埃特莫斯能源 (ATO) 2004 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Atmos Energy Corporation fourth-quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following today's presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, November 10, 2004.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Susan Kappes, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I am Susan Kappes, VP of Investor Relations. Our call this morning is being webcast live over the Internet and we've placed slides on our Web site that summarize our financial results. We will not review those slides in detail but will be happy to take any questions about them at the end of our remarks.

If you would like to access the webcast and the slides, please visit our Web site at www.AtmosEnergy.com and click on the conference call link.

To discuss our financial results and highlights for the fiscal 2004 fourth quarter and year are Bob Best, Chairman, President and CEO, and Pat Reddy, Senior Vice President and CFO.

As we review these financial results and discuss future expectations, please keep in mind that some of our discussion might contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act and the Securities Exchange Act. Any forward-looking statements are intended to fall within the Safe Harbor rules of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

To begin, Bob Best will review the highlights of our 2004 fiscal year.

Thank you, Susan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning.

After the market closed Tuesday, we announced results for 2004 and our fourth quarter. I'm pleased to report that our earnings per diluted share for fiscal 2004 were $1.58, and that was well within our guidance of $1.55 to $1.60 and in line with First Call's mean estimate.

We also announced our 17th consecutive annual increase in Atmos Energy's cash dividend. Our indicated dividend rate for 2005, for fiscal 2005, is $1.24 a share, up 2 cents from the $1.22 we paid in 2004.

Net income for the year was at 86.2 million compared with 71.7 million in 2003. Utility operations provided 73 percent of our net income and non-utility operations provided 27 percent.

By all measures, both financial and operational, 2004 was an exceptional year for us at Atmos Energy. Our biggest achievement was doubling the size of our company. On October 1, 2004, we completed our acquisition of the operations of TXU Gas. We added about 1.5 million more customers in Texas, as well as one of the state's largest intrastate gas pipeline systems. We financed the acquisition with two successful equity offerings that raised almost $620 million and a $1.4 billion debt offering. We also maintained our investment-grade credit ratings.

We benefited from a full twelve months of contributions from our Mississippi Valley Gas division, compared to 10 months of contributions in 2003. We overcame the effects of record high gas prices and volatility as well as weather that was 6 percent warmer than normal on our system last year.

We also benefited from a 36 percent increase in the gross profit contributed by our non-utility operations. This improvement was the result mainly of work we undertook to enhance margins and to amend wholesale contracts so that the risk from high gas prices was shared more evenly with our customers.

Pat Reddy, our Chief financial Officer, will review the financial results in just a moment. But before he does, I want to mention a couple of points about the fourth quarter. Our fourth quarter is historically a loss quarter for us. That's because the summer is our lowest period of natural gas consumption. As expected, we reported for the quarter a net loss of 11 cents per diluted share. This compares with a net loss of 5 cents per diluted share in 2003. The net loss for the quarter was 6.4 million compared with a net loss of 2.4 million last year.

Contributions to gross profit from our utility operations were about 1.4 million lower, quarter-over-quarter, mainly due to reduced irrigation sales. Contributions from our non-utility operations were down about 8 million from last year's quarter due to less-favorable marketing margins this year.

Now Pat will discuss our numbers in greater detail. Then I will be back with a few closing comments about our plans for fiscal 2005 and beyond. Pat?

Thanks, Bob. Good morning, everyone.

As Bob said, we achieved an exceptional year and I'm very pleased with those results. Our net income for fiscal 2004 increased by 14.5 million to 86.2 million, or $1.58 per diluted share. As most of you will recall, our fiscal 2003 results were affected by a nearly $8 million cumulative non-cash charge resulting from a change in accounting principle pursuant to EITF 02-03. Atmos Energy and many other energy companies were required to change the way we account for gas storage and transportation contracts. Excluding the effect of that accounting change, fiscal 2003 net income would have been 79.5 million, or $1.71 per diluted share. Results for fiscal 2004 represent an 8 percent increase in income year-over-year before that cumulative effect of the accounting change.

Our number of shares outstanding increased after we sold 9.9 million shares of common equity this past July to pre-fund a portion of our TXU Gas acquisition. As a result, our average number of diluted shares outstanding for the year increased by 7.9 million shares, or 17 percent. That amounted to about a nickel's worth of dilution.

