Earnings Call Excerpt
Third-Quarter 2005 Teleconference Script
Steve Parks
Good morning. Thank you for joining us for a review of Questar’s results for the third quarter and first nine months of 2005. I’m Steve Parks, senior vice president and chief financial officer. We had a pretty good quarter – net income was up 78% compared to a year ago. The increase was driven by higher production and realized prices for natural gas, oil and natural gas liquids, and increased volumes and margins in gas gathering and processing. Our earnings release – issued yesterday – provides a more-detailed review of our results and is available on our Web site at www.questar.com.
Following my remarks, Keith Rattie, our chairman and CEO will provide an update on operations and comment on our outlook for the rest of 2005 and our initial earnings and production guidance for 2006. After Keith’s comments we’ll take your questions. We have with us today other members of Questar’s senior management, including Chuck Stanley, president and CEO of Questar Market Resources; Allan Bradley, president and COO of Questar Pipeline, and Alan Allred, president and CEO of Questar Gas.
Our remarks this morning will contain forward-looking statements about the future operations and expectations of Questar Corporation. These statements are made in good faith, and we believe they are reasonable representations of the company’s expected performance at this time. Actual results may vary from our stated expectations and projections due to a variety of factors that are described in our Form 10-K and 10-Q filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Now, let’s review our third-quarter financial results. For the third quarter of 2005,
Questar’s net income was $65.8 million, or $.75 per diluted share, compared to $36.9 million, or $.43 per share, in the 2004 period. There were 87.4 million diluted common shares outstanding in the current-year quarter compared to 85.9 million a year ago. Once again, our Market Resources subsidiary led the way for earnings growth – up 75% from a year ago. You’ll recall that Market Resources engages in gas and oil exploration, development and production, gas gathering and processing, wholesale gas and oil marketing and gas storage. Market Resources net income was $65.3 million in third- quarter 2005 compared with $37.2 million in third-quarter 2004.
Key drivers for Market Resources were higher production and realized prices for natural gas, oil and natural gas liquids, and increased investment in Wexpro. Also, gas-gathering and processing margins were higher, and NGL volumes rose significantly.
And we’ve also recently started using what’s called ?slick water
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »
