Black Hills Corp (BKH) 2008 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Black Hills Corp.'s quarterly earnings and 2008 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Jason Ketchum with Investor Relations.

Good morning and welcome to our 2008 full-year and fourth quarter conference call.

During the course of this call, some of the comments we make may contain forward-looking statements as defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and there are a number of uncertainties inherent in such comments. Although we believe that our expectations and beliefs are based on reasonable assumptions, actual results may differ materially. We direct you to our earnings release, slide 2 of investor presentation on our website, and our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a list of some of the factors that could cause future results to differ materially from our expectations.

I will now turn the call over to Dave Emery, Chairman and CEO of Black Hills Corp..

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning. For those of you following along on the webcast presentation that we posted last night, I will try to at least mention page numbers as we go. If you don't have it, I think you will still be fine as far as keeping up with the information. But I'll try to reference, at least at some points, the slide numbers so you can follow along.

Today, we will talk about several things. First is just I'll give an overview of the year. Tony Cleberg, our CFO, will give an overview of the financial results, both for the fourth quarter and for the year of 2008. And then, I will get back on and talk more about future and future growth plans and things like that before we open it up for question-and-answer.

2008 was the 125th anniversary of our corporation, and it was truly a transformational year for the Company. We closed the two largest transactions in our Company's history on consecutive business days in the middle of July. Those deals included the sale of seven of our IPP plants for $840 million and the purchase of five utility properties from Aquila for $940 million.

The result of those two deals was a significant increase in the Company's utility assets. And that resulted in a more defined growth plan and a lower overall corporate risk profile as we go into the future.

Operational performance in most of our units was very strong in 2008. In the utilities, in addition to the acquisition and integration of the Aquila utilities, we continued construction of mine-mouth coal-fired power plants at our Wyodak mine site in Wyoming. We completed the 95 MW Wygen II plant and placed it in service January 1 of 2008 to serve Cheyenne Light, Fuel & Power customers. We also commenced construction on the 100 MW Wygen III plant in early spring. And that will be completed in mid-2010 and will serve the customers of Black Hills Power.

Despite the economic times we have been in, and particularly even in light of the last quarter, quarter and a half here, we've had very minimal past-due accounts in our utility companies. Very, very remarkable numbers. I really have not seen any significant increase there. We've continued to work very diligently to make sure that our customers are paying their bills.

On the Non-regulated Energy front, our energy marketing unit finished 2008 with a strong year, an excellent quarter, and really one of our better years that we've had with that unit, despite a pretty slow start early in the year.

We aggressively managed our counterparty credit risk and energy marketing through some of the most tumultuous times in the credit market that we have ever seen, and had no credit losses to speak of, which is really a truly remarkable accomplishment, given the economic times we were in. And marketing continues to be a well-performing unit for us and they're off to a good start in 2009.

Generation and coal mining units also had a good year in 2008. Earnings at our coal mine, from a net income standpoint, were down somewhat, despite a record of 6 million tons of production. And the reason for the income decline was primarily due to a huge increase in overburden removal and some other expenses there, which were anticipated.

The oil and gas side, we posted declines in both production and reserves, compared to 2007. Permit delays and weather early in the year, and then reduced drilling activity and even production shut-ins in the third quarter, basically due to low oil and gas prices, impacted our performance in the oil and gas unit. We took the position, as the year went on and prices continued to fall, that we are better off spending less money and not focusing on production growth and reserve growth as much as really focusing on the true economics of our investments, which led us to spend less in the second half of the year.

The gain on the sale of our IPP plants in July resulted in nearly a $140 million gain from a net income perspective. And through tax planning and then utilization of the proceeds from the IPP sale to purchase the Aquila properties, we were able to defer income tax payments of $135 million to $160 million, which played a key role in helping us finance our Aquila transaction.

Last week, our Board increased our quarterly dividend $0.005 a share to $0.355 per share, which is the annual equivalent of $1.42. Although that increase of $0.02 on an annualized basis is less than the $0.04 we've done in recent years, we believe it's prudent to conserve cash and liquidity and be a little more conservative with our increase, in light of just the current economic times.