Looking closer now to fiscal year, consolidated gross profit increased 5 percent to 562 million. Utility gross profit went up 2.4 percent or about 12 million year-over-year. The increase was due to a full year of contributions from Mississippi Valley Gas Company and rate increases in three states but it was offset by slightly lower utility gas throughput due to weather that was 6 percent warmer than in 2003 and 4 percent warmer than normal, as adjusted for our areas that have whether-normalization clauses.

Nonutility gross profit increased 36 percent, or $16 million ,year-over-year. The increase primarily came from our market-enhancement program begun last year, from reduced risks on our wholesale gas contracts and from improved physician management. These gains, however, were offset by slightly lower gas marketing sales volumes, reflecting the relatively warmer winter weather.

Operation and maintenance expense increased year-over-year by 9 million. But if you exclude the provision for doubtful accounts and a 6 million increase of spending at Mississippi Valley Gas Company, our core O&M expense increased 11 million, primarily due to increased employee compensation, benefits and insurance costs. The provision for doubtful accounts decreased by approximately 8 million year-over-year due to continued improvement in our customer collection efforts.

Depreciation and amortization expense was up almost 10 million due to the full year of depreciation on our Mississippi Valley Gas assets.

Miscellaneous income increased 7 million year-over-year. The increase mainly was due to a $6 million pretax gain on the sale of our remaining interest in Heritage Propane Partners. In January and again in June, we and our three other utility partners sold our remaining indirect interest in Heritage. Miscellaneous income also increased 5 million due to the absence of a weather insurance amortization that resulted from our termination of a former weather insurance policy in 2003. Those increases in miscellaneous income were partially offset by the absence in 2004 of a 4 million pretax gain associated with the lease of a distributed (ph) electric generation plant that we recognized in 2003.

Turning now to the fourth quarter ended September 30, Atmos Energy had a net loss of 6.4 million, compared with a net loss of 2.4 million in the 2003 fourth quarter. The loss per diluted share was 11 cents compared with a net loss per diluted share last year of 5 cents. Our consolidated gross profit for the fourth quarter declined by 10 percent to about $90 million compared with approximately 100 million in 2003. Utility gross profit was down 1.4 million quarter-over-quarter, primarily due to lower irrigation sales in Texas, Colorado and Kansas during the summer. However, rate increases in Mississippi, Texas and Kansas helped offset that decline.

Our nonutility gross profit was down 51 percent from 16.4 million in the 2003 fourth quarter to 8.1 million this quarter. The reason was primarily less-favorable marketing margins this quarter compared to those in 2003.

O&M expense for the fourth quarter decreased almost 6 million from the same quarter last year. Excluding the provision for doubtful accounts, our core O&M expense decreased $800,000 due to cost-control efforts during the quarter. Our provision for doubtful accounts decreased by approximately 5 million due to our better collections of Accounts Receivable.

Depreciation and Amortization expense in the quarter was up about $5 million due to a regulatory disallowance of certain deferred costs and a higher plant balance as compared to last year's quarter. Miscellaneous income for the quarter was almost $2 million compared with miscellaneous expense in last year's quarter of about $1 million. The $3 million positive change resulted in part from the absence of $1 million loss quarter-over-quarter from our Heritage Propane partners indirect equity interest, which as I mentioned we sold earlier this year. The change also is due to an $800,000 increase in interest income earned on the proceeds invested from our July, 2004 equity offering.

Looking at cash flow for the 2004 fiscal year, operations provided cash of about 271 million compared to about 50 million during 2003. The increase of 221 million was due to various factors, including improved collections of Accounts Receivable, lower injections of natural gas into storage, accelerated recoveries of purchased gas costs, a reduction in cash held on deposited margin accounts to collateralize certain of our financial derivatives, and other favorable changes in working capital.

Capital Expenditures for our fiscal year totaled about 190 million. That compares with approximately 159 million for fiscal 2003. The $31 million increase was due to approximately 8 million of incremental spending at Mississippi Valley Gas and for various other capital projects across our utility segment. For fiscal 2005, we are projecting total Capital Expenditures of between 250 and 260 million, including our new TXU Gas subsidiary. We are still evaluating the capital requirements associated with TXU Gas operations and our final expenditures likely could exceed the budgeted amount because of some significant and attractive growth opportunities. For our TXU Gas operations, we expect to spend about 80 million on maintenance projects. In addition, we have budgeted about 180 million for our six other divisions.

