Good afternoon, and thank you for joining NorthWestern Corporation's Financial Results Webcast for the Quarter Ending March 31, 2022. My name is Travis Meyer. I'm the Director of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Officer for NorthWestern. Joining us today to walk through the results and provide an overall update are Bob Rowe, Chief Executive Officer, Brian Bird, President and Chief Operating Officer, Crystal Lail, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as other members of management in the room with us. All participant lines are currently muted. After the presentation, we have allowed time for our Q&A session. I'll provide instructions for asking questions at that time. However, if you intend to ask a question and are joining us by computer, please set your Zoom identity to your first and last name and firm name so we can call on you by name to let you know when your line is open. NorthWestern's results have been released, and this release is available on our website at northwesternenergy.com. We also released our 10-Q pre-market this morning. Please note that the company's press release, this presentation, comments by presenters, and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. As such, I'll direct you to the disclosures contained within our SEC filings and Safe Harbor provisions included on the second slide of this presentation. Also note this presentation includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please see the non-GAAP disclosures, definitions, and reconciliations also included in the presentation. This webcast is being recorded. The archived replay of the webcast will be available for one year beginning at 6 P.M. Eastern today and can be found in the Financial Results section of our website. With that, I'll hand it over to NorthWestern Energy CEO, Bob Rowe. Thank you, Travis, and thank you all for joining us. We're meeting this week in Butte, Montana, where we're having yet another good, heavy late season snowstorm, very much needed. We're continuing to build up snowpack across Montana, which is great. The board came in a day early, which was an opportunity to get them out meeting quite a lot of our employees and visiting some key facilities in the Butte area and our local distribution center, grid control, the new distribution operation center that we've been standing up in stages now for a number of years, and also real-time trading desk, our cybersecurity team. Then we had a fantastic community reception as well. As you know, we had an online annual shareholders meeting earlier this morning, and there were a lot of good questions as part of that, which we also very much appreciated. In terms of recent highlights, our financial results are in line with expectations for the quarter. Net income of $59.1 million, which is $1.08 diluted EPS, and the non-GAAP net income of $59.5 million, or $1.09 diluted EPS. Our expected long-term annual EPS growth rate is in the 3%-6% range, and we're reaffirming full-year non-GAAP guidance of $3.20-$3.40 per diluted share. We've been doing a tremendous amount of work and seeing real results in the whole area of ESG, and that's, I think, been very well received across the board. A significant milestone there has been releasing our commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and really thank Brian for taking the lead on that. It's a serious plan. It's one we believe we can achieve. It's notable because it is a company-wide commitment for Scope 1 and Scope 2, whereas previously we had focused on our Montana electric supply. We're nearing completion of the 58 MW generating station project in South Dakota. That's been a great project and will really provide value to our customers. Site work is now underway at the 175 MW generating station near Billings, Montana. Again, a very important project came out of an RFP that also identified a hydro-based contract and our first supply-level battery investment. Good work being done there. We are our ongoing commitment to a sustainable dividend will be reflected this year in this quarter in a dividend of $0.63 per share payable on June thirtieth for owners as of 6/15/2022. With that, I'll turn it over to Crystal, and she will then pass the hot potato on to Brian. Thank you, Bob. I'll cover our financial results for the first quarter here. I'm looking at slide 4 of the deck that you should have available to you, as Bob mentioned. Net income for the quarter of $59.1 million, which is lower than the prior year first quarter of $63.1 million. Diluted earnings per share of $1.08 versus $1.24 in the prior period, and on a non-GAAP basis, $1.09. If you take a look at the EPS bridge, I'll walk you through some of the key elements of that. Really favorable performance at the margin line offset by higher OA&G, which was as expected for us. Of course, the equity dilution that we've talked about before and the headwinds that we see for 2022 in that regard of $0.09. You can see that or laid out on this slide as well. Importantly, these are in line with our expectations for the quarter, and I'll provide a little bit more detail on margin and OA&G in the next couple of slides. Margin, slide six, a couple of key elements on that. The slide lays out the drivers of improvement at that line. Overall, a $2.8 million improvement that falls to the bottom line. We continue to see strong residential and commercial and industrial growth. Overall, 1.6% on the electric side and 1.2% on natural gas. Really kind of flat customer usage from a first quarter basis versus prior year. From an overall winter weather perspective, it was warmer than normal. However, it was just a tiny bit colder than the prior year, and that you really see reflected in kind of the flat performance