NiSource Inc (NI) 2005 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. My name is David and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NiSource first-quarter analyst conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Thank you. Mr. Senchak, Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, David, and good morning to everyone. On behalf of NiSource, I'd like to welcome you to our first-quarter analyst call. We really appreciate the opportunity to be with you today and thanks for taking the time to join us. Joining me this morning are Gary Neale, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Skaggs, President, and Mike O'Donnell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

As you know, the focus of today's call is to review our first-quarter 2005 financial performance. Gary Neale and Mike O'Donnell will briefly discuss our results and then we will open the call to your questions. We expect this call to last about 45 minutes.

I'd like to remind all of you that some of the statements made on this conference call will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. federal Securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements.

Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is included in the Management's Discussion and Analysis section of our Form 10-K annual report for 2004 filed with the SEC.

Now, it is my pleasure to turn this call over to Gary Neale.

Thank you, Dennis, and welcome to all of you. We appreciate your being with us today and are pleased to share with you the results of our first-quarter 2005 financial performance, as well as the significant progress we've made on the business plan we outlined for you earlier in the year.

First, let's turn our attention to the financial results for the first quarter. Income from continuing operations for the three months ended March 31, 2005 was 208.7 million, or $0.77 per share. This compares with income from continuing operations of 216.6 million, or $0.83 per share, for the first quarter of 2004. Net income was 206.3 million or $0.76 per share for the first quarter of 2005, compared to 213.5 million or $0.81 per share for the year-ago period.

Several factors contributed to the quarterly difference. As you know, our pipelines renegotiated long-term contracts with their largest customers last year. While this has resulted in a slight decline in revenue, the renegotiation process is now complete and the new contracts span an average of seven years with staggered expiration rates -- dates, excuse me.

We had a warmer weather during the winter heating season in our gas distribution markets compared to a year-ago period. We also have a greater number of shares outstanding, primarily due to the conversion of our NiSource stock appreciation income-linked securities, or SAILS as they are known in the market, in November of 2004. There was an increase of 8 million shares in the average number of shares outstanding as of March 31, 2005 compared to a year earlier.

We are pleased with our first-quarter accomplishments and results. This first quarter delivered significant progress towards NiSource's business plan for 2005 and 6, which we laid out for the market earlier. As we have stated, our business plan centers on four key initiatives, pipeline growth and expansion, regulatory and commercial initiatives, ongoing financial management of our balance sheet, and expense management. I'd like to take a few minutes here to highlight the key accomplishments we've achieved so far this year, demonstrating real progress on all the key initiatives that we laid out.

First, in the area of expense management, we issued a request for proposal for a business process service provider to potentially take over day-to-day operation of some of our business-support activities. Accenture and IBM responded to this request during the quarter. We've had teams of employees from our business-support areas working with both Accenture and IBM for the last three months to identify potential areas for transformation and savings. This has been a very disciplined process with a lot of hard work and time put in by our employees as well as by Accenture and IBM. Both Accenture and IBM have developed proposals that could meet our business needs, as well as our continuing expectations for safety, reliability and delivery of quality service to our customers. Today, we are announcing that we're moving into an exclusive negotiations (sic) with IBM towards a contract to outsource a portion of our corporate-wide business support activities. We have not fully finalized the exact activities and processes that will be outsourced, nor the expected savings, but we expect to do that over the next two months. Under our current corporate structure, the total O&M cost for the areas under consideration for this change could amount to approximately $2 million over the next ten years -- excuse me, $2 billion over the next ten years. As you can see, we're talking about truly transforming this company.

The next steps are to work together with IBM to continue to define the future relationships between our two companies. We expect to make final decisions and to conclude the contractual negotiations in June with a July 1 implementation date.

We made good progress on several other important planned projects since the beginning of the year. In Indiana, NIPSCO, our gas and electric subsidiary, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor that would allow NIPSCO to recover purchased power costs. At the same time, the agreement allows NIPSCO to secure safe, reliable and intermediate dispatchable supplies of power for selected customers from outside vendors. To obtain those dispatchable supplies of power, NIPSCO chose EnergyUSA TPC from bidders responding to the request for proposals. EnergyUSA TPC will use the generation facilities of Whiting Clean Energy to provide NIPSCO with 230 megawatts of dispatchable power. As you know, EnergyUSA TPC and Whiting Clean Energy are also subsidiaries of NiSource. We have filed with the FERC for immediate action on rate approval for this project.