We're very confident in our future and our ability to continue paying dividends, but just took a more cautious approach this time around. That increase represents our 39th consecutive annual dividend increase, which is one of the longest streaks in the industry and something we're very proud of.

Moving on to slide 5 -- or to slide 6, there were two notable non-cash charges to earnings in the fourth quarter. Tony will talk more about the numbers. I'll just talk about some of the details, I guess, if you will. But our operational performance in the fourth quarter and even the year was really kind of overshadowed by those non-cash charges, which total almost $120 million.

First, the ceilings test impairment at our oil and gas unit. We have to perform a quarterly ceilings test for E&P companies because we utilize the full-cost method of oil and gas accounting. That test utilizes December 31 product prices. It holds them constant for the life of your production, then you take the net present value based on that and compare it to book. And adjusting for taxes and a few other things, but long story short, then that resulted in a $59 million after-tax impairment for us.

At year end, NYMEX gas prices were $5.71. Crude oil was $44.60. Since that time, prices have fallen more, almost $1 on natural gas and about $4 a barrel. If those prices continue to stay at that level through the end of the first quarter, and we don't have significant reserve adds at low cost during that time, it's possible we could have another impairment in the first quarter. It just really depends on where those quarter-end price levels end up.

I think it is important to note that, in December, the SEC issued new ceilings test rules that won't takes effect until December 2009. But in the proposed new rules, or in the approved new rules, rather than use a December 31 product price to evaluate the future value of your reserves, they're proposing using a 12-month average of the first-of-month prices, which essentially is a proxy for an annual average price.

Under that methodology, we would not have had a ceilings test impairment this year. If prices continue to stay low for a whole year, of course you still would have one. But it has a tendency, under the new rules, to temper the highs and lows of prices, which we believe is good change.

On the interest rate swaps, we disclosed this in the third quarter and spent a lot of time talking about it. We'd entered into interest rate hedges on $250 million worth of anticipated long-term debt that we expected to issue in late 2008 to retire some of our short-term debt and a bridge -- a part of the bridge financing that we did for the Aquila acquisition.

Those swaps, because we were not intending to actually place the long-term debt, we de-designated those hedges, and then, as a consequence, had to mark them to market. And that resulted in about a $61 million charge to earnings. Now, those will continue to be mark to market on a going-forward basis. So as the spreads continue to get better on those hedges, it's possible we could be actually recognizing unrealized mark to market income on a going-forward basis, just depending on whether those spreads continue to get better, as they have been recently, or if they get worse again.

Earnings guidance -- due to the economic environment we're in and several significant uncertainties, really make it impractical for us to accurately forecast our 2009 earnings. And several key things that contribute to that. But because of that, we withdrew the guidance that we'd issued on November 24.

The factors that influenced this decision are several, but one is that continued low crude oil and natural gas prices will most likely impact the level of capital spending we do in oil and gas. If the prices continue to stay low, that in turn impacts production, reserves, and certainly earnings for the oil and gas segment.

In addition, there is some volatility associated with our energy marketing segment, and although we're pleased with the performance of our marketing entity, absolute price levels have dropped, some basis differentials have narrowed, and things that make it a little more challenging to predict right now what we think the performance of that unit will be, although we think it will be good.

And then, the timing and pricing of our planned debt offerings for this year, until we actually get the debt placed and know at what rates it will be placed at, very difficult for us to accurately forecast our overall 2009 earnings.

We are very confident in our operational performance going forward, and we will continue to evaluate the feasibility of reinitiating guidance, but really can't accurately predict or when we might even choose to provide updated guidance. We just really need to wait and see how quickly a lot of these uncertainties clear themselves up.

Slide 8 is just a recap of 2008 significant events, and also shows you some of the key milestones that we're working towards in the future. I won't spend much time on that.

Slide 9 is a list of accomplishments for 2008. I've already mentioned several of these, and I'll cover a few others later in the regulatory and rates discussion. There's a couple that I think are worth mentioning here now. We set new peaks in all three of our electric utilities this year, and by a fairly large amount, actually. They were all pretty large increases for us.

Cheyenne Light actually moved from a summer peak to a winter peak, setting an all-time peak this winter. Black Hills Power set a new winter peak, still below their summer peak, but set a new winter peak this year. And then, Colorado Electric Utility, that we acquired from Aquila, set a new summer peak and all-time peak last summer, as well.

