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Alliant Energy’s (LNT) CEO Pat Kampling on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Alliant Energy Corporation (NYSE: LNT ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 6, 2015, 10:00 am ET Executives Susan Gille – Manager, IR Pat Kampling – Chairman, President & CEO Tom Hanson – SVP & CFO Analysts Andrew Weisel – Macquarie Capital Paul Patterson – Glenrock Associates Operator Thank you for holding, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Alliant Energy’s Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Today’s conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Susan Gille, Manager of Investor Relations at Alliant Energy. Susan Gille Good morning. I would like to thank you on the call and the webcast for joining us today. We appreciate your participation. With me here today are Pat Kampling, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Tom Hanson, Senior Vice President and CFO; and Robert Durian, Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer and Controller; as well as other members of the senior management team. Following prepared remarks by Pat and Tom, we will have time to take questions from the investment community. We issued a news release last night announcing Alliant Energy’s second quarter 2015 earnings and reaffirmed 2015 earnings guidance. This release as well as supplemental slides that will be referenced during today’s call are available on the Investors Page of our Website at www.alliantenergy.com. Before we begin, I need to remind you that the remarks we make on this call and our answers to your questions include forward looking statements. These forward looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters discussed in Alliant Energy’s press release issued last night and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward looking statements. In addition, this presentation contains non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between non-GAAP and GAAP measures are provided in the supplemental slides which are available on our website at www.alliantenergy.com. At this point, I will turn the call over to Pat. Pat Kampling Thanks, Sue. Good morning and thank you for joining us today. I am pleased to report that we had another solid quarter with second quarter 2015 earnings in line with our expectations. Tom will discuss the financial details of the quarter. I am pleased to let you know for the first time in years temperatures did not have a significant impact on earnings per share for the first seven months of 2015. Therefore our year end earnings guidance is trending toward the midpoint of our guidance issued in November 2014. Environmental regulations are in the news again and it is very important to step back for a moment and review the orderly transition of our generating fleet during the past six years. We have been planning for sweeping environmental rules that would impact our industry and developed a strategic plan that would position us and our customers well for that future. We completed many components of that plan, including installing of our 500 megawatts of wind, spending over $1 billion related [ph] emissions controls to our largest and most efficient generating stations and have decided to either close or convert to natural gas several older less efficient coal generating stations. To further diversify our generating fleet, we added natural gas fired generation with the purchase of the 675 megawatts Riverside Energy Center and have another 650 megawatts under construction in Marshalltown, Iowa. And in Wisconsin, we are proposing to build another 650 megawatt natural gas fired generating station. We’ve had a very deliberate plan that transformed our generating fleet to one that is diversified, flexible, has lower emissions but ensuring that we continue to deliver reliable affordable energy to our customers. 2015 is a significant year for our industry in how we utilize and dispatch our generating fleet. We experienced some remarkable performance at our Riverside and Emery combined-cycle natural gas generating stations. During the first half of the year, they achieved capacity factors averaging approximately 45% which is about doubled they experienced in the first half of 2014. Also, our wind generation has remained consistent with capacity factors for the first half of 2015 averaging over 35%. Lastly, our coal units have operated well with the recently installed environmental controls. We have a robust capital expenditure plan for 2015 which totals over $1 billion. Approximately 35% of this year’s capital budget is for improvement and expansion of our electric and gas distribution systems, including bringing natural gas to underserved communities. Approximately 30% of this year’s capital budget is to improve the efficiency and environmental profile of our generating units. Also, approximately 30% of this year’s capital budget is for the construction of the Marshalltown Generating Station. Now let me update you on our large construction projects. In Wisconsin, the installation of a scrubber and baghouse at Edgewater Unit 5 is approximately 65% complete. It’s expected to be in service in the second quarter of 2016. Capital expenditures forecasted for this project are approximately $300 million. At Columbia, comprehensive asset management program to improve the efficiency of the units started with the installation of two new cooling towers completed in 2014 and the remaining projects are expected to be completed by the end of 2017. WPL’s share of the total estimated capital expenditure for these projects is approximately $60 million. We also expect to start construction of the PSCW approved Columbia Unit 2 SCR during the first quarter of 2016. Our estimated capital expenditure for the SCR is approximately $70 million. In Iowa, the Lansing Generating Station dry scrubber has been placed in service at a capital expenditure of approximately $55. As we previously announced, in order to replace retiring facilities and further increase the amount of natural gas fired generation, we are constructing the Marshalltown Generating Station and have proposed the Riverside Energy Center expansion. In Iowa, site construction is well underway at IPL 650 megawatt combined cycle natural gas fired Marshalltown generating station as you can see on Slide 2. Lehmans [ph] delivered the first combustion turbine in June and we expect delivery of the second CT this month. We plan to complete the construction of the gas pipeline to the facility this month and the transmission upgrades are underway. The transition upgrades for Marshalltown are projected to cost less than $25 million. So we now expect the total project to come in over $100 million below the $920 million cost cap. The reduced cost for the transition upgrades will not have an impact on our capital expenditure or rate base forecast since ITC will be funding the transmission. Marshalltown is expected to be in service by the second quarter of 2017. In 2013, WPL announced that it would require several older coal facilities and natural gas peakers. The forecasted accredited capacity loss from this retirement is approximately 640 megawatts. As a consequence, WPL evaluated a wide range of alternatives to meet the long-term energy and capacity needs for its customers. In June 2014, WPL issued an RFP from market-based options. After evaluating all of our options, we concluded that expanding the Riverside Energy Center was in the best interest of our customers. The proposed Riverside Energy Center expansion located at our existing Riverside site near Beloit, Wisconsin is approximately 650 MW highly efficient natural gas generating facility at an estimated cost of $750 million, excluding AFUDC and transmission. This past April, WPL applied for a certificate of public convenience and necessity or CPCN with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin for the proposed expansion. During a recent prehearing conference, questions arose over Wisconsin Electric Power Company’s intervention and whether WEPCo will be allowed to propose for the first time a short-term PPA as an alternative to Riverside. Later this morning, the commission will decide WEPCo’s intervention request. Our competitive RFP and alternative analysis with diligence, and we believe Riverside is and will be found to be in the best long-term interest of our customers. The current procedural schedule for the CPCN is provided on Slide 3. The proposed Riverside Energy expansion includes an approximate 2 MW solar on the properties. We also have several other solar projects under development. We’re doing them for us to gain valuable experience on how to best integrate solar on a cost-effective manner into our electric system. We will own and operate the solar panels at the Indian Creek Nature Center in Iowa as well as our Madison Corporate Headquarters which are our two projects currently under development. These solar projects were part of the capital expenditure guidance we provided in November 2014. In July, IPL announced a settlement with EPA, the Sierra Club in the state of Iowa and Linn County in Iowa to resolve potential Clean Air Act claims and to avoid unnecessary delays and ongoing uncertainty associated with litigation. The terms negotiated in the settlement were consistent with our long-term plan for cleaner energy and most of the projects included in the settlement have already been completed or at plan. The EPA meetings earlier this week issued its final rule to reduce carbon emissions from electric utilities. This rule is widely referred to as the Clean Power Plan. We understand that this is just one more step on what will be a long process that includes legal challenges and the development of compliance plans. As we work with our state regulators to develop strategies to comply we will continue to take the approach of doing what was best for our customers. We are fortunate that we operate in states that have a long history of energy efficiency programs, environmental stewardship and support for renewable energy. How we spend our capital dollars and the pace of our capital spend is focused on ensuring we manage costs, use our resources responsibly while providing energy services and solutions to our customers. As we plan for future rate cases and work with stakeholders in developing the state clean power plants, these goals will be top of mind. Let me summarize the key messages for today. We had a solid first half of the year and are well-positioned to deliver on this year’s financial and operating objectives. Our plan continues to provide for a 5% to 7% annual earnings growth objective and a 