Whiting Clean Energy has also completed the renegotiation of the terms of its agreement with its host facility, BP oils refinery in Whiting, Indiana. The new agreement reduces the required run time for Whiting Clean Energy while meeting BP's needs for steam. This is further progress towards our business plan for Whiting Clean Energy.

Earlier this week, Bay State Gas Company filed a rate case in Massachusetts, seeking a 22.2 million or 4.7% increase in base rates. If approved, we anticipate that new rates would go into effect December 1, 2005. The rate case includes a request for a performance-based rate plan and recovery of costs to replace bare steel pipes, which will improve the gas infrastructure in Massachusetts. Columbia Gas of Kentucky received regulatory approval to renew its Customer Choice Program.

We continue to see great opportunity for expansion in our gas transmission and storage business. We've recruited Chris Helms to become President of our Pipeline Group. Chris has an extensive background in the pipeline industry and is on board and already working hard to execute on the aggressive growth strategy for both our interstate gas pipeline and storage assets.

Our Hardy Storage Company this week filed its formal project application with FERC. Hardy Storage, a joint project between our Columbia Gas transmission and a subsidiary of Piedmont Natural Gas, plans to develop a 12 billion-cubic-foot capacity natural gas storage field from a depleted gas production field in West Virginia. The field will be designed to deliver up to 176,000 dekatherms of natural gas per day. An open season conducted last year resulted in a full subscription of the project's storage capacity for the future.

We also continue to make progress in strengthening our balance sheet. We entered into a $1.25 billion revolving credit agreement to fund future working capital requirements and other corporate needs. The new five-year agreement is expected to reduce interest expense by about $900,000 for the remainder of 2005 and about 1.2 million annually beginning in 2006.

Our debt ratio has improved to 55% at quarter's end, compared to 60% at the end of 2003. In addition, our short-term cash investment position at the end of the first quarter was $553 million, and there were no borrowings under the Company's $1.25 billion credit line.

Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Mike O'Donnell. Mike -- who will provide you with more details and review our operating segments for the first quarter.

Thanks, Gary.

As mentioned at the outset, income from continuing operations was $208.7 million or $0.77 per share for the first quarter of 2005, compared with $216.6 million or $0.83 per share in the same quarter last year. Gary has also explained the key factors in the year-over-year difference, including the $0.02 per share dilution from the SAILS conversion in November of 2004. I will get into a little bit more detail on the explanations.

NiSource's net income for the first quarter of 2005 was $206.3 million or $0.76 per share, compared with $213.5 million or $0.81 per share for the first quarter of 2004. Net income, as you'll recall, includes the effect of discontinued operations, which were not significant in either period. Net revenues were up $21.7 million as a result of revenue trackers, improved usage in the electric segment and improved results at Whiting Clean Energy, offset by warmer weather and reduced usage in the Gas Distribution segment.

Operation and maintenance expenses were up $15.2 million, mostly because of the revenue trackers for bad debt expenses. Adjusting for that item, O&M expenses were relatively flat for the period, consistent with our goal for the year. Total operating expenses were up $26.8 million, with most of these costs being recovered in revenues.

Turning to operating income, NiSource's consolidated first-quarter, 2005 operating income was $437.7 million, compared with $442.8 million for the same period in 2004. Note the table of significant items on Page 3 of the earnings release. We considered deleting this table this quarter, since there was not much of significance to report. We left it in, however, for historical continuity and to emphasize the continuing progress we've made in moving past some of the legacy issues that have caused one-time impacts to our operating income over the past few years. Note also from the table that weather had a somewhat modest impact on operating income between the two periods. Weather in the markets served by NiSource's natural gas distribution companies was 2% colder than normal during the first quarter of 2005 but 1.9% warmer compared with the year-ago period. The colder-than-normal weather had a positive impact on net revenues of $8.7 million during the first quarter, but that was slightly less than the $10.5 million positive weather impact during the same period last year.

