which is up over 25% to the end of last year and we expect that trend to consider, so we’ll see a significant increase in the forward book year-over-year.

Great. Thank you very much.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Shelby Tucker with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Just picking on Liam’s question, the last one, Bob, you said that the forward book for second quarter was $10.3 for Usource.

Correct. Correct.

Okay. And that’s up from $9.4 in the first quarter.

Correct. And up from $8.2 in the…

At the year-end.

Correct.

Okay. And then the, in terms of possibility for Usource and I’m just looking at the back of the 10-Q, it still shows that from a profitability point of view it’s not gaining as much traction as your revenue, is this still a factor of the paying up on the commissions relative to the business you bringing in?

No. The cost of good sold which are primarily those commissions you refer to. I don’t think that’s the issue. I think the issue is as you can tell from the forward book, as we forecasted that you’ll begin to see, there are really three reasons why we think the business will grow and grow substantially over the next three to five years. One is that the average contract term that we’re signing has gone from two to three years, as well as the fact that new business that we bring on let say over the next, over the last couple of years now becomes renewal business and renewal business we obviously have a very robust retention rate. And so you will see that annuity grow over time as those renewal customers get renewed. And they normally get renewed, the vast majority of them at end of the year. So their impact isn’t seen until January 1st of the calendar year. So you will begin to start seeing that impact next year, the next couple of years. And then finally, the last thing is new business and we are doing very well bringing in new business. So and we don’t see anything in the marketplace that tells us that we don’t have a real opportunity to continue to grow the business.

Great. Thank you. And then I guess looking a little bit ahead first, third quarter so far July has had phenomenally good weather from electric point of view. Would you mind giving us a little bit of pace for what you’ve seen so far in the quarter?

As you’ve said that how you like your weather, we’ve definitely had to -- heat spells come through and at temperatures that were in the high 90s for extended periods of time four to five days of high 90 temperatures. The New England region, I can say the peak itself was in its top three or four of all time peak for the New England region and pretty much we shared in that across our system as well. So yeah, July has been, in particular, has been a very hot month and somewhat uncomfortable month for some and we expect that to be reflected in our next quarter results. Yeah.

Okay. And then, Mark, the decoupling does not affect weather pattern. This is purely on the demand and economic activity?

Yeah. In the decoupled -- our Massachusetts business is decoupled. It isn’t as impacted by weather. On the electric side, it’s not at all. It’s fully decoupled on the gas side. We do retain incremental revenue associated with new customers and special contract. So in the winter time, there is some upside for colder weather on the gas side of the business even though we’re decoupled but as the general rule, we’re in Massachusetts. Those sales are not subject to weather.

So, as I guess, only UES, we would see upside from the weather pattern we saw in July?

Yeah. And as we’ve described about 27% of our sales are on the electric side are decoupled. So the bulk -- about three quarters are still subject to weather.

Okay. And I guess, last question, I was supposed to ask last quarter. On the slide, I think it was six -- the number of customers on Maine had a potential growth. In essence, if you add up the numbers, you’re assuming flat total number of customers on the Maine 12 to 16. I guess, first, is that a fair assumption and second, if not, what is generally the new build rate at which natural gases -- the rate at which natural gas is installed in new homes?

I am trying to get my head around your, the first part of your analytical, so.

So the first part of question is if you look at the two pie charts on slide six, they both add up to 129,000 customers on the Maine. That the reply that there are no -- there is no growth of customers on the Maine. I mean total number people on the Maine. So I guess number one is it more of a -- it is straight point you are making here about the mix of customers or do you actually project no growth in the total number of people on the Maine?

It’s the first. Just -- we’re just trying to reflect the mix of customers on a static analysis where we haven’t attempted in this project population growth, household growth or business growth on the Maine or for that matter as we expand our Maine, there will be more and more customers who once more we’re not on the Maine but we’ll come on to the Maine.

Okay. And I guess…

That number grow as well, yeah.

Okay. And then I guess on the new builds so therefore the new customers on the Maine, at what rate is natural gas installed in their homes, do you have a sense?

Well, again the projections that they were looking at are to double this year what we did last year and to get to add in approximately 5,000 customers a year which I guess in percentage terms is customer growth of about 5% a year.

Okay. Great. Okay. That’s it. Thanks very much guys.

There are no additional questions. At this time, I would now like to turn the presentation back over to Mr. David Chong for closing remarks.

Thank you very much for joining us for this quarter. We look forward to updating you in the next quarter. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Thank you and have a great day.