60% to 70% common dividend payout target. Our targeted 2015 dividend increased by 8% over the 2014 dividends paid. And we continue to successfully execute on our capital plans, completing projects on time and at or below budget. We will continue to work with our regulators, consumer advocates, environmental groups and customers in a collaborative manner. We will continue to manage the company to strike a balance between capital investment, operational and financial discipline and cost impact to customers. And finally, I must acknowledge and give thanks again to our dedicated workforce which not only provides reliable energy to our customers but also delivers the financial results we are discussing today. At this time, I will turn the call over to Tom. Tom Hanson Good morning everyone. We released second-quarter earnings last evening with our adjusted earnings from continuing operations of $0.67 per share. Second-quarter 2015 adjusted earnings are $0.11 higher than second quarter 2014. Comparisons between second quarter 2015 and 2014 earnings-per-share are detailed on Slides 4, 5, and 6. The adjusted or non-GAAP second-quarter earnings from continuing operations exclude a charge of $0.06 per share from the sales of IPL, Minnesota electric and gas distribution assets. The premium over the property, plant and equipment book value was more than offset by the elimination of the applicable tax related regulatory assets resulting in the charge recorded in the second quarter. We estimate the second quarter 2015 temperature impact on sales when compared to normal temperatures resulted in lower earnings of $0.03 per share. This was $0.05 lower than second quarter 2014 temperature impact of a positive $0.02 per share. On a temperature normalized basis, Alliant energy’s residential electric sales were flat whereas commercial and industrial sales increased approximately 1% quarter over quarter. Taking into consideration the first half results, we are currently forecasting modest increase in temperature normalized sales of approximately 1% for IPL and WP&L when compared to 2014. The 2015 EPS guidance range factors in retail rate based settlements at IPL and WP&L. These settlements reflect rate-based increases at both utilities, offset by a reduction of energy efficiency cost recovery amortization at WPL and the elimination of the Duane Arnold Purchase Power capacity payments at IPL. IPL will credit customer bills by approximately $25 million ratably over 2015. By comparison, the billing credits in 2014 were approximately $70 million and occurred from May through December. Also included in WP&L’s rate settlement was an increase in transmission costs related primarily to the anticipated allocation of SSR costs. As a result of a FERC order issued after the settlement, the amount of the transmission costs billed to WP&L in 2015 will be lower than what was reflected in the settlement since the PSC approved escrow accounting treatment for transmission costs. The difference between the actual transmission costs billed to WP&L and those reflected in settlement will accumulate in a regulatory liability. We estimate that this regulatory liability will have a balance of approximately $40 million at the end of 2016. We view this regulatory reliability as another mechanism we can use to minimize future rate increases for our Wisconsin retail electric customers. During 2015 IPL will provide tax benefit rider billing credits to electric and gas customers of approximately $72 million compared to $82 million in 2014. As in prior years, the tax benefit riders have a quarterly timing impact but are not anticipated to impact full year 2015 results. The IUB has approved a second tax benefit rider. Like the first tax benefit rider, we will accumulate benefits from two accounting method changes and a regulatory reliability which will then be passed through to customers as billing credits. The total expected billing credits are approximately $75 million. These accounting method changes are still subject to final IRS approval. We propose a credit customer bills with the second tax benefit rider after 2016 which is when the regulatory reliability related to the first tax benefit rider is expected to be fully utilized, and when we expect to file our next electric rate case in Iowa. Drivers to the difference between the statutory tax rates for IPL, WP&L and AEC, and the 2014 actual and 2015 forecast effective tax rates are provided on Slide 7. The consolidated AEC effective tax rate for 2015 is forecasted to be 16%. Turning to our 2015 financing plan. Cash flows from operations are expected to be strong given the earnings generated by the business. We also expect to benefit from not making any material income tax payments in 2015 and 2016. These strong cash flows will be partially reduced by IPL tax benefit riders and customer billing credits. In our 2015 financing plan, we anticipated issuing approximately $150 million of new common equity. In March and April of this year, we issued approximately 2.2 million shares of new common equity with proceeds to $135 million through the at-the-market offering. We plan to issue the remaining approximately $15 million of new common equity through our shareowner direct plan throughout the remainder of the year. In June, IPL retired $150 million of long term debt. The 2015 financing plan assumes we are issuing up to $300 million of long-term debt at IPL. We may adjust our financing plan as deemed prudent, if market conditions warrant and as our debt and equity needs continue to be reassessed. We believe that with our strong cash flows and financing plans, we will maintain the appropriate targeted liquidity, capitalization ratios and credit metrics. The 2015 financing plan assumed the sales of our Minnesota electric and gas distribution assets which were completed last month with proceeds of approximately $145 million, including working capital adjustments and a $2 million promissory note. Turning now to the ROE complaint filed against MISO transmission owners. In December 2014, FERC ordered formal proceedings to begin. To-date, various parties have filed testimony with FERC. A final decision from FERC on the complaint is currently expected in 2016. Year-to-date impact of the anticipated reduction to APC’s authorized ROE has lowered earnings by $0.02 per share. We have summarized our planned regulatory dockets of notes on Slide 8. In Wisconsin, we anticipate receiving a decision on the 2016 fuel monitoring level in the fourth quarter of this year and we anticipate receiving a decision on the Riverside expansion CPCN in the second quarter next year. We very much appreciate your continued support of our company and look forward to meeting with you throughout the year. At this time I’ll turn the call back over to the operator to facilitate the question and answer session. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] We’ll go first to Andrew Weisel of Macquarie Capital. Andrew Weisel Good morning guys. Couple questions on the generation fleet. First, I know the governor of Wisconsin is certainly making a claim against the EPA as part of his presidential bid. Any thoughts on how the CPP might impact your specific portfolio and CapEx plans? Pat Kampling Good morning, Andrew. This is Pat. The CPP rule is very different than the one that was originally proposed. So we’re still analyzing this and I can’t speak on behalf of our governor of course but we come from a state that has had always very good environmental rules, renewable and energy efficiency standards. So we will work with our states to make sure that we get implementation plans that work for us but right now we really need to spend the time understanding this new rule because it’s very different than the proposed rule. Andrew Weisel Then the second question is on coal to gas switching, I mean in the short term, not the long term, I understand your gas plants have been running very efficiently at very high capacity factors year to date. What kind of impact does that have in terms of the near term and longer term dispatch plans and financials? Pat Kampling No, it really doesn’t impact anything whatsoever. As you are aware, the transition on our smaller coal fleet to natural gas and keep in mind we actually had natural gas already located at those sites. It’s really a transition for us to get us through the next few years as we talked about. That’s not a long-term solution. The long-term solution is to add new combined cycle generating facility to our fleet. Andrew Weisel Then one other question on the load growth, I appreciate the high level of detail but maybe just an update on the trends in your local economies, especially the Wisconsin industrial side. Tom Hanson Andrew, this is Tom. If we kind of look at it more broad-based we continue to see a modest number of additional residential customers being added to our system but recognizing we are seeing residential use each go down. But we are seeing some expansion in the industrial sector of our business. So that gives you kind of a sense of where we’re at. So as I stated, we are anticipating about a 1% increase in sales year-over-year. Operator [Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to Paul Patterson of Paul Patterson of Glenrock Associates. Paul Patterson Just sort of circle back on Riverside. I guess what the question I sort of had is first of all, I mean this is more of a question for Wisconsin electric. But with the merger, it seems that they are saying that they are now coming up with a lot of extra capacity and that – as you indicated previously in the call, that they can replace Riverside. But I guess what my question is – what is it in Wisconsin that prevents utilities who were not merged from engaging this kind of what would seem to be a savings methodology, do you follow what I am saying? I mean this could have been done without a merger and I am wondering just in general how we should think about that. Pat Kampling Paul, we’ve been very deliberate in our process to make sure we have the lowest cost long-term solution for our customers. And I cannot speak on what WEnergy is thinking right now. And all we really know is what they filed at the Wisconsin Commission, believing that they have a short-term solution to offer to us which we have not seen, where they provided no details. So this is just a very new news and we’ve got to work through the process here and Wisconsin Commission is going to rule later this morning on if they’re allowed to be involved in the case with another proposal. Paul Patterson I mean I guess, basically get interviewed in the cases [ph] I wouldn’t – I mean is that fair to give a utility in the