Now, I'd like to provide some detail on our operating results by segment of our business. Operating income for the Gas Distribution business was $274.9 million, a decrease of $10.1 million compared to the first quarter of 2004. This decrease is mainly due to warmer weather and lower customer usage. Net revenues in our Gas Distribution business increased by $17.6 million, largely due to the regulatory trackers I just described. We added nearly 35,000 customers since the first quarter of 2004, which is a typical twelve-month increase for our companies. Gas Distribution throughput decreased by 15.3 billion cubic feet to 338.5 billion cubic feet, largely due to reduced sales as a result of warmer weather and lower customer usage during the first quarter of 2005 compared with the same period in 2004.

In addition, the expiration of the 1999 stipulation for Columbia Gas of Ohio resulted in the recognition of additional revenue, partially offset by an $8.1 million increase in depreciation expense for the first quarter of 2005. Under the previous regulatory stipulation in Ohio, we had been deferring depreciation that is now coming through our income statement, but this does not have a cash impact overall to NiSource. You'll notice that other taxes were up slightly in the segment, mostly due to higher gas costs. Again, these amounts are largely recovered in rates through trackers.

Operating income in the Gas Transmission and Storage segment was $109.5 million, a decrease of $1.9 million compared to the same period last year. This is in spite of the approximate $10 million decrease in revenues from the recontracting process that Gary talked about, so all in all, I conclude that the Pipeline segment had a good quarter. As mentioned, the major factor in the decrease was the restructuring in the firm transportation and storage contracts with the pipeline's largest customers. The new contracts accounted for a decrease of about $10 million in transportation revenues for the first quarter of 2005, compared with the first quarter of 2004. However, we have been able to somewhat offset that impacted by remarketing some of that capacity, resulting in a net revenue decrease of $8.7 million.

Operating expenses for the Transmission and Storage business decreased by $6.8 million, largely due to lower employee and administrative expenses and the impact of a tracker. Although the warmer weather during the quarter doesn't have as great an effect on our pipeline revenues as it does on our Gas Distribution business, you can see its impact in throughput, which was down by 25.4 Bcf compared with the first quarter of 2004. Virtually all of the decline in throughput in our Columbia Transmission and Columbia Gulf markets was due to weather and a continued decline in offshore production in the case of Columbia Gulf.

Our Electric operations reported operating income of $65.4 million, an increase of $6.6 million from the comparable period last year. There are some real positives here, primarily higher net revenues from the environmental cost-recovery tracker at NIPSCO and increased revenues in the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. Unlike the gas distribution trackers discussed earlier, the environmental tracker at NIPSCO does have a bottom-line impact because it contains a rate of return component. We also added more than 5,000 electric customers and customer usage was up. These positive impacts offset the slight increase in O&M expenses, which was due to higher labor costs and electric generation expenses.

The Other segment reported an operating loss of $5.2 million in the first quarter of 2005, versus an operating loss of $18 million in the first quarter of 2004. This $12.4 million improvement included decreased losses associated with Whiting Clean Energy. Gary earlier outlined the important steps we've taken to improve results from that business. We also had lower O&M expenses in this segment. We had some small one-time items affecting both periods, but when you cut through all that, the run-rate, the O&M run-rate is about a $2 million reduction compared with last year.

The Corporate segment reported an operating loss of $6.9 million, compared with operating income of $5.6 million during the first quarter of 2004. Most of that difference is due to one-time items during the first quarter of 2004, particularly the favorable impact during the year-ago period of an $8.7 million reduction in approved liabilities primarily to an insurance settlement. Operating expenses in the 2005 period are about $3.6 million higher, in part due to costs incurred for the transformation project.

To note a few other key line items from the income statement, interest expense was relatively flat compared with the same quarter last year. A decrease in the amount of debt outstanding largely offset the increased costs of variable-rate debt.

Income taxes for the first quarter of 2005 were $123.4 million, a $2.3 million decrease from 2004, mainly resulting from lower pretax income. The effective tax rate was about 37.2% this quarter, about 0.5% higher than last year due to a higher effective state income tax rate and the excess of book-over-tax depreciation for pre-1981 properties.

Turning to liquidity, we made significant progress in improving our liquidity position during the first quarter of 2005. Our balance sheet is very strong.

