Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Unitil Fourth Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to David Chong, Director of Finance. Sir, you may begin.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us to discuss Unitil Corporation's fourth quarter 2015 financial results. With me today are Bob Schoenberger, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mark Collin, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer; and Larry Brock, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller. We will discuss financial and other information about our fourth quarter and the full year on this call. As we mentioned in the press release announcing the call, we have posted that information including a presentation to the Investors section of our website at www.unitil.com. We'll 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 and strategy, market opportunities, and other plans and objectives. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminologies such as may, will, should, estimate, expect or believe, 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 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, 2015. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the 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.

Thanks, David and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'll begin by discussing the highlights of our past year. On slide four of the presentation, today we announced net income of $26.3 million or $1.89 per share for 2015, an increase of $1.6 million or $0.10 per share compared to 2014. We have another solid year in 2015 as earnings increase by 6% year-over-year. We had an income from the fourth quarter was $9.3 million or $0.67 per share. We continue to experience strong growth in our gas and electric businesses. Moving on to slide five, the graph shows that our financial results have increased sharply over the past few years with net income growing at an annual growth rate of 13% since 2012, an EPS of the annual growth rate of about 10% over the same period. If you turn on equity has also been steadily climbing as we continue to close the gap between the authorized and actual returns. We invested a record $104 million in capital in 2015. To match these investment growth, we have benefited from a constructive regulatory environment with nearly $16 million of rate belief awarded since 2010. Next on slide six, we outlined our organic initiatives, growth initiatives over the next several years that will support revenue and rate based growth. For our gas division, we will continue to see considerable investment related to increasing market penetration. In particular, we continue to look for large anchor loads that will drive our commercial and industrial sales while providing new info opportunities along newly built Maines. In addition, we have considerable investment in cash term [ph] pipe replacement across all three of our operating states as we modernize and upgrade our distribution system. This pipe replacement activity is expected to continue for a decade…

Thanks, Bob, and good afternoon everyone. Let's start, I'm going to start on slide 11. Here, natural gas utility sales margins was $101.9 million in 2015, an increase of $4.5 million or 4.6% for the full year 2015 compared to 2014. Natural gas sales margin in 2015 was positively affected by higher therm unit sales, a growing customer base and higher distribution rates. Therm sales of natural gas increased 1.5% compared to 2014. The impact of the growth in the number of customers year-over-year was partially offset by warmer, winter weather in 2015. They were 2.3% fewer heating degree days in 2015 compared to 2014. If we estimate, negatively impacted earnings per share by about $0.03 compared to prior year. However, compared to normal, they were 3.7% more heating degree days in 2015, which we estimate positively impacted earnings per share by about $0.03. Estimated weather normalized gas therm sales excluding decoupled sales were up 4% in 2015 compared to 2014, led by a year-over-year increase of about 8% in gas therm sales to our largest commercial and industrial customers. Moving to slide 12, we highlight our electric utility sales and margin. Electric sales and margin was $85.5 million in 2015 resulting an increase of $4.7 million or 5.8% for the full year 2015. The increase in electric sales and margin for 2015 primarily reflects higher electric distribution rates, as kilowatt hour sales, units decreased 0.7% in 2015 compared to the prior year. The decrease in kilowatt hour sales is due to lower average usage per customer, for residential customers which was partially offset by an increase in electric sales to commercial and industrial customers. Next on slide 13, you'll see a comparison of the major revenue and expense components driving the year-over-year financial results, including changes in both natural…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Shelby Tucker with RBC Capital Markets. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Mark, what was the property that you sold in the quarter?

It was a operating center in Portland, Maine that we acquired during the acquisition and we needed the larger facility with more capability and such. And so we moved to a larger facility given the growth we've seen in the Maine area, and completed that and sold this property as no longer as needed.

Got it. And I guess why should we treat that as ongoing earnings?

I'd say it's a non-reoccurring a gain on the facility, yeah.

Okay. So as we just – that by reduces your earnings by about $0.04 or so?

Yeah, if you just looked at that one item I think we've talked to you about the other items including weather with a negative effect on the area. So if you normalize for weather and such I think you probably end up fairly close to where we are or maybe even a little higher than the final reported earnings that doesn’t include the normalize numbers.

Got it, okay. And then Bob, great results at Usource, so glad to see that coming through. As we look at the earnings for this year, the $1.4 million, is that a good base to use from which you can grow or are there items there that brought the $1.4 million to that level?

Yeah, Shelby thanks for the kind comments. Bottom line is I think Usource – we've kind of reoriented our sales strategy. We started this on a very strong December with new sales and we expect that we can carry that forward. So our objective going forward is to grow our bottom line contribution by 5% to 10% per year.

Got it, okay, great. And then last question I have is, has the competitive landscape for gas conversion changed much given the lower oil prices that we've seen in the market?

Yeah, there is no question that the drop in the price of oil has – when we talk about being able to grow unit sales and gas by 46% a year it probably would move us towards the lower end of that as long as this drop in the price of oil that exists. But on the other hand, we continue to find opportunity such as the TAB program, I can tell you with that, the preliminary indications from town officials as well as customers in the industrial park along that trip is that they're taking long-term view. So we still think there'll be opportunities even without the competitive advantage we had say couple of years ago.

Great. Thank you guys.

Good talking to you.

Thank you.