Avista Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to the fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. My name is Brandon, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, during which you can dial star 1 if you have a question. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and I will now turn it over to Jason Lang. You may begin, sir.

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Avista's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2018 earnings conference call. Our earnings were released pre-market this morning and are available on our website. Joining me this morning are Avista Corp. Chairman of the Board and CEO, Scott Morris, Senior Vice President and CFO, Mark Thies, Avista Corp. President, Dennis Vermillion, Vice President, External Affairs, and Chief Customer Officer, Kevin Christie, and Vice President and Controller, Ryan Crassels. I would like to remind everyone that some of the statements that will be made today are forward-looking statements that involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties which are subject to change. For reference to the various factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in today's call, please refer to our 10-K for 2017 and 10-Q for the third quarter of 2018, which are available on our website. To begin this presentation, I would like to recap the financial results presented in today's press release. Our consolidated earnings for the fourth quarter of 2018 were $0.70 per diluted share compared to $0.42 for the fourth quarter of 2017. For the full year, consolidated earnings were $2.07 per diluted share for 2018 compared to $1.79 last year. Now, I'll turn the discussion over to Scott.

Well, thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. To start off, I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who worked with us on the Hydro One transaction over the last 18 months. Throughout this process, we were able to achieve remarkable collaboration with the various parties involved, including the staffs in Washington, Idaho and Oregon, public council in Washington, as well as the parties in Montana and Alaska, just to name a few. And because of this joint effort by all parties, we were able to reach agreements that were unprecedented in our industry. We were committed to ensuring the transaction would best serve the interests of our stakeholders, and the agreements reflected this commitment. And while we're disappointed that we were not successful in obtaining timely regulatory approval, I want to celebrate the tremendous effort by everyone involved. The agreements that we reached emphasized our values. And as a company, and as who we are as a company, dedicated to innovative thinking and serving the interests of all of our stakeholders, our customers, our employees, our communities, and our shareholders. The agreements reached contain unprecedented safeguards. and outstanding benefits to all our stakeholders. We believe the agreements would have allowed us to operate as an independent utility and continue to provide the same level of service. Hydro One would have been a great partner. We enjoyed collaborating with their employees on the transaction, and I want to thank all of them for their outstanding effort over the past 18 months, and we wish them well in the future. Lastly, I want to thank our employees who never let this transaction distract them from providing safe and reliable energy and unequal dedication to our customers and our communities. And even though the transaction was not completed, we believe that Avista is well positioned and we look forward to building on our nearly 130-year legacy. Looking ahead, We like our strategy and we remain focused on running a great utility and continue to invest prudent capital to maintain and update our infrastructure and provide reliable energy services to our customers. And to facilitate that timely recovery of our costs, including capital investments that are not included in our current rates, we expect to file general rate cases in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon in the first half of 2019 with requested effective dates in early 2020. And in addition to continued prudent capital expenditures at the utility, we expect to invest about $19 million at our other businesses in 2019. This is mainly related to economic development projects in our service territory that will showcase the latest energy and environmental building innovations and house several local college degree programs. Looking back to 2018, we're pleased with our earnings results. Avista Utilities and AEL&P had earnings that were above our expectations. We're initiating our 2019 earnings guidance with a consolidated range of $2.78 to $2.98 per diluted share, which includes $1.01 per diluted share for the termination fee received from Hydro One and the payment of remaining transaction costs. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Mark.