here. I would note that we continue to see a bit of incremental improvement on the transmission revenue side here as well. Overall, a $2.8 million improvement at the margin line that falls to net income. From an operating expense perspective, we had laid out our expectations for the year of a bit of increase at that line. Overall, you'll see here a $5.8 million increase in operating costs that fall to the bottom line. Again, these are in line with our expectations that we've laid out with our 2022 guidance. You'll see key elements there. Higher depreciation, of course, reflecting the amount of infrastructure investment we've made in the system and we'll be looking to recover. Higher uncollectible accounts. I would remind you that that prior year number was reflected by collecting, and reduced by amounts we were collecting from the prior period before. So a bit of that is returning back to a more normal level of uncollectible accounts. We continue to invest in technology in the system. You'll see that there. Higher labor and benefits costs, and some pressure on the insurance costs, offset a small amount by property taxes being slightly lower. Again, this gives you the detail a bit consistent with our guidance range and consistent with our expectations for the quarter. Again, $5.8 million on the operating side. Next slide eight. This is where we walk you through the non-GAAP adjustments. You can see $59.1 million of net income, as I alluded to, $1.08 on the left-hand side of this slide on a GAAP basis. The only adjustment here that adjusts on a net income basis is the unfavorable weather add back of about $600,000 for the quarter, getting us to $59.5 million on a non-GAAP basis or $1.09. You see how this compares to prior year. I mentioned that weather was overall warmer than normal, but a little bit colder than last year. You see the equivalent of last year, we added back $1.3 million of unfavorable weather, getting us to $64.1 million or $1.26. And again, I would mention the diluted share impact of our equity issuance and where that's driving performance from a comparable quarter-over-quarter basis. Slide nine. From a cash flow perspective, we saw significant improvement in operating cash flows and working capital. Really, that's driven by the collection of prior year supply costs. I'll remind you, in Q1 last year, I think you all know, that Winter Storm Uri occurred, and we had significant gas costs in the South Dakota and Nebraska side. That continued to see higher overall costs on the supply front, both electric and gas, as the year continued, into Q3 and Q4. We are collecting some of those back. You see favorable cash flows from that perspective. Also, in, the first quarter of 2021, we had a couple of refunds in there totaling around $30 million. The absence of those obviously leads to improved cash flow performance, for quarter-over-quarter as well. With that, I'll take you to slide 10, which is we are reaffirming 2022 guidance of $3.20-$3.40. Again, with performance coming out of Q1 here in line with our expectations. We've talked about before what's driving a down year from a guidance perspective as to our performance from 2021 to 2022, really driven by some improvement at the margin line, offset by a little bit higher operating costs, and then, of course, the impact of that equity dilution. We continue to see a direct path to our guidance for 2022, with no changes noted in this slide. With that, I will turn it over to Brian for an operating update. Thanks, Crystal. On slide 11, we're talking about our capital investment. On the left-hand side of the page, you can see the investment of approximately $1.8 million over the last five years. It resulted in a 12% CAGR, if you will. Looking forward, the next five years, it's, we're increasing that investment to $2.4 billion. A substantial increase, approximately $500 million a year of investment. I would tell you that if you look at it, you can see that two-thirds of that's primarily from a T&D perspective. In addition to just maintaining our system, we're making investments to increase capacity, think grid modernization, and obviously things that we need to do, think AMI meters and other ways to improve the customer experience. A significant investment in those coming years. That will result in an annualized rate-based growth of approximately 4%-5% on a going forward basis and financed really with a targeted 14%-15% FFO to debt. Bob mentioned early on the call on slide 12 was hydro conditions. We've been watching this closely. A matter of fact, day to day, we saw a rerun of this report even this morning, and it's getting even a bit greener. We had some good snow here in Butte overnight. We're keeping an eye on this. I think many of you on the call know Montana is experiencing a drought, and all of this is helping us really on two fronts. One are helping our hydro facilities that we're really demonstrating here with the red dashed line, but also to help us from a fire perspective in our business. Keeping an eye on this, we're feeling certainly much better here at the end of April than we did at the end of March. The late snows in Montana have been very helpful. Looking forward, I think we're talking a matter of days now in early May, we'll be completing the testing of the Bob Glanzer 58 MW Bob Glanzer Generating Station in South Dakota, and hope to be having that online and helping us meet needed capacity in South Dakota. Speaking about capacity, you may have heard Bob speak today, earlier today in the annual meeting, talking about in over 10 years of not adding any fossil-fueled resources in Montana, over 700 MW of carbon free resources added during that time. It's now time to provide a capacity resource to help offset that intermittent