neighborhood – I mean how much of a gating factor should we look at that being in terms of what their proposal is. I don’t get it. I mean that means that their proposal is unlikely to – but I mean in general though, I mean assuming that they are giving it, how should we think about that? Pat Kampling Yes, and Paul, it’s common that other utilities get interviewed in the status in the cases, that’s just very common as you follow the cases. So that’s not unusual. The unusual thing here is that at the 11th hour they want to provide another proposal and they were not part of the RFP process, they did not reply to any — they did not provide any offers when we did the RFP. So this is a little unique. Paul Patterson Now you said that you’ve – just to clarify this. You did say that basically you looked at all these things and this is the cheapest cost. What about this idea of combining with the utilities I guess is what I am sort of wondering here now, like it seems kind of that Wisconsin with the merger with WPL was able to come up with some savings. I am just wondering, is there something that doesn’t allow utilities to cooperate in that manner without a merger? Pat Kampling Paul, just to be clear they merged with WPS. Paul Patterson I am sorry, WPS. I apologize. Pat Kampling That’s okay. No but they were – and again I prefer that you address this with WEnergy but we are not part of their IRP planning process. Paul Patterson But I am just wondering – generically, I am sorry to harp on this. I am just speaking generically. Is that something that you guys look at and when these plans are put forward, the idea of partnering with – Pat Kampling Now our IRP relates to our Wisconsin customers, Paul. We’ll talk to you later on this if you want to follow up. End of Q&A Operator Ms. Gille, there are no further questions at this time. Susan Gille With no more questions this concludes our call. A replay will be available through August 13, 2015 at 888-203-1112 for US and Canada, or 719-457-0820 for international. Callers should reference conference ID 8244179. In addition, an archive of the conference call and a script of the prepared remarks made on the call will be available on the Investors section of the company’s website later today. We thank you for your continued support of Alliant Energy. And feel free to contact me with any follow-up question. Thanks. 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Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE) Andrew Littlefair on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. (NASDAQ: CLNE ) Q2 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 5, 2015 04:30 PM ET Executives Tony Kritzer – Director, IR Andrew Littlefair – President, CEO & Director Bob Vreeland – Senior VP, CFO & Accounting Officer Analysts Rob Brown – Lake Street Capital Laurence Alexander – Jefferies & Company, Inc. Aaron Spychalla – Craig Hallum Capital Group Operator Greetings, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only-mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions].As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host Mr. Tony Kritzer, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin. Tony Kritzer Thank you, operator. Earlier this afternoon, Clean Energy released financial results for the second quarter ending June 30, 2015. If you did not receive the release, it is available on the Investor Relations section of the Company’s Web site at www.cleanenergyfuels.com, where the call is also being webcast. There will be a replay available on the Web site for 30 days. Before we begin, we’d like to remind you that some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Words of expression reflecting optimism, satisfaction with current prospects, as well as words such as believe, intend, expect, plan, should, anticipate, and similar variations, identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance, and the Company’s actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in the Risk Factors section of Clean Energy’s Form 10-Q, filed August 5, 2015. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this release. The Company’s non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA will be reviewed on this call, and exclude certain expenses that the Company’s management does not believe are indicative of the Company’s core business operating results. Non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to results prepared in accordance with GAAP, and should not be considered as a substitute for, or superior to, GAAP results. The directly comparable GAAP information, reasons why management uses non-GAAP information, a definition of non-GAAP EPS and adjusted EBITDA, and a reconciliation between these non-GAAP and GAAP figures is provided in the Company’s press release, which has been furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K today. Participating on today’s call from the Company is President and Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Littlefair; and Chief Financial Officer, Bob Vreeland. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Andrew. Andrew Littlefair Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us. I’m pleased to review our second quarter 2015 operating results with you today. We delivered 74.4 million gallons this quarter, up 15% from 16.8 million gallons we delivered in the second quarter of 2014. Revenue was $86.9 million in the second quarter versus $98.1 million a year-ago. Revenue decreased primarily due to three factors. Our overall effective price, which is primarily driven by lower natural gas commodity prices drop by $0.10 per gallon compared to the second quarter of last year. A simple way to think about this is when applied a 74 million gallons, this affected our revenue by close to $7.5 million. And as I told you last quarter we had $9.1 million in construction projects that were essentially complete at the end of the first quarter, but we’re still unable to recognize about $6.4 million of the revenue. This particular construction projects is part of a larger facility. Our portion is complete and we’ve been paid, but we’re waiting for the completion of the remainder of the facility to be able to recognize the revenue which we anticipate in the third quarter. And lastly our Clean Energy Compression subsidiary was somewhat challenged due to the global decline in oil prices, the strength of the U.S dollar and a slowdown in China, all of which contributed to softened international sales. However, they improved their gross margin over last quarter by almost $1 million and continue to make progress on their product standardization. The first of their standardized units are in production now. The impact of these three factors affected our top line by roughly $19 million. Fortunately, because of our volume growth, we had incremental revenues from fuel sales of $8 million, which help offset that impact. In spite of lower oil prices, which have been challenging our recurring revenue model — let me back up, in spite of lower oil prices which have been challenging, our recurring revenue model continue to show growth. Our margins remain relatively intact to $0.27 and fuel volumes grew 15% year-over-year. For many of our customers, volatility is much an issue as fuel price and we still offer an economic value proposition with a cleaner fuel. Along these lines with economic and clean fuel benefits, adoption continues and we see significant investments across the entire natural gas vehicle industry and in our sectors. New vehicles and platforms are coming to market and being developed including the new commenced Westport 6.7 liter engine and the CWI 9 liter near zero NOx engine. Additionally, Quantum Fuel Systems just launched a high capacity CNG fuel module last week. We’ve also seen the incremental cost of natural gas trucks continue to come down, partly due to our tank programs with agility and chart. In trucking, in the first half of the year, we’ve began fuel 700 new trucks and open 15 truck friendly stations in 11 states and we plan to open 10 more by year-end. In total, we now have 208 truck friendly stations open across 31 states in British Columbia. These include Corridors, the I-5 and Highway 99 between northern and southern California. On the I-40 from LA to Oklahoma City, the I-10 from LA to Jacksonville, the I-20 from LA Birmingham going through Dallas and on the I-95 from Jacksonville to Richmond and CNG tractors can now go from Washington DC through Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. We now fuel close to 3,000 Class-8 heavy-duty trucks nationally. We recently our demo truck programs where we lend new CNG or LNG trucks and box trucks to potential customers. Our goal is to provide as many fleets as possible with the opportunity to test drive these natural gas trucks, if they have a positive driving experience on top of enjoying the benefits of a cheaper and cleaner fuel. The demand for these trucks has been strong and there are currently 93 fleets on the waiting list to demo the trucks in both our core and trucking segments. In our refuse market, the momentum continues. We have completed 17 station projects to date and we anticipate we will complete 36 refuse station projects by the end of the year. We’ve added nine new contracted projects to our refuse pipeline in last month alone. It become almost a requirement for refuse companies to convert at least part of their fleets to natural gas in order to stay economically and environmentally competitive. We currently fuel over 9,000 refuse trucks daily. In our transit market, in the second quarter, our customers ordered or added 224 buses to their fleets. This equates to over 3 million gallons annually. We announced the Big Blue Bus of Santa Monica has become one of the country’s first municipal transit authorities to convert its entire fleet to our Redeemed branded renewable natural gas that is 90% cleaner than diesel and is the cleanest transportation fuel commercially available. In addition, to Big Blue Bus, UPS previously committed to fueling which Redeem for a portion of its heavy duty fleet as part of their plan to drive one billion miles using alternative fuel by the end of 2017. We comment Big Blue Bus and UPS for their commitment to using cleaner fuel and we look forward to working with other major companies and fleets who value that same commitment to sustainability. For the first six months of the year, we saw a 21 million gallons of Redeem and we’re on track to double what we delivered in 2014. Across all our markets, we’re working with over 950 fleet customers representing close to 42,000 vehicles that we fuel on a daily basis. On NG Advantage, we’re pleased