As far as the Aquila properties, we have been aggressively rebranding those companies under the name Black Hills Energy. Most of that rebranding is complete now, and we've had good receptivity to our new brand in the service territories that we're operating in.

And then, of course, in December, we extended the $383 million acquisition facility for the Aquila transaction until the end of 2009 to give us more time and flexibility to really watch the capital markets and have a little more flexibility and control over the timing of when we do our long-term financing to replace that bridge.

On slide 10, gives an overview of the key integration activities. We've made tremendous progress on integrating. We basically picked up 600,000 new customers and 1,200 new employees, almost 1,300 new employees, which was a huge undertaking. The progress has been excellent, really, as good or better than we could have expected. From a customer perspective, things really have been seamless, which is a tremendous accomplishment for our employee groups.

Slide 11, we're going to continue the integration of systems and processes. I think, using the integration and systems conversion projects that we have planned, we plan to re-look at essentially everything we do from a process standpoint in an effort to continue to improve our efficiency and reduce our operating expenses going forward.

Now I'll turn it over to Tony Cleberg, our Chief Financial Officer, for an overview of the financial situation.

Good morning. As Dave mentioned, the operational performance of the fourth quarter was -- produced solid results. But the bottom-line financial results generated a large loss driven by the two items he mentioned -- first, the non-cash impairment charge on the oil and gas and natural -- on the oil and natural gas assets for the ceiling test calculation, and second, an unrealized loss on a mark to market of interest rate swaps.

I don't mean to discount these charges in our explanations, but to help you understand our performance, I believe it is necessary to share with you the with and without impact of both the ceilings test and the mark to market interest rate swap on various line items.

For example, if you exclude these two items from the loss from continuing operations of $2.52 in the fourth quarter, you would have income from continuing operations of $0.62. That compares to $0.47 in the fourth quarter of 2007, and $0.51 in the third quarter of this year. So overall, the operations did improve in the fourth quarter.

Moving to slide 13, which compares our November 24, 2008, EPS guidance to the actual results. We estimated earnings to be in the range of $2.00 to $2.10, but the range included a $0.38 gain on sale for our interest in Wygen I. The sale occurred in January, adding $51 million in cash to our liquidity. So if you exclude that gain from the guidance range of our earnings, and before the mark to market and the ceiling test, we performed better than expected.

The next slide provides an overview of the positives and the negatives included in income or loss from operations for the year. The electric utilities improved, primarily from increased cost recovery in their rates. The gas utilities reflect performance from the acquired Aquila properties. The former Aquila properties, or Black Hills Energy, generated net earnings of $4.4 million.

This includes a net after-tax integration expense of $5.4 million or $0.14 per share. These integration expenses were lower than anticipated. In addition, $4.3 million, or $0.11 per share, had been incurred at the corporate level for pre-close integration expenses on this transaction.

Moving to the non-regulated businesses, you can see the impact of the ceilings test impairment. The impairment reduced overall performance from $35.5 million to a loss of $23.5 million. Even excluding the ceilings test, these businesses underperformed in 2007 by $14 million.

But, as a reminder, our energy marketing business had a record year in 2007, and setting the bar very high for comparison. So we would like to see our non-regulated businesses perform better in 2009, but it may be difficult with the oil and gas prices.

Moving to slide 15, we're comparing the fourth quarter income statement for 2008 to 2007, and to the third quarter of 2008. The revenue at $408 million is 165% over 2007 and 40% over the third quarter. The main driver of the revenue increase was the Aquila acquisition, which added $239 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. So without Aquila, our growth was about 10%. So -- the 40% increase over the third quarter was really driven by the gas utilities and cold weather.

Moving down to the operating income or loss line, the $38 million loss includes the $92 million pretax charge for the ceiling test impairment. Excluding this charge, the operating income would've been $53.9 million, an improvement from both 2007 and 2008.

Continuing down the income statement, the interest expense was $19 million for the quarter, an increase of $12.5 million over 2007. The main driver is the increased debt level of $536 million and slightly higher interest rates.