As Bob mentioned, we were very pleased with outcome of our equity and debt offerings. On October 27, we completed the sale of 16.1 million shares of common stock. The shares were priced at $24.75, yielding net proceeds of a little over 382 million before other offering expenses.

On October 22, in a separate offering, we completed sale of 1.4 billion of senior, unsecured notes in four serious. The net proceeds for the Company were approximately 1.39 billion and the initial weighted average interest rate is 4.76 percent, including the effect of unwinding our treasury locks that we entered into in the amount of 875 million. Earlier in July, we also sold 9.9 million common shares also at 24.75 a share, yielding net proceeds of approximately 236 million before offering costs. We used the proceeds from these offerings to repay the entire $1.7 billion bridge loan that we undertook to temporarily fund our TXU Gas acquisition.

On October 22, we also closed on a $600 million revolving credit facility as a backup liquidity facility for our commercial paper program. This facility expires in October of 2005 and replaces our previous $350 million working capital facility. It has essentially the same terms as that previous facility.

Turning now to our earnings guidance for fiscal 2005, we remain confident that we should earn within our stated guidance of $1.65 to $1.75 per diluted share, which is in line with First Call's mean estimates. Our estimate assumes normal weather conditions, gas commodity prices that are not as volatile as those of last winter and certainly no major additional acquisitions. We expect that our TXU Gas acquisition should add between 5 to 10 cents per diluted share to EPS.

With that ,now once again, here is Bob.

Thanks, Pat.

In closing, I want to comment about the progress of our TXU Gas integration and about the outlook for Atmos Energy in 2005.

We are extremely pleased with how smoothly our integration of TXU Gas is going. The capital markets in October again showed their support of our decision to acquire TXU Gas. Following our successful July equity offering, we sold another 383 million of stock and 1.4 billion of bonds to finance the deal.

Earl Fischer and his leadership team at TXU Gas are in high gear, working to integrate all distribution operations. JD Woodward and his nonutility leadership group are planning opportunities to unlock more value from the gas pipeline and storage assets that we acquired with TXU Gas.

This coming February, our 1.5 million new Texas customers will begin seeing the Atmos Energy logo on our people and facilities and their gas bill as we rebrand the operation. In April, we will begin operating our own telephone call center to serve these customers. By this time next year, we will have converted all of the back-office and Information Technology systems at TXU Gas to our own processes and IT systems.

We have gained some exceptional management talent among the TXU Gas leaders who joined our system. Equally important, we have added a highly experienced group of dedicated employees who are glad to be with a pure gas utility and are taking to heart our commitment to serve our customers exceptionally well. These 1,350 employees who joined us from TXU Gas are working as hard as we are to speed the transition along.

In addition, we see numerous opportunities with this acquisition. Natural gas usage at TXU Gas is growing at 2 percent a year on average, even factoring in declining customer use. That's double the rate of growth throughout the rest of our system. Texas is the largest natural gas producing and consuming state. It has a fair regulatory climate and a highly professional staff at the Texas Railroad Commission. Our 6,000-mile TXU gas intrastate pipeline system, one of the largest in Texas and the United States, runs from one end of the state to the other. It interconnects with three major gas hubs, Waha, Katy and Carthage, and can transport gas from many producing areas as well as TXU Gas' own 38 Bcf of working storage.

The GRIP law in Texas, which stands for gas reliability infrastructure program, allows prompt recovery of the essential capital investments we make to maintain our system or serve new customers. Adding the TXU Gas properties has increased our assets under regulation, and that provides an opportunity for a more stable rate of return.

We now have 75 percent of our assets in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. We are the largest pure gas utility in these states and the largest LDC in the country.

Going into fiscal 2005, we are very encouraged about growing our earnings and our stated goal of 3 percent to 6 percent a year, on average. We continue to be successful in maintaining our rates. In 2004, we added 15.8 million in net rate increases to our future revenue stream and expect about 20 million in net rate increases in fiscal 2005. We have received approvals with eight from our largest states to add weather-normalization adjustments to our bills or to increase our fixed charges. This helps to moderate the effects of warmer weather on our earnings while it helps to protect our customers from high winter bills when the weather turns extremely cold. Our collection efforts have been successful in reducing bad debt expense, and our allowance for doubtful accounts is back well within our historical range.