with the volume growth, having delivered over 10 million gallons in the first two quarters. We are expanding our station in Milton, Vermont to add 30% more contracted capacity. This is the second significant upgrade of that station in the past year to meet demand of contracted volumes. On the policy front last week, the Highway Trust Fund Legislation was passed by both houses of Congress and was signed by the President. Within the bill is a provision to equalize the federal tax in LNG to an energy equivalent basis with diesel and gasoline. The result will lower the tax in LNG by $0.17 per diesel gallon equivalent effective January 1, 2016. Additionally, 26 state legislatures have already taken similar action to equalize transportation fuel taxes. Across the country we’re seeing the development of robust grant programs to support fleets to dock natural gas. Here in California, Prop 1B funding will provide $65,000 per truck for fleets to qualify. The Prop 1B funds totaled over $260 million, which will become available later this year and will be allocated throughout 2016. So far this year, we’ve received $40 million in grant funding for 17 stations and 546 natural gas vehicles in 25 states. Regarding our balance sheet, at the end of the second quarter, we had a $182 million of cash and investments and we’re on track with reduced CapEx program of $59 million. We are focused on the 2016 convertible notes which are due at the end of August of next year. We have flexibility with different options including cash, stock, or a combination of both and we’re in regular communication with the noteholders. We plan to file a universal shelf registration statement of $500 million in the coming days to replace our expired shelf. We don’t have any immediate plans to use the shelf, but we think this is good corporate practice and gives us the tools and flexibility should we needed. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Bob. Bob Vreeland Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon to everyone. It’s my pleasure to go over our financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2015. Overall, we made progress in the second quarter, mainly our adjusted EBITDA improved by $3 million from negative $5.6 million in the first quarter of 2015 to negative $2.6 million in the second quarter of 2015, and slightly less volume in the second quarter. And we improved our adjusted EBITDA by $2 million over the second quarter of 2014, despite lower revenues in 2015 compared to 2014. Now I’ll go over some specifics for the second quarter of 2015. Starting with volume, compared to the second quarter of 2014, as we reported, volumes grew by 9.5 million gallons or 15% over the second quarter of 2014. Refused increased 27%, trucking increased 19%, together transit and fleet services increased around 5% and our industrial sector more than doubled to a little over 6 million gallons. When compared to the first quarter of 2015, I want to point out that volumes were down in the second quarter of 2015 by a net 2.7 million gallons as a result of fully finishing our involvement with our former biomethane plant in Dallas, effective mid April of 2015. On a year-to-date basis, through June 30, our volumes are up 20% or 25.4 million gallons over 2014. Our revenues of $86.9 million or $11.2 million last — then a year-ago which is principally a function of lower fuel prices driven by lower commodity costs, the timing of station sales and our compressor business. Lower fuel prices represented about $5.6 million of the decline in revenue. Fewer stations completed and recognized represented about $5.2 million of the decline. As Andrew mentioned, we still have one large station being deferred to the third quarter from the first quarter. Lower revenue at Clean Energy Compression Corp of about $8.1 million, reflects the general softness in the international marketplace as previously mentioned. These declines in revenue were partially offset by 7.9 million in higher revenues from the 9.5 million incremental gallons in 2015 over 2014. It’s important to note that our effective price per gallon declined $0.10 per gallon from a year-ago, while our effective costs per gallon declined $0.08 for a net impact of $0.02 on margin per gallon. So this has a fairly significant impact on revenues at $0.10 a gallon and less of an impact to our margin. Now moving on to margin, our gross margin per gasoline gallon equivalent was $0.27 in the second quarter of 2015 compared to $0.29 in the second quarter of 2014, and $0.28 in the first quarter of 2015. The decline of $0.02 from 2014 was attributed to a volume mix, a higher concentration of incentive programs that are tied to fuel deals in 2015 and some pricing squeeze from today’s low price environment. Offsetting these margin pressure was another solid quarter of our RIN credits at $2.9 million associated with our sales of Redeem, our renewal natural gas. All in all, we’re holding steady on our gross margin per gallon and are rather fluid pricing environment. As Andrew mentioned, we saw gross margin improvement of around $1 million from our Compression Corp in the second quarter when compared to the first quarter of 2015. This was mainly from cost controls and a focus on selling core products versus larger custom build projects. However, the challenge remains due to a soft demand internationally as we’ve mentioned. Our SG&A spending remain under control at approximately $29 million for the quarter, a decline of 16% from a year-ago and a 4% decline from our most recent quarter. Our cash investments totaled $182 million at June 30, 2015. We continue to control capital expenditures as planned. We spent $26 million on CapEx in the first six months of 2015 compared to $62 million spent on CapEx for the first six months in 2014. NG Advantage is about $10 million of the $26 million spent in 2015. So on a comparative basis; you’re really comparing $16 million to $62 million or a $46 million reduction while volumes are growing. As I mentioned, our adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2015 was negative $2.6 million. The improvement of $3 million over our first quarter of 2015 was primarily from improved margins at the Compression Corp, station sales and lower SG&A spending. We improved by $2.1 million compared to 2014, despite a $11.2 million less in revenue in the second quarter of 2015 versus 2014. In comparing to the second quarter of 2014, our adjusted EBITDA was negatively impacted by lower station sales and Compression Corp revenue in 2015 that positively impacted by our increased volumes between the periods as well as our reduced spending on SG&A. Now we’ve seen improvement in our quarterly adjusted EBITDA and we expect to continue to leverage our station and cost infrastructure and grow volume such that we expect these improvements to adjusted EBITDA to continue. It is unlikely we will get a positive adjusted EBITDA for the full-year, but it is still possible. However, we anticipate getting to positive quarterly adjusted EBITDA by the end of this year as we make steady progress, growing volumes, and leverage the infrastructure of our business. And with that, operator, we will open the call to questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Rob Brown from Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question. Rob Brown Good afternoon. Andrew Littlefair Hi, Rob. Bob Vreeland Hi, Rob. Rob Brown Could you just give us little more color on the pipeline of sort of new fleets or just in fleets expanding to natural gas? I know a number have been testing it, but where is that at with oil, it’s obviously slowed down but has — are people still moving forward, are they evaluating it? Where are things at with the lower oil price in the pipeline? Andrew Littlefair Yes, Rob I’m glad you asked that question, because we haven’t had any current customers leave the program or turn back the keys with their natural gas truck. Let’s face it, lower, lower diesel price and oil prices, those customers that are on the fence has given them even more to think about. However there is still lots of new fleets coming to the program. We just this last week, we — and I can’t go through all their names with you right now, but we’ve had about eight or nine new fleets, field more trucks. I think our demo truck program where we got really 90 some odd fleets in the queue to test those vehicles. I think it’s very encouraging. So we have seen good examples of our current customers UPS and Waste Managements and others continue to order vehicles and that really hasn’t slowed. We just have to put more in the pipeline and get more people exposed. We still have, I think it’s important to remember, we still have an economic offering. And in this last nine months or so since the oil has done what’s its done, the incremental cost has come down significantly on these trucks, as I mentioned in my remarks. But we’ve seen concrete examples of the incremental cost on the 12 liter truck going from somewhere around $40,000 somewhat to $22,000 to $25,000 and so that’s been very helpful. So we’re still able to save customers and we’re between $0.75 to over $1 a gallon. So the economic proposition is still there. We’re still getting new people to sign up. Rob Brown Okay, good. And then it sounds like refuse has become sort of the standard to having natural gas. What’s sort of the thinking on when that can happen in trucking, is that — I know its hard to predict, but are you still in a path to having that ultimately be the case in trucking where everybody [multiple speakers]? Andrew Littlefair Yes, I haven’t lost any optimism for what I think is going to happen. To me it’s impressive that UPS hasn’t bought a diesel truck in two years. I mean look, this is the one world leader in terms of logistics and has one of the largest fleets, and haven’t bought a diesel truck in two years. So to me that’s very telling. We’re still having some of our big shipper friends, Unilever, MillerCoors, Procter & Gamble and others requiring their contracted carriers to move to natural gas. This year you’ll probably feel about as many new heavy duty Class A trucks on natural gas as you will refuse trucks, and so — but it’s a much larger market. And so I still remain very optimistic that we’ll get on a much higher penetration rate, of course having fuel at higher price is the delta one, the delta increases, it will make it that much more compelling for fleets. But I don’t know, I can’t give you a time Rob, but we’re still saving these guys money and its still pretty impressive. As I mentioned in my remarks there’s still a lot happening in the business, there’s new models coming to market, there’s new engines coming to market. I quickly went over it, but the Cummins 9 liter and next year sometime the 12 liter of low NOx engine, I think that’s a game changer. Now you’re talking about an engine that’s almost 10 times cleaner now and the future of the low NOx has occurred. And so that really makes us competitive when we put it that with the renewable fuel. Its one of the cleanest vehicles on the road in the world. And so investments continue to be made, our customers are building stations and ordering vehicles. Rob Brown Excellent. That was a great review. Thank you. Andrew Littlefair Thank you. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander from Jefferies. Please proceed with your question. Laurence Alexander Good afternoon. Could you help with a couple of things. First, I think was a quarter or two ago you mentioned that seeing some competitors likely being forced to shut capacity or slowdown their project build out. Have you actually seen that play out, and how are you seeing the competitor dynamics right now? Andrew Littlefair Well, as we talked I think before Laurence, well there is a lot of people that are in “fueling business” as we’ve reviewed before some of them are regional, some of them are partnerships with utilities, some of them are relatively small compared to us. Yes, I mean we’ve seen just recently in the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen few different smaller competitors either out searching funds or being put up for sale. Look, this is a difficult business and if you only have four fueling stations at light duty convenient stores, this is tough. Because now you’re going up against really small fleets and light duty gasoline vehicles, so it’s difficult. So I would say yes, we’re seeing a consolidation. You go back with me Laurence and think, I don’t know six months ago, boy there was a lot of companies talking about building — getting ready to launch 100 stations and those kind of thing, but you don’t hear anything about that anymore. So there are some larger competitors that are still proceeding that we will. We’ll build more station projects this year than we did last year close to 70 and some of our other larger competitors [indiscernible] gain and a few of these others, they’re continuing. But I think for some of the smaller companies this is a difficult environment. Laurence Alexander And then with the tax changes that have been passed and also the draw up in the truck premium back with the envelop it looks as if the truckers are getting about one and half year payback. Andrew Littlefair I think that’s fair. Laurence Alexander Are you hearing that from your customers as well? Andrew Littlefair Yes, I think that’s fair. I mean it depends on exactly the price that they’re paying. But there was a time we’re even a little bit better than that. Of course it all depends on how much fuel. I was kind of figured you’re using a 20,000 gallon annual truck. We have some customers right now, one that’s taking delivery of 12 trucks as we speak; they use 37,000 gallons annually — a year per truck. But if you use that 20,000 one, we’re still able to save these guys close to $1 a gallon, and so you’re somewhere around a year and a half. That depends on the tank pack as you’re putting in place, but we’ve seen significant reductions in the price of these trucks. So anywhere in the less than two years, year and a half area, I think this still makes a lot of economic sense. Laurence Alexander And then just one last one if I may, if you had 100% conversion of your pipeline, do you have any sense for what the gallon opportunity is that’s embedded in your existing target? Andrew Littlefair Wow, it would be a big number, right? So I don’t know that you want me to quote that. But I mean its — well… Laurence Alexander Yes, actually I just got a sense for, without changing anymore minds if you just change the … Andrew Littlefair Yes, well if we just got the 200 or so fleets that we’re working with and that began to really kind of do what the refuse guys have done over time and go from 10 to 100. I mean you’re talking about 10s of 1000s of trucks. So we’re working with very large customers and they have the ability to take big numbers of vehicles. That’s why I like, when I mentioned these 950 fleets and that business sound like a very big number, but that 950 fleets, I’m just kind of guessing on top of my head, that probably deals with — that probably would get you into a million or couple of million vehicles at that 950 fleets. So we’re dealing with the right people and it’s just the matter of getting them comfortable with the experience, matching that up with the infrastructure and that’s happening. I went through that in my remarks, when you begin to look and we have these maps and if you ever want to have those, you can let us know. But we have these maps that show coverage across the country and its pretty impressive now that the coverage you get 300 miles away from our stations these are overlapping umbrellas if you will and you’ve covered most of the country. So you’re able now to deal with lots of corridors, lots of trucking where there’s an off a lot of regional trucking that happens in the country that go from Houston to Dallas and places like that, and so we’ve got that infrastructure in place today. Laurence Alexander Okay. Thank you. Andrew Littlefair Yes, you bet. Operator Our next question comes from the line of Eric Stine from Craig Hallum. Please proceed with your question. Aaron Spychalla Hi. Good afternoon, it’s Aaron Spychalla. Thanks for taking the questions. Andrew Littlefair Sure. Aaron Spychalla Maybe first on Mansfield, can you give us an update there and the JV for bulk fuel hauling. How many stations do you guys have inside the fence now and what does the pipeline look like there? Andrew Littlefair Okay, well now you know that our Mansfield joint venture ride is the bulk fuel hauling joint venture. So that’s really targeted at people that are — the trucks that are going in and out of terminals. So we just got started with that. Our first station opened in Doraville, Georgia in November and I’m pleased to report its now doing 40,000 gallons a month which is a nice start. We’ve got two other locations that we can’t — I can’t mention the names right now but two other locations where we’re just finishing up the contracts with other fleets where they’ve committed to go. Now I will say this, that particular segment bulk fuel hauling. Now as you’re dealing with people that are hauling gasoline and diesel and in some places in the country, diesel has dropped significantly. So we’re having to work very hard and being very aggressive on pricing to make sure that those still will happen. But I think what we’ve seen is we proved out the model, it’s a good segment for us, we’re with the best in the business which is Mansfield and those — we’ve always figured that we would build a few more this year and I hope that we get those things launched too shortly — those new stations. Aaron Spychalla Right. Thanks. And then, could you maybe provide some color on the AB 857 legislation and what that might mean for your business if we continue to see that move forward? Andrew Littlefair Right. Well for those on the phone, it’s the piece of California legislation. So when it gets tied into the cap and trade funds, there’s a big part of money now in California and its getting to be I mean large, I mean we’re now talking as much as a couple of billion dollars, AB 857 would, starting in 2018 to 2023 would make available $100 million a year for natural gas heavy duty trucks. So it’s significant for us. We like — we’re working hard on that now. We’ve got very good support in legislature. We get up to $100,000 of grant money per truck when we have that low NOx truck, that’s why I’m so excited about the potential of what Cummins Westport is doing on that low NOx truck that really puts us way ahead of what diesel can do and other fuels can do. So we’re excited about it. It’s not done yet, but it’s significant. That does bring me to just highlight that Prop 1B, I mean the Prop 1B money is slopping around right now. Its $260 million, it gets [indiscernible] out to the air districts in California, San Joaquin, the Bay Area, the South Coast. We have our sales people working with fleets right now. That money was being coordinated by their resources board and I think maybe the California Energy Commission, that money will get distributed out to the air districts and then the fleets submit for it, and that is underway and it’s significant for us. Aaron Spychalla Good. Thanks for taking the questions. Andrew Littlefair Okay. Thank you Operator Mr. Littlefair, there are no further questions at this time. Would you like to have any closing remarks? Andrew Littlefair Sure, operator and everybody on the call, thank you for dialing in this afternoon. We look forward to updating you on our progress in the next quarter. Thank you. Operator This concludes today’s teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time.

Laclede Group’s (LG) CEO Suzanne Sitherwood on Q3 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Laclede Group, Inc. (NYSE: LG ) Q3 2015 Earnings Conference Call August 5, 2015 9:00 AM ET Executives Scott Dudley – Director-Investor Relations Suzanne Sitherwood – President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Rasche – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Analysts Dan Eggers – Credit Suisse Spencer Joyce – Hilliard Lyons Selman Akyol – Stifel Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Laclede Group’s Third Quarter Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Scott Dudley, Managing Director, Investor Relations. You may begin your conference. Scott Dudley Thank you and good morning, welcome to the Laclede Group earnings conference call for the third quarter of fiscal 2015. We announced our financial results this morning and you may access the news release on our website at thelacledegroup.com, and you can find that under the News Releases tab. Today’s call is scheduled for up to an hour and will include discussion of our results, and question-and-answer session. Prior to opening up the call for questions, the operator will provide instructions on how you may join the queue to ask a question. Presenting on our call today are Suzanne Sitherwood, President and CEO; and Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and CFO. Also in the room with us is, Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Distribution Operations. Before we start, let me cover our Safe Harbor statement and discussion of our use of non-GAAP earnings measures. Today’s earnings conference call, including responses during the Q&A session, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of today and we assume no duty to update them. Although our forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, various uncertainties and risk factors may cause future performance or results to be different than those anticipated. A description of the uncertainties and risk factors can be found in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which will be filed later today. In our comments, we will be discussing financial results in terms of net economic earnings and operating margin, which are non-GAAP measures used by management when evaluating the company’s performance. Net economic earnings exclude from net income, the after-tax impacts of fair value accounting and timing adjustments associated with energy-related transactions, as well as the impacts related to acquisition, divestiture and restructuring activities, including costs related to the acquisition and integration of Missouri Gas Energy and Alabama Gas Corporation. Operating margin adjusts operating income to include only those costs that are directly passed on to customers and collected through revenues, which are the wholesale cost of natural gas and propane, as well as gross receipts taxes. A full explanation of the adjustments and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their GAAP counterparts are contained in the news release we issued this morning. So with that, I’ll turn the call now over to Suzanne. Suzanne Sitherwood Thank you, Scott, and welcome everyone. I’m proud to report we turned in another quarter of solid performance, as we continue to execute on our growth initiative. I’ll begin with the quick summary of our results and then I will provide an update of other items related to achieving our strategic objectives. Steve Rasche will follow me with a more detailed discussion of our operating results and financial position, as well as some commentary on our outlook. This morning, we reported net economic earnings at $0.25 per share for the third quarter and $3.56 [ph] per share for the nine-month period. Steve will discuss the details in a moment, but I’m pleased to note that these results are in line with our expectations and we remain on track to achieve our growth target for the year. At the AGA Financial Forum in May, we had an opportunity to meet with many of you to discuss our achievements relative to our strategic growth initiatives. I like to spend a few minutes recapping that discussion and providing a few updates. We remain focused on transforming our business and continuing to deliver long-term growth by executing on the four pillars of our strategy. First, we are growing our core Gas Utility business through investment and further pipeline infrastructure upgrades and organic growth initiatives. Second, as we demonstrated, we are growing to acquire another gas utility and successfully integrating them to create value for investors, customers and the communities we serve. Third, we are working to further leverage our natural gas industry expertise to optimize our current and future investments in natural gas transportation, source and supply assets across both our regulated gas facilities and our gas marketing business. And fourth, we are investing in innovation and emerging market. I’ll start with our initiatives to grow our Gas Utility business. As you know, a significant driver of growth for our Gas Utility businesses is capital investment, particularly for upgrade to our distribution infrastructure. In 2015, we have continued to ramp up our pipeline replacement efforts across both Missouri and Alabama. Our commitment to prudent investment in our infrastructure is designed to improve safety and reliability, while lowering operating cost. As far this year, we have invested more than $200 million in capital and we remain on track for approximately $300 million we spent for the full year with a little more than half of this total dedicated to infrastructure upgrade. Our 2015 plan in perspective, for fiscal 2014, our capital expenditures were about $170 million and the very [ph] the Infrastructure System Replacement Surcharge or ISRS provides us with a more timely regulatory recovery of our prudent infrastructure investment. Effective May 22, the Missouri Public Service Commission approved an annual increase in ISRS of $5.4 million for Laclede Gas and $2.8 million for MGE. On Monday of this week we filed for additional ISRS to cover our investments for the period running from March 1 to August 31. The filing requests $4.3 million from a fleet gas and $1.8 million for MGE. We expect that approved amount to be effective later this calendar year. We are also seeing results from our organic growth initiative, targeting increasing revenue and margins while also improving our cost efficiency. We have been testing the growth potential on the various markets we serve, starting with St. Louis and Kansas City, and learning from Alagasco’s experiences. In LA, we are getting back to the basics [ph] of understanding our customers and their energy needs and identifying opportunities to better serve them. In doing that we are striving to grow our customer base and [indiscernible] and improve the retention of existing customers in both traditional and creative ways. Our initial focus area has been to deal commercial and industrial loans conversion from alternate fuel. While I can’t state to specific customer, I’m proud to say we are running success in converting several industrial customers to natural gas, representing a meaningful amount of incremental margin. And I would note that we are seeing modest customer growth across our entire gas facility footprints. We are also now pursuing service extensions within our franchising areas and acquiring integrating gas facility. As we work to grow revenues and margins, we are offset for greater cost efficiency and how we serve our customers. We are deploying enhanced technology and communications tool to improve the quality of the interactions we have with our customers and to ultimately deliver service more effectively. We are also leveraging our shared services model and looking for and stocking process improvement across our organization. These initiatives are tied in part to our integration efforts for MGE and Alagasco. As I mentioned last quarter, we’re nearly complete with the integration at MGE with final item, system implementation next month and our integration work at Alagasco is well under way. Now let me turn to optimizing gas supply assets. As I narrated last quarter, we have undertaken a thorough evaluation of our mix with natural gas stores, transportation, and supply assets to ensure we have diversity to access to gas supply from various states and transportation sources. Due to the introduction of Shell Gas, such an evaluation should improve diversity and the liability for years to come. We started this effort in Eastern Missouri evaluating access to Shell Gas in the Northeast supply basin and Western Missouri and Alabama are earlier in the process. However, by the end of the calendar year, we expect to be in a position to outline some initial step we will take to realize value both for our customers and shareholders. Now, I’d like to close on positive merits. Last week, Laclede Board of Directors declared a common stock dividend of $0.46 per share, payable October 2. This is the same quarterly rate declared since the annualized dividend was increased 4.5%, effective January 2. We are proud of our track record applied in consecutive years, I mean keeping dividend, as we continue to make good on commitments to deliver a shareholder value. With that, now let me turn the call over to Steve Rasche to review our third quarter results. Steve? Steve Rasche Thanks, Suzanne. Good morning, everyone. We announced three quarter earnings earlier this morning that came in to the top end of our expectations, due to timing and a slight improvement in our income tax rate. Let me take a few minutes to review those results with you and talk a little bit about the rest of this year and 2016. Starting with the third quarter results, total operating revenues were just over $275 million, up 14% from last year. Operating margins or earnings contribution after gas cost and gross receipt taxes of $177 million was 36% higher than last year. Our business segment, Gas Utility margins of $173 million were up $50 million from last year, as the addition of Alagasco contributed $54 million in margin, while the operating margin of our Missouri utilities, declined by $4 million. This decline reflects interest revenues that were higher in the quarter, but they were more than offset by the change in Missouri Gas Energy’s rate design. As we noted in previous quarters, MGE’s rates now include a variable user space component, which has shifted the margin into the first and second quarters of the fiscal year and decreased margins in the third and fourth quarters. Gas marketing delivery operating margins of $3.1 million down from $6.5 million last year, this decline reflects the return of normal weather and market conditions in the Midwest, as compared to the higher volatility and wider price differentials prevalent in the prior year. Remember that last year the overall market was recovering from the record cold winter of 2014 and the market dynamics were still working to return to the new normal, so to speak, that we are seeing again this year. Returning to the income statement, other operations and maintenance expenses of just under $91 million include the benefit of $7.6 million nonrecurring gain on sale of utility’s property, related to the consolidation of our St. Louis offices. Excluding that gain, run rate operating and maintenance expenses of approximately $98 million or $25 million higher than last year, reflecting; first, the addition of Alagasco, which added roughly $36.5 million to O&M cost and second, lower expenses at Missouri utilities, driven by lower bad debt expense, lower labor costs, offset in part by higher integration expenses. Depreciation and amortization of $32 million was up $14 million from last year, with $12 million attributable to the addition of Alagasco and the remainder reflecting the higher level of capital spent in the last 12 months. Taxes other than income of $26 million were up $4 million, reflecting mainly the addition of Alagasco, offset in part by lower Missouri gross receipt taxes. Interest expense for the quarter of $18 million was higher year-on-year by just under $7 million and reflects the debt assumed and issued in conjunction with the Alagasco acquisition. Income tax expense was $4.6 million, compared