From third quarter, the interest expense increased $2.6 million, reflecting additional debt of $60 million in the quarter, and also the spike in the LIBOR in October and November. Almost all of our short-term debt is LIBOR-based, which, as of today, the LIBOR is quite favorable again.

Continuing down the income statement, income taxes for the third quarter are at a normal rate of 35%. The 2007 amount was a tax rate of 22%, which reflected the benefits of successfully closing tax audits and true-ups on some other tax accounts. The 35% in the third quarter -- the 35% is consistent with our third quarter, so from a continuing operations standpoint, our loss was $2.52 per share versus an income of $0.47 in 2007.

As I mentioned before, if you exclude the impairment for the ceilings test and the unrealized mark to market, the continuing ops would've been $0.62 compared to $0.47, and $0.51 in the third quarter.

Moving to discontinued operations, this quarter included an adjustment on the gain for the independent power production assets. The gain on sale was reduced by $0.03 per share. This reflects part of the impact for the earnout settlement in the fourth quarter. The earnout settlement increased the cost basis for certain IPP assets that had been sold in July.

The bottom line loss for the quarter was largely impacted by the combination of the non-cash ceiling test impairment and the unrealized mark to markets. That total was $120.4 million, or $3.14 per share for the quarter.

I should mention that since we reported a loss from continuing operations, we must use basic shares to calculate EPS, so you will see some minor changes on certain numbers, whether they're reported in the quarter or whether they're reported in the total year. Just -- we're just talking pennies.

Slide 16 displays a roll-up of revenue and operating income. One notable item on this slide includes the gas utility revenue in the fourth quarter increasing over the third quarter by $109 million. This reflects two things -- moving from the slowest seasonal quarter to a much stronger seasonal quarter, and then the higher revenue because of the cold weather. The earnings for the gas utilities reflect the volume of the gas sold.

Another notable item is the improved operating income for the electric utilities. The year-over-year improvement in operating income reflects better cost recovery in our rates. Compared to the third quarter, we were slightly down because we saw the drop-off in off-system sales.

Another notable item is the improvement in earnings in energy marketing of $4.2 million over 2007, and $9 million over the third quarter. Market volatility is generally a good thing for our energy marketing business. And needless to say, the fourth quarter had market volatility.

The last item to note is the oil and gas financial performance, including the $91.8 million pretax charge for the ceiling test impairment. The rest of that business lost $1.5 million during quarter. The precipitous drop in the commodity prices really drove the performance.

Moving to slide 17, as a total year P&L for 2008 compared to 2007, one noteworthy item is we were profitable -- is we were profitable for the year if driven by the gain at the IPP -- of the IPP assets. Another noteworthy item is that the tax rate in 2007 was very low at 30% because of the true-ups of the tax accounts and the successful results on some state audits. A more normal rate is the 35% to 36% range.

Moving to slide 18, this is supposed to be a roll-up of revenue and operating income for the total year. Unfortunately, we used slide 16 on the quarterly slide again. A notable point to make is that, if you exclude the ceiling test -- impairment test, the operating income would've been $147.7 million. If you compare the operating income from the utilities, it's $92.8 million. So 63% of our earnings on an annual basis came from the utilities. And this compares with last year, where we had $53.3 million of operating income, which was 42% of our total mix.

Moving to slide 19, this shows the capitalization of our debt increased year over year by $536 million. To fund the acquisition of Aquila properties and to continue spend on capital projects, such as Wygen III, we planned various financing in 2009 to move a considerable amount of the short-term debt to long-term. If you look at our total debt capitalization of 53%, we believe we are well-positioned for our asset mix and have room to grow.

On slide 20, we have our credit and liquidity update. As we have described in the past, we planned to issue $400 million to $500 million in long-term debt to replace the $383 million bridge facility. We extended the bridge facility due now in December 2009, and we are considering various options to retire this debt and other short-term debt during the year, including term loans, issuance of bonds, equity, and other items. We are pleased with the debt markets have improved since year end.

In addition, we're looking to obtain a committed facility for Enserco. Currently we're managing Enserco, our energy marketing business, with a very conservative capital structure. We only have $126 million in letters of credit drawn on a $300 million facility.

I'd like to add that we have a number of initiatives within the Company to defer and, in some cases, eliminate both capital spending and expenses. And although we're seeing improved performance in our businesses, we are being very conservative about moving forward because of the continued overall economy and the declining commodity prices.

So with those comments on the financial performance for the quarter and the year, I'll turn it back to Dave.

Moving onto slide 22 and looking to the future here, we have really one of the most clearly defined growth plans in our history. We're very well-positioned, as Tony said, from a financial perspective. We're in good shape. As we move some of our short-term debt to longer-term debt, financings will be even stronger and be in a good position to move forward.

Our asset mix has shifted dramatically, and Tony referenced that related to earnings. But now we're approximately two-thirds regulated utility and one-third non-regulated energy assets. That's almost a complete flip-flop from where we were last year at this time. So a substantial improvement in our overall corporate risk profile, more predictable earnings and cash flows with which to continue to grow in the future.

Slide 23 is simply a reminder that we changed our reporting segments for financial reporting purposes, beginning in the third quarter of 2008. And we will continue to utilize these six different business segments for financial reporting going forward.

Slide 24 highlights the key growth-oriented opportunities that face the company today. And there are truly some great projects and opportunities there.

A couple things worth noting, oil and gas -- we show a planned level of $65 million to $90 million for capital spending. We already announced back in November that our plans for '09 were reduced to $35 million to $40 million. If prices continue to stay low, it is possible we could spend even less than that. We're basing our decisions on economics, and if prices don't cooperate, we're not going to invest as much capital there. So that one has a qualifier on it for '09.

But we do believe we have good properties, that, assuming economic conditions warrant, that would justify continued investment.

Wygen III is on schedule and on budget. That $191 million represents our 75% interest. We've disclosed previously that Montana Dakota Utilities has expressed its intent to take a 25% interest in that plant.

The other projects I think we've talked about in prior years, and have continued updates. But, overall, we're looking at in the neighborhood of $900 million to $1.1 billion in growth opportunities over the next several years, which is a clearly defined growth plan for us, and we're very confident in our ability to execute on those projects, and also to access the capital markets as we need to, to continue to support the spending associated with those projects.

On page 25 is an update on our Colorado Electric Resource Plan. Recall that Aquila, Black Hills Energy utilities as we call them now, purchases a large portion of their power supply through a long-term contract that expires at the end of 2011. And that contract will not be renewed by the current supplier.

So we proposed a plan in August that proposed building five combustion turbines in Colorado. Relying heavily on natural gas for generation fuel is the only way we could comply with the emissions rules and the renewable plans in Colorado. Proposed along with those turbines, the integration of some solar and wind into our system as well.

The Colorado PUC held hearings in January, a public input hearing on January 15 and then formal hearings at the commission running from January 20 through the 26. We expect an order from the commission during the month of February. We believe we presented an excellent case to the PUC on why our proposed plan is indeed in the best interest of the customers. And now it's in the commissioners' court to make the decision and issue an order.

Moving onto slide 26, in our various utilities, we have continued to make great progress on the regulatory front. We've got excellent regulatory -- excellent regulatory relationships, and have worked very hard to establish good, credible relationships in the new states that we acquired from Aquila. And I believe we have done just that.

Many of these items you have seen before, that are on this slide, as far as regulatory and rate initiatives. A couple updates related to the Colorado Gas rate case and the Black Hills Power FERC transmission rate case. We have reached tentative settlements in both of those cases and expect final orders in February, which is real positive news.

In the case of Colorado Gas, we cannot implement interim rates there, so we're waiting for the final order before we disclose the amount of the settlement. In the case of Black Hills Power, the FERC transmission case, we settled for $3.8 million and implemented those rates on January 1, subject to refund.

The FERC case is notable in that it is a formulaic-based rate. So as we add continued investment in transmission, which we intend to do in Black Hills Power over the next few years, it allows us to recover those with an annual true-up via a calculation, rather than having to go back with a separate new rate case for the additional investment. So it's a very, very positive way of achieving regulatory recovery of our transmission investments going forward.

Finally, on 27, you have seen this slide in previous quarters. This is what I would consider to be our strategic plan scorecard, if you will, and it really outlines our accomplishments in 2008. I think I have touched on all of those already, so I won't reiterate them.