In those states that severely restrict us from collecting or disconnecting customers during the winter, we are seeking to recoup bad debt expenses incurred during winter cut-off oratoriums (ph).

As we invest in new operations, we're focused on strategically spending our growth capital to improve cash flow and maximize returns. We are planning our future discretionary expenditures carefully to keep our capital working as productively as possible by favoring jurisdictions that allow a timely recovery of those investments through rates and minimize stranded investments. At the same time, we are proposing to regulators and legislators accelerated capital recovery mechanisms, such as the GRIP law in Texas, to reduce the effects of regulatory lag on cash flow and earnings.

In our nonutility segment, we have renegotiated contracts to reduce the risk to our business from high and volatile gas prices and to improve sales margins. We also continue to expand our nonutility operations into new markets and attract new wholesale customers.

With our earnings growth on average between 3 and 6 percent, coupled with our dividend yield of almost 5 percent, we believe we are serving as good stewards. We are intent on meeting our earnings estimates and maintaining that progress in 2005 and beyond.

I'll now turn it back to Susan.

Thank you, and that does conclude our prepared remarks. We will be happy to answer any questions now.

Thank you ,ma'am. Ladies and gentlemen, and this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Jay Yannello with UBS.

Good morning. Can you go into a little more details about the significant and attractive growth opportunities from the TXU acquisition? I think you implied there might be some more upside than you initially thought. Can you give us a little more details?

This is Pat. I can say about that that I don't know about whether there's more upside in total; I think what we are gratified to see is some very specific projects in early stages that are materializing, some connected with growth on the north end of our system, some having to do with producers' desire to move their increasing production to hubs that have a higher base of differential. J.D. Woodward, who leads that part our business on the nonutility side, is here this morning as well as Earl Fischer. I might ask J.D. to comment a little bit on the in -- (technical difficulty) -- that we are seeing.

One of the things we are seeing on the pipeline and storage side is an opportunity, by spending some capital, to increase our transportation capability, primarily for the producers in the north Texas Basin, through both the Carthage and Katy hubs, and we're working on that as we speak. We are also seeing, I think, an opportunity for our Atmos Energy Marketing Group to come into Texas and look to grow our marketing business in effect around the assets that we now have acquired with this acquisition.

Okay, but this is within the guidance ranges apparently?

This is within the guidance, that's correct. Well, we are continuing to scrub these and as you know, some will follow A and some -- I think the exciting thing is that, after we announced that we were the successful bidder for those properties, you know, TXU had not undertaken any kind of major capital expenditures or system expansions since 1995. I think the exciting thing is that, with our announcement, the phone has started to ring with producers and pipelines and others that would like to do some business with us. So I think the gratifying thing is that the assumptions we made during our valuation part of the acquisition are holding up well, but within our guidance.

Okay. The second question is regard to elasticity or potential elasticity. What are you seeing? What might you expect? Does your guidance assume some uptick in elasticity from the rising prices?

Well, I think -- we haven't seen, on our system to date, a great loss of load, particularly in our industrial market. We tend to be, in most of our divisions, primarily a residential and commercial market. We do have some significant industrial load in Kentucky and in Tennessee, but we really haven't seen huge drop-offs with that. You know, we have followed the plan that we followed the last three or four winters in that we have locked in prices for about 56 percent of our winter supply, if you count the storage that we have. So you know, one of the reasons we do this with hedging and with storage is to try to take as much volatility out of the pricing as we can. So to date, I mean, even if prices do go up a little bit, we still think we can make the earnings levels that we have given guidance in, and that's $1.65 to $1.75.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Philip Salles with Credit Suisse First Boston.

Thank you very much. Just a couple of questions on the growth rate -- I seem to remember, in past, you talking about a growth rate of 4.5 to 6.5 percent and a growth rate coming from the unregulated of 2 percent. Prior to that, you've talked about a growth of 10 percent from the nonutility operations. It would seem to me that there's opportunity, as you describe from J.D.'s world, on pipeline capacity and storage. I was just wondering if you could just confirm the growth rate targeted, going forward, and if you could describe some of the opportunities that you have in addition to Jay's question from cost savings and cost initiatives that you've factored into the 2005 guidance.