to a net tax benefit in 2014. The effective rate for the current year now stands at 31.6%. And the provision for the quarter reflects the year-to-date change to that new run rate. During the quarter we filed our annual income tax returns and recognized the onetime benefit associated with the retroactive components of the tax extenders that were passed in late 2014. We anticipate our full-year effective tax rate to remain close to this run rate. The resulting GAAP net income for the quarter was approximately $14 million or $0.33 per diluted share. Net economic earnings for the quarter were $11.1 million, down from $14.5 million last year. As noted in our press release, our net economic earnings this quarter, excludes that gain on sale of property and after tax benefit of $4.7 million, to provide a truer picture of our run rate earnings. Looking at the earnings by segment the Gas Utility segment delivered net economic earnings of $16.5 million, compared to $13.3 million, a year ago. This increase reflects the additional earnings from Alagasco and the increase in [indiscernible] revenues offset in part by the impact of MGE’s rate design change. Gas marketing earnings are $0.5 million, down from $1.9 million last year reflect the change in market conditions I noted a minute ago. Other net cost in 2015 of $5.9 million reflect primarily the interest cost associated with the lead group debt issued to finance the portion of the Alagasco acquisition. On a per share basis, third quarter net economic earnings were $0.25 per diluted share, compared to $0.44 per share last year. This comparison reflects the change in the quarterly distribution of earnings, as well as the weighted average impact of the additional 10.4 million shares issued to finance the Alagasco acquisition, last year. Let me turn briefly to our year-to-date results. Overall net economic earnings for the first nine months of our fiscal year were just over $154 million or $3.56 per share. This compares to the prior year earnings of $102 million or $3.12 per share. This increase of nearly $52 million is due to growth in our Gas Utilities segment reflecting not only the addition of Alagasco, but also growth of our Missouri Utilities. Gas marketing earnings were lower than the last prior year period due to more favorable weather and market conditions in the prior year. Switching to cash flow statement, cash provided by operating activities for the first nine months of 2015 essentially doubled from a year ago to $366 million. Alagasco added $120 million of that operating cash flow and the remainder reflects favorable timing of collections the Missouri cost under our purchase gas adjustment cost, as well as lower inventory values. And as Suzanne mentioned, year-to-date capital expense was nearly $203 million up more than $93 million from last year with approximately $57 million of that increase attributable to Alagasco and we remain on track for our targeted capital spend $300 million this year. Our balance sheet at June 30 remains very strong with solid long-term capitalization of 51% equity and 49% debt. And short-term borrowings were approximately $211 million down from last quarter, reflecting our ongoing plans delever the business. Our liquidity remains excellent and we have ample capacity in our credit facilities and commercial paper program. During the quarter, we finalized our private placement of two tranches of Alagasco senior notes. These notes will fund later this calendar year to better match our seasonal cash dues [ph] with $35 million in ten-year notes with an effective interest rate of 3.2% funding on September 15, essentially replacing a similar north of high rate notes that we called in January of this year. In addition, we will plan $80 million in 30-year notes and an effective rate of 4.1% on December 1, and current with the maturity of life amount of debt that carries an interest rate of approximately 5.4%. In both instances our customers in Alabama will benefit from the lower interest rates since interest expenses recovered currently and trued up quarterly. Looking out to the rest of the year, our results continue to demonstrate the success of our growth strategies and we remain on track to meet our full year 2015 earnings targets. As a reminder, due to the change in MGE’s rate design, and the acquisition of Alagasco, our distribution of earnings becomes more seasonal and as a result we anticipate an operating loss in the fourth quarter, hot summer season in our service territories. We anticipate our fourth quarter loss being higher than last year and a little above the top end of the 9% to 11% range of full year net economic earnings per share we first introduced last fall. These expectations reflect the adjustments I noted earlier for a slightly lower effective tax rate and the timing of operating and maintenance expenses in the fourth quarter. Again, putting all this together, we remain on track for meeting our commitment of growth in 2015 above 6% after moving last year’s gas marketing weather benefit. And we’re already well into preparing for fiscal 2016, especially our budget and long range of plan. All are on track with our long-term EPS growth target up 4% to 6% and the expectation that 2016 will again be above that range. I would also note that as part of that detailed planning process we are assessing the launch of more formal, annual earnings guidance. More later as we complete the hard work internal with our team to get our 2016 plans in place. Now, let me turn it back over to you Suzanne. Suzanne Sitherwood Thanks, Steve. So summarize, we continue to execute on our strategy and delivered results in line with our expectations, including our earnings per share growth target. We are executing well and we continue to transform Laclede to effectively integrating and bringing together our utility companies and improving the business models of our non-regulated businesses. This transformation includes the shift in our corporate culture to reflect where we are today, a larger, growing company, to serve gas utility customers across two states and provide other gas services across the Midwest and other parts of the country. We continue work to build stronger connections and communications at all of our constituencies, sharing our changes and our plans. Our recent AGA presentation had simplified they’re reflected truly are the company. The slide depicts the community with a description, the description is energy exists to help to live their lives, relative businesses, advance the community. This is simple idea that had won the heart of our business. In that spirit I offer things are more than 3,000 employees for their commitments through our simple idea. And months ahead, you can expect that we will continue our efforts to focus and solidify our emerging messages to our stakeholders, and continue to deliver on our product. Operator, we are now ready to take questions. Thank you. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Dan Eggers with Credit Suisse. Dan Eggers Hey, good morning guys. Hey, good morning, sorry about that. Just a couple of questions, Suzanne you’ve made mentioned to the Muni system acquisitions or something about Muni’s in your prepared remarks. I just wanted if you could just, maybe elaborate a little bit more on that or tell me if I just misheard you? Suzanne Sitherwood Here I’ve given a little bit more expansion regarding organic growth. We’ve shared just a couple of calls ago, we had hired our Vice President of Organic Growth, and he’s done a lot of preliminary work in terms of areas that we should be focused on. And one of those areas on the resistible [ph] and also with the acquisition of Alagasco, there’s several municipals [ph] on that scale, as well as even some in Missouri too. We are just focused right now on understanding who they are and we also think about it in terms of all the pipeline regulations and Steve Lindsey is at the table and he can talk a little bit more that if you’d like but some of these municipals are actually reaching out to gas company because they have a stronger need in understanding what [indiscernible] and Steve if you want to add. Steve Rasche I think we’re [indiscernible] exactly where we’re really seeing a trend nationally that has enhanced pipeline safety regulation moving at the place. Some of these near to operators are looking for business either in the operation or exist in more perhaps concluding divesting our existing system. So we are out in market, we’re making ourselves available to have discussions with those long [indiscernible] and we do these as part of our organic growth. Dan Eggers Again we’ve in the water space where it makes tremendous amount of sense for the communities probably to be selling their systems because of the capital obligations and operational challenges, yet they seem not to show a whole lot of willingness to do it. As you guys are kind of looking into this, are you seeing interest either from the communities [ph] or the people in the communities would suggest, this is something you guys get yourself more actively involved in? Steve Rasche Well, yes, I think again as you mentioned some of the operational characteristics of the system have changed, as well as leadership looking at different municipalities. So I think again, our overall work right now is to evaluate where those opportunities to exist, have those discussions, and if those opportunities present themselves be ready and take a little bit more of a proactive approach that we have in the plans. Suzanne Sitherwood And you know what are the plans is, capital constrains, some of the communities have, especially coming out of the sort of the 2008 recession period and then you layer on this additional on Federal regulation. I still have the volume capacity and other capital resources to terms to you. So that’s part of what’s driving interest to your point. Steve Lindsey Do you think this is – is there an opportunity to kind of be a manager of their systems instead you get paid in a little capital way, you pay their management fee effectively to run it for them without having to do a lot of balance sheet work necessarily? Suzanne Sitherwood I guess I repeat we keep our mind open to you what the interest about, if we go to municipalities and for the Public Service Commission. I think if you will the commission really transactions in different way that we will keep our minds regardless taking the liabilities to the help of that system and our ability to evaluate with the extremely important. And then, secondly how we work with the regulators to get the – it’s a right way to transition that principle into the gas company that