Going forward, we will take off our '08 progress and show you what we're working on for '09 and the future here. We are indeed well-positioned. We've got a very clear strategy, as I said before, one of the best and most clearly defined growth plans we've had in our history. Good access to capital markets, good financial position, and really sets us up to continue to add long-term shareholder value as we go forward.

Now I would be happy to entertain any questions you might have.

(Operator Instructions). Eric Beaumont, Copia Capital.

Good morning. A couple things. First, just to check the math here, you -- in the fourth quarter, E&P, even without the ceiling test, would have been a loss, and I'm just wondering is that -- was that just run rate or did that have more to do with the LOE or depletion change from write-downs?

The specifics of it, we haven't put out. But certainly, the change in reserves results in an increase in depletion, even not including the ceilings test. And the reserve reductions were primarily driven by price, as well.

As I think -- or, and obviously we don't know where things ultimately end up, but just thinking about -- you were down about 11% in production. Anything we should think about for production levels for '09, or is that up in the air right now?

It really is dependent on -- and that's part of the guidance issue -- is that it really depends on what we're going to do for capital spending. And frankly, at current price levels, we're not really enthused about spending a lot of capital. So it's very difficult for us to give accurate guidance on production right now, and that's why we have chosen not to.

We did have a decline in '08. I think it was about four-some percent, 5% quarter over quarter. I don't think it was 11. I think the annual number was, what, 7.5%, something like that. Anyway, we did have a decline and I would say, going forward, we're hoping we can continue to replace some of our production, but it's very difficult to say that we can do that. It just depends on what the levels of prices are and how that contributes to our willingness to make investment decisions. But year-over-year decline is about 7.5% in production.

And if we take a look on the marketing side again, volatility and things up in the air, I guess what I'm getting at is, I understand pulling the guidance, but you should have a decent handle on the utilities. Have you thought about just giving kind of breakdowns of pieces that you can quantify, because -- just to pull things in their entirety causes a little bit more uncertainty than you may want to have out there.

Yes, it clearly does and we have talked about that a lot. And say, as I alluded to before, we're kind of continuing to evaluate what we want to do from a guidance perspective.

I think, related to the utilities and the Corporation in general, one of the large drivers is going to be what we end up doing for financing and how we replace our current short-term debt, which is based off of LIBOR, with long-term financing and the timing of that financing and the rates at which we obtain that financing will have a real significant impact on earnings. So we definitely need some clarity there before we're comfortable with putting numbers out.

And your point is well-taken. The utilities are producing, and they're very solid.

A couple real quick things here. On financing, we're seeing that Holdco is still kind of maybe open, but not really open. Any thoughts about pushing anything down to OPCO or is all the debt you're looking still to be Holdco [level]?

We're continuing to investigate both holding company debt and the potential for utility first mortgage bonds. I think we're a little bit cautious about utilizing a lot of utility first mortgage bonds, and having separate financings at multiple utilities and have separate issuers and all of those issues. But, I think as you note, there's not a whole lot of Holdco issues being done right now. With the extension of the bridge, we have the luxury of being able to watch the markets here for a while, which I think is a benefit.

Last thing, and put you on the spot, and I'm sure I won't get that clear an answer. But if prices stay about where they are and let's say the strip plays out the way it is for '09, we would anticipate probably lower production in '09 than we saw in '08 and E&P would probably not be much in the way of profitability, and if that does play out, there's not much volatility. The marketing probably wouldn't be as robust, unless we see summer winter spreads blow out for -- as far as transportation and basis difference. Is that a fair assumption?

Marketing is kind of a different game. I would say E&P, probably reasonable assumptions to make, depending on what prices do. But, as I said before, we're not going to spend as much if prices stay low, which means we probably won't replace production. How much we will replace kind of remains to be seen. It depends on what we do choose to invest in and how successful it is.

On the marketing side, certainly the absolute price levels may have an impact, but we make a lot of our profit in our marketing entity based on kind of day-to-day volatility and price. We also make it on seasonal spreads related to gas storage, and then, of course, basis differentials related to transport. In any given year, the various contributions of those different segments, producer services and proprietary trading included, has a tendency to vary. So it's very possible that even though absolute price levels might be low, you could have potentially better storage numbers or transport numbers or something.