resources and provide the needed capacity. He talked about the Billings area and the Yellowstone County plant will do just that. We just began construction here in April and look forward to completing that in the 2023-2024 winter season. Last on this page, we are gonna be filing both electric and natural gas rate review this year. I would argue that's primarily just to recover the substantial investment and other costs that we've incurred since our last rate case. Expect to file for midyear 2022 on a 2021 test year with some other adjustments accordingly. Bob mentioned earlier in terms of net zero on page 14. As we point out on the slide, you know, our utilities brought together under NorthWestern Energy have been around for 100 years, and obviously we're very proud of the environmental stewardships we've provided over the years. But as we point out in our document, more must be done, and we've committed to achieving a net zero by 2050 for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. We may have been a little later to the game, but I think one of the things we had to consider is being a combo electric and gas utility. We really wanna get comfortable with the ability to deliver on this, and we feel much, much more comfortable as we move forward. We also wanna acknowledge that timeline might seem longer than others, but we do need to balance affordability, reliability, and sustainability in that transition. We also committed in that document that we would be adding no new carbon-emitting generation additions after 2035. What's the magic with 2035? We are following closely, as Bob pointed out on the call earlier today, technologies that are non-carbon emitting that we believe will be not only available to us, but more cost-effective in that 2035 timeline. In addition to committing to Scope 1 and 2 emissions around net zero standpoint, we will also try to help both upstream and downstream Scope 3 emissions, help our customers in that regard, and dealing with our suppliers as well to help in that regard as we move forward. With that, I'll pass it back over to Mr. Meyer. Thank you, Brian. If you're joining us by computer today and would like to ask a question, please signal your intent by using the Raise Hand button that's typically found within the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. You can also simultaneously press Alt and Y on a PC or Option Y on a Mac to raise your hand. Please ensure your microphone is unmuted. If you dialed in by phone, you can also press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your line to ask the question. Again, that is star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute your line. If you've not provided your name and your Zoom ID or dialed in by phone, please be listening for us to announce your Zoom ID or last four digits to your telephone number to notify you that your line is open and ready for your question. With that, we'll take our first question from a Guggenheim line. It's either Shar or Jamieson. Your line should be open. Hey, guys. It's Shar in for the famous Jamieson. Thanks, Shar. Good afternoon, Shar. No, it's good to see you guys are getting very technological on a Friday afternoon, so it's. That's right. Just a couple of quick ones here. You know, obviously first looking ahead to the IRP, you said you plan to file either, I guess, later this year or early next year. How should we think about the timing in terms of the arbitration efforts around Colstrip? At a high level, where does arbitration progress stand today? I'll jump in on the arbitration. We at one point or another, each of the owners has filed requesting arbitration, but never at the same time or in the same venue. There was oral argument in front of a federal magistrate just earlier this week, in which one of the questions was, should the magistrate advise the federal judge to require arbitration? So that's the technical answer. What I would say beyond that is all of the IOU owners at Colstrip are concerned to serve their customers and comply with state policy and legal requirements. The challenge then is just figuring out how to do that. I'm sure Brian will want to speak more to the upcoming IRP. What I would say is simply, we've done a really good job managing risk for customers and for shareholders over the next few years with what we have in place. That provides a very good foundation for whatever the outcome is of the next planning process. Part of that certainly will be reacting to whatever more we know about Colstrip at that time. I think we're in an overall good position, and there's really been an awful lot of progress over the last couple of years. Brian? Yeah. Thanks, Bob. I think first of all, we have to get our South Dakota IRP done, and that's gonna be in the latter half of 2022. That puts pressure, same folks working on these plans, kinda late 2022, early 2023, as you know, in the Montana IRP. Shar, to your point, obviously it'd be really helpful to us if we had some clarity on the Colstrip situation by the time we release that IRP. I think you may know that it's with the intent of putting additional capacity in the 2026 timetable. If we do not have that. Got it. clarity by that point in time, obviously we'll have to provide some sensitivities with or without Colstrip generation. Got it. Perfect. Thank you. Maybe just turning to your upcoming rate case filing in June, sort of with, you know, rising inflation and supply chain issues. I mean, you guys called out 2% on the CapEx. Sort of the regulatory lag pressures that come, you know, with a large construction project. You want to make changes to the test period, among other things. It seems like there's a lot of moving pieces. You know, maybe Brian, have you had any sort of preliminary