works for customers and our shareholders, and there [indiscernible], but we’ve done a lot of homework and we feel pretty confident about our approach. Dan Eggers This is Andy, I think this is the fiscal year 2016 event where we’ll start to see something converter how long [indiscernible] take to make sense of this from our perspective? Suzanne Sitherwood I think the few line items on organic growth, I’m trying to give into the [indiscernible] in terms of mix evaluation clearly wanted to the pillars and we’ve done a lot of analysis regarding to municipals that are in Missouri as well as Alabama and we have – they are working out in the field. So, I guess, time will tell that definitely something that we studied well and we are out looking. Dan Eggers And I guess, probably on the organic front you made mention of kind of looking at your share for shale related infrastructure and that sort of thing. Can you just maybe explain a little bit what the thought process is there? And I guess the timing is you give an update at the end of next quarter’s call up your fiscal year end? Suzanne Sitherwood It’s correctly. You did hear that correctly. So we embarked under my guide by heart leadership as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development Strategy. We started evaluating all the upstream asset that are prior actually to closing Alagasco for our considering utility and we were looking at the historical supply, transportation and stores contracts and sources for serving our customers. So we started evaluation process on how long they service regarding the liability for our customers on the short term and the long-term. As you know again with the introduction of shell gas in the various basement and there is attributes for these basements. As you know that changed the market, as well as the pipeline respond to those supply basements. So I believe and my colleagues believe the responsibility for us to embark on this evaluation, we started in eastern part of the state and we split up for a lot of the modeling therefore physical and logical modeling are now starting to same sort of western side of the state in Alabama and because we’ve started earlier with eastern side in more sophisticated, I mean reliability and then you layer on commercial availability you want some of their supply transportation services pipeline and go forward it. And that some of what you will hear an update for the end of next quarter. Dan Eggers Okay, great. Thank you guys. Suzanne Sitherwood Thank you. Operator Your next question comes from the line of Spencer Joyce with Hilliard Lyons. Spencer Joyce Steve, Suzanne, and Scott good morning, how are you? Steve Lindsey [Indiscernible]. Suzanne Sitherwood Good morning. Spencer Joyce Steve. I like that teaser on the guidance. We are all eagerly weighted queue for now. Steve Lindsey [Indiscernible]. Spencer Joyce Just a quick one here. Steve refreshes on the timing for that reallocation of the earnings kind of across the quarters, those rate structure changes will have anniversary like as of Q4, is that right. So we should have a pretty clean year kind of in the rear view mirror as of next quarter. Steve Lindsey We should but Alagasco will not have been in the mix last year cause you might recall close on that at the end of August. So we kept it out of our net earnings for the full year or so, if that and Alagasco is more seasonal due mainly to the fact of the geographies that it’s providing a natural gas. And so the fourth quarter will still be a little bit kinky, what I would suggest, Spencer is go back to the guidance that we talked about earlier in the year and I did talk about on the call and talk about on the call and we kind of give ranges of the earnings by quarter and that range that we gave for the fourth quarter was a loss of between 9% and 11%. And as I just mentioned, we expect to be a little bit above that range. So a little bit higher than 11%, I mean the loss for the quarter and that’s really timing of expenses as much as it is the change in the seasonality. But I would say that once we get beyond this year that I think we should have a reasonable cadence to work through, as you look at 2016 and beyond. Spencer Joyce Okay, great. So maybe one more kind of noisy or kinky quarter there and that we should be pretty clean? Steve Lindsey Yes, it is real hard. Not to make it noisy and comfortable for you. So – Spencer Joyce Yes, well, I know you all did a great job closing those acquisitions right at the end of the year, which made it nice to work with. Turning up to the income statement, the gain on sale from this quarter was that baked into the O&M line, was that a offset O&M expense or was that in the other income line? Steve Lindsey That was in the O&M expense line and you’d want to take out that $7.6 million essentially reduction in operating expenses in order to get to a better run rate. Spencer Joyce Okay, perfect that’s – and I think that was in the release. I just want to make sure I was understanding that right, that’s kind of a large item. Finally for me, on the corporate overhead and sort of the other unallocated expense or earnings line, we’ve obviously seen some wider losses this year, but I’m assuming that should peak somewhat for full year fiscal 2015, and then perhaps draw down a little bit moving forward. Is that kind of, I guess qualitatively the right way to think about those, the other segment, if you will? Steve Lindsey Yes, the other – the magical all other categories is everything that doesn’t set it nice and uniquely into a segment. And you’re right, the vast majority of those expenses are interest expense on the Group debt that we should financially, Alagasco transactions. So, and those are all, mostly at fixed rate some at variable rate, but short-term variable rate, so I until we start retiring that debt, that will be a fairly static number by quarter-to-quarter basis. There is a small amount of what I’ll call unallocated corporate costs that would also fall in that category. Those don’t generally vary much on a quarter-to-quarter basis, a little bit more this quarter because of some integration costs but we would pull those out for an economic earnings purposes. So, I think over time Spencer, as we start delivering the business and we know that in 2017, we delever the business with the – unit mandatory’s, liquidating at least the equity forward component those liquidating. That will definitely see change and the interest component in that other category. Aside from that is probably has a bit more flattish going into 2016. Spencer Joyce Okay. Perfect. So now – a potential drawdown talking point in 2017, but before that you’re looking kind of flattish. Steve Lindsey Yes. Spencer Joyce All right. Nice quarter, that’s all I have. Steve Lindsey Thanks, Spencer. Operator Your next question comes from the line of Selman Akyol with Stifel. Selman Akyol Thank you, good morning. Suzanne Sitherwood Hey, good morning. Selman Akyol A couple of quick questions. On your acquisition related expenses from Alagasco, how much longer do you expect those to be running through? Should we expect to see this continue to bleeding to 2016 as well? Steve Lindsey Yes, we do. We typically look on a broad brush Selman, when we look at integration. It’s generally a two to three-year program, if we look at MGE and that’s a really good marker to take a look at. We do anticipate there being some cost next year which would be the third year of that acquisition. Remember, we’re only coming up on the first anniversary of Alagasco. And as Suzan mentioned in our prepared remarks, we are now implementing the integration plans. So, we would clearly expect those integration cost to continue through 2016 and then perhaps some into 2017 at Alagasco. At that point, probably not much from MGE going forward. Selman Akyol All right. And then I think you said before that MGE was a good marker and maybe up to $20 million of integration expenses there, am I remembering that correctly? Steve Lindsey You are, and that was our original transaction cost guidance and we came in well underneath that. Our integration costs for MGE are running at a level significantly below that. In fact, if you give me just a second here because we do disclose that information every quarter, I’m not sure if I’m going to get it to – I will get it to you separately if I could – Selman Akyol Okay, we can follow-up offline Steve Lindsey Yes. Selman Akyol But so I’m just taking back 2016 in terms of Alagasco, should we expect sort of similar run rates to 2015 or is the bulk behind that is very just kind of quantify that? Steve Lindsey I would suspect that just as with MGE, you’re going to see a fairly consistent run of cost, they run into different categories, depending upon what’s driving them. So I would suspect we’ll see a similar level as we go through 2016 and that embraced our tailing off as we get to 2017. Selman Akyol Great, I appreciate that. And then just looking at the CapEx expenses, I clearly understand what’s being spent in Missouri, can you go through with the $56 million, where that’s being spent for Alagasco? Steve Lindsey Over a half of it was pipeline replacement and that’s clearly what our goal is in fact if you look into 2016 and beyond, we would expect that number to even go a little bit higher. So in terms of the fully 50 – 30 or almost two-thirds of that amount is either pipeline replacement or other things that would be directly associated with pipes or new customers. And then this year, and we see the same thing happening in St Louis or in Missouri, as we do have some facilities costs that are coming in this year, that’s about $10 million at Alagasco this year which we wouldn’t expect to recur next year. From our pipeline replacement perspective, all the three utilities will be at or above the level they were at last year. So we are managing holistically and at Alagasco, there is one large infrastructure expansion and as a surprise or improvement that this year, so that in other major pieces, what’s going on in 2015 Selman Akyol All right. Last one for me on still on the CapEx, $300 million for this year, roughly split two-thirds between Missouri and one-third for Alagasco? Steve Lindsey Yes, sir. Selman Akyol Got it. All right. Thank you very much. Suzanne Sitherwood Thanks, Selman. Steve Lindsey Thanks, Selman. [Operator Instructions] At this time we have no further questions. Management, I’m turning this back to you for closing remarks. Scott Scott Dudley Great, thank you all for joining us and will be available throughout the day for any follow-ups. Thanks for joining us. Operator This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.