I got you. But again, it would be more along the lines of what we saw in '08 definitely without some change. We're not putting out anything near what '07 was again.

'07 was a really exceptional year. The real exceptional marketing conditions, really wide basis differentials and other things and the, you know, I -- . It's tough to predict, but I certainly don't see any basis differentials that are that wide right

Will you have anything, assuming -- any clarification in the K as far as hedge levels with regard to the marketing? I know there's always been some competitive issues for not giving a whole lot there, but anything we'll be able to help figure out so we can kind of come up with our own sensitivities?

We're continuing to add some disclosure to our quarterly reporting. I'm not sure if it is going to specifically meet your needs, but we're continuing to try to expand what we do report related to the marketing unit, and we do always update our oil and gas hedges for E&P in the K or Q, as well.

I'm not sure -- it's kind of a long, gradual process on expanding our disclosures around our energy marketing unit. We basically try to add a little bit here as we go forward each time and add what we think makes sense and that we can continue to update going forward. So we're being kind of cautious in the additional information we provide but we are trying to add items to that list to help you out.

Thanks for the time, guys.

Gordon Howald, Calyon Securities Inc..

I think Eric covered a lot of this, but what is the cost of the current extended financing, and maybe just a little more color on why you wouldn't consider more operating company financing, given that that market for first mortgage bonds is wide open? Trying to get a sense of what kind of variability there may be in financing costs for 2009.

You're talking about the bridge itself? As far as what the cost of the bridge is?

Correct.

It's LIBOR plus 300 for the first quarter, and then it bounces up each quarter by 50 basis points. The last -- actually, it gets to LIBOR plus 450 towards the end of the year. So that is the bridge loan, and LIBOR is very favorable right now. So it would be -- a step up if we're talking -- what other people have been going into the market for. From an interest rate standpoint, at the Holdco level.

And certainly on the OPCO bonds question that you raised, it's certainly something we're considering. You have to be a little bit cautious about issuing OPCO debt at all the different operating companies because then it impacts your overall corporate credit rating as well. And there's a lot of considerations to that.

But clearly, OPCO debt is something that the market is open on right now for utility first mortgage bonds, and we are an issuer for Black Hills Power, so it's certainly something we have considered doing. Like I said, right now we have the luxury of a little bit of time to kind of watch the markets and make decisions related to whether we want to issue Holdco debt, OPCO debt, term loans, equity, or a combination of those to secure some of our long-term financing.

And the Black Hills Power debt, if you were going to [walk convert it], what is that debt rated in the credit rating agencies?

It's one notch above our corporate rating.

So probably triple-B (multiple speakers).

Two notches above? Two notches above.

Got you. Have you guys disclosed -- and I apologize if this has been answered already -- E&P realized prices for fourth quarter and for 2008?

We have not disclosed those in the press release. I think we disclosed the year-end prices that were used for the ceilings test, but we have not yet disclosed our average receipt prices. Those will be in the 10-K.

Yes, I saw that number. Is there -- okay. Is there an update on hedge positions? Is there any hedges in place at this point on E&P for 2009?

Yes. And we published that list in our Q, and you can look in the last quarter's Q and see a significant list of hedges and some of them substantially in the money now. And then, we update that list of hedges every quarter so there will be an update in the 10-K as well.

Good. That should do it. Appreciate it.

Chris Ellinghaus, Shields & Company.

Good morning. Couple things. Tony, you mentioned tax benefits. I don't recall any individual periods with tax benefits. Were there any true-ups in the fourth quarter?

No, the true-ups and the tax -- or some of the audits were in 2007. So this year, our tax rate was pretty straightforward, the 35%, 36% area. And -- but that's from an expense standpoint. From a cash standpoint, with all these tax deferrals that we've been able to implement, our cash taxes have been nominal.

Were there any other unusual nonrecurring items in the fourth quarter?

Of any significance? There were some small things. For example, pension expense was a little bit higher, $0.03 a share on the Black Hills Energy. And there were some other small things, but nothing of any real significance.