Sure, Phil. This is Pat. You know, you're absolutely right. Historically, before the TXU Gas acquisition, we talked about earnings growth rate over time within the 3 to 5 percent range, and we believe and continue to believe that the higher growth from both the distribution side and the nonutility side of TXU Gas should enable us to pick that up in more like the 4 to 6 percent range. So we've just kind of bracketed that in talking about 3 to 6 percent. And the reason is that some of the things that -- these growth projects, for example, are going to require some capital investments, so there's a little bit of a lag between the time you make the investment and the time the incremental revenues come on, so it's really not a 2005 item. It's really 2006 and beyond.

Also, because we've got a major outsourcing arrangement with Capgemini for the revenue cycle that includes reading the meter, billing the customer, answering the calls, collecting the revenue -- and that we will have that contract for about a year. We're not going to be able to achieve synergies related to those operations within 2005, so we don't really have any synergies baked into our 2005 guidance other than the fact that our corporate overhead allocations to the subsidiary are going to be lower than TXU Corp.'s allocations were, but that's been factored into our $1.65 to $1.75.

Now, going beyond 2005, we do see significant synergy opportunities and we've estimated those in the range of 15 to $20 million year, which is part of what gets us to that higher EPS growth rate in the 4 to 6 percent range, but that's probably a year out. The other thing that we are emphasizing is the need to have stability. We've doubled the size of the Company; we've undertaken some very significant financings; we are very focused on running a stable operation and getting that pick-up in earnings for 2005 while laying a foundation for these growth projects and for getting synergies beginning in 2006.

Thank you. Am I to understand then, in the 2005 guidance, there is nothing being -- as far as include -- nothing being included as far as cost savings in the first year, that you're looking for everything in the second year? Perhaps you could just also, as part of the discussion, could you talk about the rate relief you identified, I think an additional $20 million in 2005, as far as rate-relief? But perhaps you could extend that going into 2006, as you have already begun a 2006 discussion?

Sure, Phil. First of all, with respect to TXU Gas, as we did our evaluation estimates and looked at what their stand-alone 2005 OEM was budgeted to be, if I remember, it was about 253 million. As we looked at the corporate overhead allocations that were coming from TXU Corp., we identified 20 to 25 million of allocations that would go away at closing just because some of the functions were redundant; some of their corporate G&A was really at a higher rate than ours was. So we took down the O&M budget to 235 million for TXU for 2005, and that's already part of our guidance for '05. We didn't assume any operating synergies beyond that in '05. So, we're looking forward to evaluating those and getting those beginning in 2006.

Now, with respect to the rate relief in the rest of our business, as you probably know, in Mississippi, we are required to file semiannually to refresh rates, and we also, as Bob discussed, have this GRIP program in Texas for both the distribution company and the pipeline, and so between Texas and Mississippi, that's where really virtually all or almost all of that $20 million would come. You know, we've been running -- this year, our net revenues increased by 15.8 million, so I don't actually have a budget or a breakdown for 2006, but I think it's safe to assume that our run rate of about 15 to 20 million would continue on an annual basis, again, in jurisdictions where we are required to file semiannually or annually.

That's very helpful, and I appreciate all of those insights. One final question is on free cash flow -- just the thoughts, given the combined operations and some of the I guess capital needs of TXU, you describe some of these, including some of the -- not only on the maintenance side but on the growth side as well. But how are you're looking at managing the Company, going forward? In the past, free cash flow seemed to be quite tight in some years. Even normalizing for weather, it seemed to be negative and I'm just thinking -- could you just -- (multiple speakers) -- give us some thoughts as to managing on the free cash flow side, especially against the backdrop of increasing the dividend today?

You bet. Also, the other consideration, of course, is the fact that, as an acquisitive company, every three or five years, we tend to leverage up to do a significant acquisition, and that's exactly what we've done here. Our debt-to-cap has gone from about 43 percent at September 30 to about 60 percent, and we're going to be very focused on working that leverage down. We've told our investors, as well as the rating agencies, that within three to five years, we want to reduce that to the 50 to 55 percent range that we traditionally target. So, it's going to be a balancing act between using our cash flow to pay down debt but also using part of it to fund these growth investments that we need in turn to fuel our EPS growth.

