Good morning. My name is Dennis and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Xcel Energy Third Quarter 2005 Earnings Conference Call.

I will now turn the call over to Mr. Richard Kolkmann, Managing Director, Investors Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Dennis, and I would like to welcome all of you to Xcel Energy's third quarter 2005 earnings release conference call. With me today is Ben Fowke, Vice President and CFO of Xcel Energy. We also have several others here to help provide answers to your questions. Some of the comments that will be made contain forward-looking information, significant factors that could cause results to differ from those anticipated are described in our earnings release and Xcel Energy filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I will turn the call over to Ben.

Thanks, Dick, and welcome everyone. On today's call, I'm going to provide an explanation of our quarterly results, our outlook for the rest of year, our 2006 guidance and finally an update on our construction program in COLI. Starting with our results for the quarter, I'm pleased to report that Xcel Energy recorded earnings from continuing operations of $0.47 per share for the third quarter of 2005, compared with $0.40 per share for 2004. Total earnings for the third quarter 2005 were $0.47 per share, compared with $0.12 per share for 2004. As a reminder, we recorded a loss of $0.28 per share in the third quarter of 2004, largely due to an asset impairment charge related to our Seren investment. As you know, the core of our company is our utilities subsidiaries, which provided earnings of $0.46 per share for the third quarter 2005, compared with $0.41 per share for 2004. Utility earnings increased by $0.05 per share, largely due to higher electric utility margins which increased earnings by $0.10 per share and income tax benefits, which increased earnings by about $0.03 per share. These favorable results were partially offset by lower short-term wholesale and trading margins, higher utility O & M expenses, higher depreciation expense, and various other items. Each of these items decreased earnings by $0.02 per share individually, or $0.08 per share in total. Our holding company costs and results of other non-regulated companies provided earnings of $0.01 per share for the third quarter of 2005, compared with a loss of $0.01 per share last year. The change is primarily due to temporary timing differences related to accounting for income taxes under GAAP and our own reporting guidance. That summarizes our third quarter results. Now let's look into the details of the quarter. Starting at the…