Cash flow for the quarter was $1.0215 billion, an increase of 248.8 million over the same quarter last year. Most of that increased cash came from working capital changes. Reduced Accounts Receivable, reduced inventories costs by increased gas withdrawn from storage at higher prices and accelerated recovery of gas costs from customers all contributed to the improved cash flow from operations. Also, as Gary mentioned, at the end of the quarter, we had $588 million of cash on hand and no borrowings under the $1.25 billion revolving credit facility. This is the strongest liquidity position we've had since I've been with the Company.

Now, I will turn it back to Gary for his wrap-up.

Thanks, Mike.

As you have heard this morning, we are extremely excited about the strong progress we're making towards our 2005 and 2006 strategic business plan. We have a low-risk business model and an experienced management team in place to execute this plan. We continue to build on our strong portfolio of regulated assets to deliver long-term, sustainable growth and shareholder value.

Thank you for participating today and for your continued interest and support in NiSource. Now, we will take your questions.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). Paul Ridzon of Key/McDonald.

Good morning. I had a couple of questions. What's the timeline on an Indiana decision with regards to Whiting? What's the timeline in Massachusetts? Could you review the rate case parameters, requested ROE, equity and equity layer? Then lastly, do you have an ultimate objective to bring the balance sheet to? How does that play into dividend policy?

Anything else, Paul?! (LAUGHTER). Let's let Bob take the regulatory side first.

Good morning, Paul. Let me start with Bay State. The request for Return On Equity is about 11.5%. The equity layer is 54%. The intent is to have rates -- new rates in effect December 1 this year.

You've also seen that the Bay State proposal reflects a steel, bare steel infrastructure replacement program, as well as a PBR mechanism and a tracker to cover pension and other pension-related costs.

Turning to Indiana, we have a series of filings that we are in the process of making to implement the MOU to secure the filings for EnergyUSA TPC and Whiting to serve NIPSCO requirements. The EnergyUSA TPC filing has already been made. We are hopeful we're going to receive favorable commission action in order to put that arrangement into effect midyear, June or July time frame. We will follow up with the NIPSCO-required filings under the MOU as we work through a verification process to prove out the needs for the intermediate dispatchable power. Again, the intent, the plan is to have approvals in place midyear. Just one caveat -- some of those approvals may be subject to refund but nonetheless, we will have the mechanisms up and running midyear, 2005.

What's the Massachusetts total rate base?

I may have to get that number for you, Paul; I don't have it right here with me.

The second part of your question was what, Paul?

Ultimate goal for the balance sheet and how we can think about dividend policy once we kind of get closer to that objective?

Well, you know, at 55% debt-to-equity, where we are at today, we're getting very close to what our objectives are, so what we want to do is hold onto that 55% debt-to-equity range. We believe that gives us freedom to do some investment in some of our projects. We've spoken to the credit rating agencies on this, and some we think we are in a range where we're very comfortable at this point. Obviously, dividends come from growth in earnings and as we laid out for the market in our February meeting, we believe that that will be visited at the end of this year for -- based on where we think 2006 is going.

You kind of want to get through the '05 transition first?

That's correct.

Tom O'Neill of Lehman Brothers.

I was wondering if you could just give us an update on the transmission tracker case at the IURC and then perhaps maybe just give us a little color on the purchase power tracker MOU process, just kind of help us think of what to expect in the base rate case in '07/'08 and whether ROE would be a focus or where the focus will be?

Well, I think it's too early to anticipate 2007 and 2008 electric case. We will leave that for another year or so, Tom, but I will let Bob comment on the tracker issues.

Yes. In Indiana, the tracker process for purchased power and transmission really revolves executing on arrangements that tie to that memorandum of understanding with the consumer council. One key element -- and I mentioned in the response earlier -- is that we have to work through a verification process for the need (indiscernible) the intermediate (ph) dispatchable power. That's a very abbreviated examination, a very abbreviated period, I should say, to do that examination. We will then follow up with the settlement agreement that will go before the commission. We are hoping for expedited approval of that. Then again, we would again implementing (sic) the tracker subject to refund midyear.

We need an expedited approval on this because the NIPSCO needs the power to meet summer needs of our domestic customers.

What about the MISO cost recovery?