When do you expect to give us any additional insights into CapEx for this year? Is that a 10-K issue?

Yes, it is.

It really is.

And last thing, Tony, I thought when you were going through the litany of adjustments or items that you were thinking about in terms of issuing the new debt, did I hear the word equity, and was that -- were you referring to equity infusions into utilities or something?

You did hear the word equity. But if you look at our total capital plan over the next several years, we won't do it all on debt. There's a lot of expenditures there. So we have to look at equity into the total mix of whatever we do.

But you're talking long term for the capital expansion, and not for replacing the credit facility.

Yes.

Great. Thanks so much.

John Hanson, Praesidis.

Most of my questions have been answered here, by all the other folks here. But a question I have, though, is in the -- in theory, I know it's going to be tough for CapEx here this year, but do you see -- any particular areas that you're in, are there any -- discoveries other people are doing or anything close by or anything that gets you interested in any particular of your E&P areas?

There's some significant activity going on in several of the areas we're in. Our New -- we basically are in three primary locations on the operated side -- the San Juan Basin, the Powder River Basin, and the Piceance Basin. And really, all three of those, you see some significant degrees of activity, or you did when prices were higher. The activity is quickly diminishing.

But we're pretty optimistic about what we have for proved undeveloped reserves and even probables and possibles in those three basins. And there's a lot of activity around us, or again, was, before prices started to fall. Now it's diminishing.

And we also hold some nonoperated interest in some other properties, shallow gas play in northern Montana, a little bit, a minority interest, in the Bakken shale play in North Dakota and we've previously disclosed those. We don't give a lot of specifics around those. But clearly, they're in areas that are very cost-effective and good recovery on reserves. So, as prices improve, I think they will all be very viable drilling areas again.

Okay, thanks. Good luck.

James Bellessa, D.A. Davidson & Co..

Good morning. I have one comment. I concur with the first Q&A participant. It seems like there is an inconsistency when you move your portfolio to two-thirds being regulated and you're declining yourself, having reduced the risk profile, that you aren't giving guidance at least on that business. And I would encourage you to think about that.

And then the second is a small question. In the press release under the section about oil and gas loss, oil and gas explanation, in the second paragraph of the first bullet, it talks about excluded from this guidance range. Was that an edit issue where that should have been edited out? You contemplate guidance range and then backed off on that and --

Yes. That's exactly it. We did contemplate guidance range for a long time and, as I talked about, we just could not get comfortable with the magnitude of some of the potential uncertainties. And so we made the decision not to update guidance, and in fact to withdraw it, as we discussed more and more about the magnitude of some of the potential uncertainties, it just didn't make sense for us to put it out. So that's merely a missed omission. We should have taken that out.

And the 10-K filing is expected when?

It's absolutely due March 2. And we will meet that deadline.

When are you thinking you're going to get it out?

Well, we would always like to have it out sooner, but --

This year's K is a lot of work. This is the first time (multiple speakers)

It's just reasonable to assume you'll take the full amount of time?

More than likely. I mean, if we can get it out a day or two early, we're going to try to. But, like I said, with the addition of all the Aquila properties and all the events of 2008, it's a pretty lengthy document with a lot of numbers in it. And a lot of onetime significant transactions and non-cash charges and a lot of other things that just complicate any effort to really expedite that process too much.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Michael Worms, BMO Capital Markets.

Hello everyone. Can you just remind us what your capital structure strategy is going forward? Where we are now, and where -- what you would want it to look like in a couple of years?

We've said for a long time we would like to be in that 50-50 range. And that during periods of -- when we're doing projects or we have powerplant construction, things like that going on, particularly when it's going to be for a rate-based type asset, we will allow the short-term debt to creep up a little bit in anticipation of long-term financing.

So you may see it -- like now, it's 53%, you may see it creep up to 53%, 55% during periods of construction. But our long-term intent is to try to keep it in that 50-50 range. And really being cognizant of what our overall corporate credit ratings is, and other factors.

All of my other questions have been answered already.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). There are no additional questions. Please continue.

Thank you for being with us this morning, everybody. We appreciate your time and certainly, we appreciate your interest and support for Black Hills. Thanks for joining us. Goodbye.

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