dialogue with key stakeholders in anticipation of the filing? I'm kind of curious if they're going to be surprised. Yeah. Well, first, we haven't announced a June filing date. We do expect to file in the summer. It will be an electric and gas case. The internal work being done to develop the filing is really impressive. It's a great team. We're well along. There absolutely will be discussions, letting people know, what we are filing and why. There's certainly been some good substantive discussions with the commission staff just around the process of managing a major rate filing. Fundamentally, the two questions are covering or recovering our current costs, but also bringing into rate base the substantial capital investments we've made over the last few years. As you said, a number of, I think, valuable specific proposals. Crystal's in the middle of all that and can speak to a little more detail, I think. Yeah. The only thing I would probably add there is just, you know, it has been five years between test periods, so you alluded- Mm-hmm. To the inflation comment and with stakeholders. Our key plank of that rate case is simply going to be the amount of infrastructure investment we've made over that time period and recovering those costs. You know, we're not under a rock. There's pricing changes everywhere, and we're going to be in that same bucket of asking for a price increase. We're certainly talking to stakeholders with staff and others and giving them a heads up on where we see this rate case going. I'm going to answer the question. I think. Go ahead. No, I'm sorry, Bob. You go, please. I was going to say, I was going to answer the question you didn't ask, which is that if we had been able to be more aggressive about investing in owned generation earlier and if we'd had a better ability to hedge, I absolutely believe our customers would be much better off and much more protected from those volatile market costs than they are right now. A good example of that is hydro system came into rate base just a few years ago. We've kept investing in that. The cost of the hydro system to our customers is already starting to go down through depreciation. I hope people learn the right lessons and not the wrong lessons. I interrupted you. I'm sorry. No, Bob, you just asked the question I was going to ask, and you answered it, so I appreciate it. Thank you so much, guys. Have a great weekend. Appreciate it. Thanks, Shar. Thanks, Shar. Okay, we'll take our next call from the line of Sophie Karp at KeyBanc. Sophie, your line should be open. Hi, guys. Can you hear me? We sure can, Sophie. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to see if you could help us with the total number of capital investment recovery that you would be seeking in this rate case. I appreciate if you are in the weeds in actually planning the filing. Should we look at it as more like five years of CapEx? What's a good approximation for that? I think a couple of things, and I'm looking to Travis. I think in the appendix we have slide 23 that gives you an overall look at an ending rate base figure, which would be somewhat of a proxy for what we'd be going in to ask to recover. You know, we'll have more updates, Sophie, when we actually file as to the ending rate base number we'll be requesting. I think that's where I'd point you for the best indicator of what we'll be going into from a revenue requirement perspective. Got it. That would not be including the facilities that you are expecting to commission this year, right? The Bob Landreth and the Yellowstone County project. That wouldn't—Bob Landreth in South Dakota. We haven't announced any, you know, next rate case timing on that one yet. With regard to Yellowstone, we're expecting that to be in service sometime in the 2023/2024 winter season. We'll be looking at ways to bring that in. But obviously from a test period basis, it's a 2021 test period with no imputable adjustments in 2022. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Very helpful. Then, maybe a philosophical question, if I may. You know, do you think that there's been any evolution in Montana on the attitude towards kind of utility generation ownership by utilities? Great question. It's been a complicated topic, I know, in the space. Great question. I think what I said, just in response to Shar, is right on target there. Being on the market is fantastic when the market is going your way. All those savings can be eviscerated in just a couple of days. Another good data point there is last July, and looking to Crystal to correct me, but we had budgeted about what? $6-$7 million for electric supply purchases in Montana and spent right around $28 million. That's just another data point. Under any scenario, we're obviously going to be participating in the market on behalf of our customers, short-term and long-term. Boy, there is incredible value to customers over the long term in including a substantial portion of own generation. They figured that out, obviously, and that was never in question in South Dakota, where we do own most of our generation and participate in an organized market and deliver our customers very stable rates. Thank you. I appreciate the color. Last one, if I may. Now that Talen is, you know, filed, is there any implications from that to the Colstrip process that you know of? I would say this. You know, we've been in contact with Talen and we're thinking through the implications. I think make sure it's clear to understand that Talen is an owner in Unit 3. We're an owner in Unit 4, though we have a reciprocal sharing agreement between the two units. Nonetheless, how that bankruptcy could impact the operations at the plant. They are the operator. We're certainly keeping our eyes on. At this point in time, we do not believe it will have an impact on the operations of the plant. Thank you. That's all I had. Thanks, Sophie. We'll take our next question from the line of Ryan Greenwald at BofA. Ryan, your line should be open. Did that work? Yeah. There we go. It worked. Hey, Ryan. Hey, it's Ryan and Julian. Hey, afternoon, guys. Hey, Julian. Good afternoon. Hey. Absolute pleasure. Oh, man. Guys, let's chat. Thank you for the thoughts so far. Team, just to get straight to it, just following up on Shar's line of conversation earlier. How do you think about introducing more of a conversation on trackers here, both not just capital tracker in the context of Laurel, but also just O&M in the context of a more inflationary environment. Conceivably, that might be more of at least there might be more understanding as to the need. I'm curious where you are in those conversations, preliminarily, stakeholders and otherwise, but specifically on the ability to track cost. Obviously, you guys have done a good job past tense, but perhaps we're in a different era of cost inflation today. Julian, it's not lost on me that I step into the CFO suite here, where the different era, I think is your word you used, inflationary going forward. It's nice of Brian to hand that off to me after it's no longer transitory, I guess. The comment I want to make about- You're just in time. You're just in time. First, your question to trackers. You know, base rate case, that's an important piece. Importantly, I wouldn't call our PCAM a tracker. I would call it a mechanism that doesn't work very much at all like a tracker. We will certainly be going in and asking for a different design of that mechanism to make it hopefully more tracker-like and certainly where you see power market prices and Sophie's line of questioning that went to, you know, are people thinking about generation differently? I certainly think pricing can lead to a different thought process. From that tracker perspective, we'll certainly be making a proposal for something that I think is more fair in this environment. We're certainly using our known and measurable structure in the rate case a bit differently than we have in the past, and certainly we'll be making the case. Again, I think it should be a pretty straightforward case to make that we are in an inflationary environment and need to have some mechanism to recover costs on a more timely basis and to show that adjustment for them. You know, maybe I'll be asking for everything in the kitchen sink, or we will be, but I think different times call for different measures, and so we'll be making that case both on, you know, the capital side as we think about Yellowstone, revising the current mechanisms we have with the PCAM tracker, and also just how we look at the test period and adjust that to more reflect our current costs. Just to pile on, I think the observation that PCAM isn't a tracker is a really good one. It's more of an anchor than a tracker. It does a lot of things really badly. It's complicated and convoluted. The lag is extraordinary. It's incredibly asymmetrical. The fact it needs to be not just reset, but probably realigned. If you think about what the implications are on the customer side, to the degree that you want pricing to give some kind of a signal to customers, the PCAM doesn't do that. Instead, it just delivers a shock at some point. Again, this is an opportunity to really learn some things about what works and what doesn't work, and this is in the latter category. Yeah. No, I hear what you're saying. I mean, actually maybe we could speak specifically to Laurel here a little bit more. Just what is your confidence level in being able to zero in on cost on that asset here? You know, where are you in kind of fixing and nailing down those related capital costs at this point in time? Yeah. As you know, one of the reasons to move forward with the Yellowstone project itself is we had a fixed price contract and moving forward. Obviously there's inflationary pressures throughout on the project itself, but being locked in feels much better where we sit today. Some aspects of that could have an increased cost, but we think it's very, very manageable, particularly because of that fixed price contract. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, it did, does make a lot of sense. I hear you. Just sort of to go back on what you said a second ago and clarify. Your conversations with stakeholders, you know, how has this resonated in having a relook at maybe PCAM as you characterize it or frankly, you know, anything beyond PCAM plus? I think one thing on the PCAM side, you know, if you looked at our filing, and Bob alluded to earlier what we saw in higher prices, and of course, we are on the market more than our midcap peers are. You could see in our filing last year the amount of outsized costs above the base in that filing. It clearly shows that we need a reset. I think, you know, conversations with staff and others is something that's a bit more formulaic and, quite frankly, a little less convoluted to manage is something we can all get behind. I would like to think that a proposal. Obviously, we made the proposal outside of a rate case last year to adjust that base and look at how that functioned. That got kicked to the rate case. I certainly think it's ripe for conversation. Excellent. All right, guys, I'll leave it there. Thank you. Have a great weekend. With that, it looks like we've exhausted our queue, so I'll hand it back to Bob for any closing remarks. Great. Hey, thank you very much for the good questions and, support throughout the year. We're looking forward to seeing a number of you in person here before too long. Have a great weekend and, let's keep the snow coming.