On the MISO cost recovery, a portion of that is still being litigated. You'll recall -- you may recall that the utilities in Indiana have filed what's called a joint petition for recovery of certain MISO related transmission costs. That is still pending before the commission for resolution. Obviously, a part of our costs would be subject to that. The other part would be subject to this MOU that we reached with the consumer counselor.

Ashar Kahn of SAC Capital.

Good morning. Mike, can you just tell us what this reversal of the accrued legal reserve is in the current quarter, what is it related to and the amount?

That was a reversal in the first quarter of 2004 that improved earnings at that time by $8.7 million. The comparison this quarter is just explaining that we are down 8.7 million this quarter versus that quarter because we don't have that one-time positive effect back there.

The main part of that was a reserve we took up for an insurance company settlement. We were concerned that the insurance company first didn't pay -- they had some credit problems -- and eventually we took a reserve for it. So, eventually they did pay it, and that's why we took the reversal in the first quarter of '04.

(indiscernible) confused -- you mentioned that you, in the Other segment, that you have a reversal of accrued legal reserves in the current quarter and the corporate is 8.7. There are two separate things, right? Am I correct?

That's right. Maybe I misunderstood. I was talking about the corporate item.

Sorry, I apologize. I was talking about the other and the other income.

In the Other item, it's actually a pretty small item. There were two. One was about $2.1 million; it was a reversal of a reserve we set up for an Enron bankruptcy issue, which we resolved favorably, so we reversed that this quarter. Then also there was a $1 million item this quarter last year that (indiscernible) about a $3 million comparison in total -- (multiple speakers).

Okay, so that 1 million was kind of a negative?

It was a negative last year, right.

It was a negative last year. Then, Mike, you guys had mentioned -- I just wanted to -- in your presentation in I guess February, that pipeline contracts and recontracting was going to hurt you by about $0.09 year-over-year. How much did it hurt you this quarter? How should we track this $0.09 coming in over the year?

Yes, I think the way to look at that is that, in the aggregate, it hurt us -- you know, the $10 million, which annualizes to $40 million a year -- but that the Company was able to offset quite a bit of it, so that the impact on an annual basis, if we can maintain that mitigation, will be less than $0.09. I can't give you the exact amount for the year, but we were pretty successful in mitigating some of that in the first quarter.

Okay, thank you very much.

(OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). David Grummhaurs of Copia Capital.

Good morning, guys. Just one remaining question from me on the electric operations. Obviously that's a very strong quarter there. It seems to be driven by higher revenue in addition to the trackers but higher revenues, especially in industrial. I just wanted to see if you could give us a little more color on that.

Yes, the industrial -- our industrial steel mills are running at near capacity, probably as strong as they've run in the last ten years, and so we see that in our numbers, not only to the steel mills themselves but to the oxygen suppliers and the various supplies to the steel mills. So, it had a very strong industrial year -- or quarter. This is true throughout Ohio and other places, not just in Indiana, so it's true in the gas side, too; the industrial market has come back very strong.

Should we expect that type of pickup to run throughout the year?

Yes, the forecast that we see coming from the steel mills right now is for a strong year.

So electric may be higher than -- we should see some pickups there?

I mean, there may be some areas that are soft but it won't be on the large industrials.

Okay, thanks for the time.

Jonathan Arnold of Merrill Lynch.

My question was answered. Thank you.

Dave Maurine (ph) of JP Morgan.

Good morning, everyone. Just a quick one -- I noticed that BP last week announced a pretty significant expansion or intended expansion at Whiting. I just was wondering if that had any implications down the line for the Whiting Clean Energy facility.

Absolutely it does, because part of their expansion is -- obviously it's increased capacity and they have some outdated steam units on property that are touch-and-go but as far as EPA requirements are concerned -- and so they're concerned long-term about what they want to do with those. There's some long-term desires on the part of the management over there to convert some of the steam drives to electricity, so we can't give you any exact figures on it but we think this is a very positive signal long-term for Whiting.

Thank you.

Po Chang of Talon Capital.

Good morning. Can you just remind us what your exposure is to floating-rate debt here in dollars or as a percent of total debt, and what the sensitivity is to a percent change in rates?