The thing that was very attractive about this acquisition is that the Pro Forma free cash flows are strong, partly -- one of factors just off the bat is that, because this is being accounted for as an asset acquisition, we can write up, for tax purposes, the basis to the 1.9 billion level that we paid. That gives us an incremental increase in cash flow from deferred taxes of about $30 million on a full-year basis.

In our core businesses, we had a pretty dramatic turnaround in free cash flow this year -- from year-over-year of almost -- to about $256 million, partly because of things like accelerating the recovery of our gas costs, not having to put up cash and margin accounts, things like that. So, we're very focused on tightening up our free cash flow in our historical business units. We are looking at, as Bob said, targeting discretionary incremental capital investments to jurisdictions that give us quicker recognition of those investments. So, we're going to be very focused on free cash flow generation. But as we model it with our modest dividend increases, we can achieve both reducing debt and investing in these growth projects over the next three to five years.

Thank you. That was very helpful. I appreciate the comments.

Stephen Rountos (ph) with Talon Capital.

Good morning, everyone. I have a few clarification questions. The first is the $20 million of internal revenue in '05 -- through rate increases in Mississippi and the Texas GRIP program -- was that what was Atmos before the acquisition or does that include the TXU Gas piece as well?

It includes, in Texas, the TXU Gas piece.

Okay. Then when you had mentioned -- I think Bob was talking about the call center and the back office and getting those set up. It sounds like you're moving where I think originally you had talked about I guess taking a look at the Capgemini program and seeing what you might want to keep and what you might want to outsource. It sounds like you're moving away from that and planning to take it all in-house after the one-year transition services expires.

That's correct. This is Bob. We are. We looked at this and really, we think we can provide this service at a lower cost than we could get it from someone else, so that's really the driving force behind that. You know, we're moving forward with that. We're going to announce or have announced our call center, where it's going to be located and we are going to start on that immediately.

The other thing, Steve, is that we wanted to make sure that we had all of our customers on the same technology platforms for billing and accounting. We've worked hard over the last six years or so to have a uniform call center , to have one accounting system for financial reporting, one billing system for all six business units, and so that's part of this as well, to have kind of state-of-the-art -- make use of state-of-the-art technology. That's, frankly, one of the ways our O&M per customer and our G&A rates are as low as they are.

You had mentioned, Pat, 15 to $20 million of cost savings post '05, I guess post the expiration. Is that right?

Yes. I don't want to be overly precise here. That's an estimate based on past experience for a company that had an O&M run rate of about $250 million. It's just 10 percent of that is 25 million, and it's things like putting them on our technology platforms, our processes. It's probably 15 different things that -- we've outsourced and our inventory and warehouse management, so that we don't -- our inventory levels have gone from 8 million down to less than half a million, and I could give you six or seven other examples of things that we've done. Accounts Payable, for example, I think when we closed, TXU had about 23 or 24 AP clerks; we've got 4. So it's those kinds of things. Over time, we will get those efficiencies.

But they are all O&M savings and they're not working capital savings, that kind of stuff?

That's correct.

Okay. I guess one last clarification -- in the latest quarter, there was an uptick in depreciation by about 5 million year-over-year. How much of that was due to the regulatory disallowance?

The regulatory disallowance piece was about 2.9 million.

2.9 million? So is that going to continue in the future, or I mean what's the right run-rate for us to think about for the business? Is it the full 26 or is it 23, somewhere around there?

That was a one-time charge and won't affect our going-forward run rate for depreciation expense.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Ms. Kappes, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Okay. I just would like to remind you all that Atmos Energy is hosting its annual analyst meeting in New York City on Thursday, December 9. The presentation will be webcast live on our Web site at AtmosEnergy.com. In addition, a condensed version of the New York meeting will be held in Boston on Friday, December 10. So just watch for your invitations in your e-mail during the next few days.

Let me also remind you that a recording of this call is available for replay on our Web site until February 8, 2005. We appreciate your interest in Atmos Energy Corporation and thank you very much for joining us today. Bye-bye.

Thank you. You may now disconnect.