Yes, I will summarize that. We have about $1.5 billion of long-term fixed-rate debt that swapped back to floating. We have a floating-rate note that has a three-year maturity that has about -- it's about $450 million outstanding on that. As you know ,we have no short-term debt outstanding. So our floating-rate exposure at the moment is about $1.5 billion, and we have just a little over $6 billion of debt outstanding. That's a little bit below our portfolio target of about 20 to 25% floating-rate debt.

And the sensitivity?

The sensitivity, I'm sorry! Just multiply that. The 1% times $1.5 billion would be about 15 billion on an annual basis -- million (LAUGHTER).

Heather McPherson of T. Rowe Price.

You guys have a very strong operating cash flow quarter and actually cash flow quarter. Can you just -- it looks like a lot of that came from inventories and from the tax line. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Then I just wanted to see. Did you feel like your CapEx came in according to plan and what would you think that that's going to be for the year? Do you still think you are on track with what your budget was?

I'll start with the last one, the easy one, CapEx. Yes, we are on budget for the year. A lot of times, the first quarter can be a little volatile because of weather, but we're definitely on budget for the year. You are right; on the cash flow from operations, as I mentioned, about 249 million of that increase is from working capital items, including reduced receivables, increased cash from inventories, which is due to taking more gas out of storage and at higher prices. Also, you mentioned the accrued taxes. That's about $40 million as well.

Are you expecting, for the year, that this also equalizes out and you're not really going to take any more working capital out of the business, or do you think there's some potential there to take some out?

We are continuing to work on taking out working capital, including things in the regulatory arena to recover gas costs quicker, but over longer periods of time, we would expect working capital changes to neutralize over a calendar period.

The first quarter is typically where we harvest a lot of cash. Then we will put gas back in storage and we will build up receivables towards the end of the year so that the back end of the year will be negative cash flow from working capital and the front end, mostly in the first quarter, is positive. So this is fairly typical. It's just that we've got some pretty big swings compared to last year.

Okay. Then one last quick question -- Gary -- and we are almost all the way through April. Are you still seeing pretty strong industrial activity in the Midwest at this point, just sort of following on what you said about the first quarter?

Yes, the steel mills, Heather, seem to be going very strong and I think that's the bellwether for what's going on here. The steel mills are -- you know, prices are staying very high for the mills, and we still see strength -- and the forecast that we get for them, we get weekly forecasts plus longer-term forecast and it still looks extremely strong.

What are you seeing out there in terms of pricing, in terms of around-the clock-prices?

On electricity?

Yes.

Electricity prices are up slightly, probably -- at this time, they look better right now than they have in the last three or four years. A lot of that depends on summer months, but there's a lot of people that have got a lot of units down for NOX because of converting their units for NOX and so on, so there's a slight shortage, I think, of baseload power out there that's been sold into the marketplace this year. For instance, our Whiting Clean Energy plant has been running and selling into the market more so far this quarter that it ever has, so we are expecting a little stronger electric market this summer, too.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thanks.

Follow-up from Paul Ridzon of Key/McDonald.

I did have one question, Gary, actually. As you look forward into the year, how should we think about seasonality with the ability to backfill on the losses to recontracting? It looks like you picked up 1.3 million. How does the rest of the year look?

Well, as you know, Paul, we've got new management in the pipeline. Chris Helms is looking at everything, including the opportunity to maybe look at some different rate structures on some of our storage. So, we are going to have some meetings with FERC over it, so I think it's too early to tell, Paul, what all we can do on back-storage as far as storage in the transmission concern. But I think we are surprised that the pipeline market is very strong right now, so we will have a better plan on that in the next two months after Chris get some time here.

Would you expect the strength to be concentrated in the first and fourth quarters or --?

Well, as you know, the pipeline does not fluctuate quarterly the same way the distribution business does, so pipeline stays strong because, in the wintertime, in the wintertime, you're pulling from storage and in the summertime, you're putting storage back in, so the pipeline runs fairly full year-round.

Thank you very much.

There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Senchak, do you have any closing remarks?

Thank you. Once again, everyone, for being on the call this morning. We appreciate the opportunity to bring this information to you and keep you updated on our plans and where we're going.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's NiSource first-quarter analyst conference call. You may now disconnect.