NISC is an organization that is dedicated to delivering enterprise technology solutions to our member-owners. These mission-critical components are essential for our member-owners to operate their business in the most efficient manner, improving their customer experience and maintaining their competitiveness and to do that they embrace the power of NISC technologies.

Now the best analogy that I could present is that NISC enterprise is the virtual heartbeat of our member-owners organization. As employees, it is for us to understand the significance of our work whether you're designing, developing, implementing, or supporting the various modules of the enterprise or maintaining the infrastructure. We all need to be mindful that these 7 by 24, always on, nature of our business and solutions is all-consuming in its responsibility. Without our solutions, our members are dead in the water. They can't issue a bill, settling accounts payable, pay their employees, or serve the members at the end of the line without the NISC enterprise.

Gone are the days, when the system was shut down at 5 o'clock for a four and a half hour backup making the system inaccessible. Today If the systems we provide even begin to slow down it's a crisis. Did I mention to you that the work you do is very important?

Now over the years, we have built our enterprise methodically one function, one module at a time. Our board has supported our efforts, year after year, by approving our ever increasing research and development budget and never once, not once, have they not approved our request for building or increasing our staff. As you consider our enterprise arguably 90 percent of our solution has been designed, built, installed, and supported by NISC employees. With each addition to our enterprise, we go through that build versus buy analysis. The question is, is it best long term if we build the solution ourselves or should we buy or partner to secure the intellectual property that would be required? Partnering with ESRI for our geospatial system and Information Builders for our business intelligence tools are examples where we have partnered with a leading provider, and we've taken their solution and embedded that technology seamlessly into our enterprise rather than build it from scratch.

For the last ten years we have partnered with Electrical Distribution Design or EDD, as they are known, for critical components to our operational analytics product. EDD is a 20-year-old company closely associated with Virginia Tech and staffed mainly with a group of individuals that have their masters and PhDs in electrical engineering. This staff has largely been devoted to smart grid research, many times funded with grants from the Department of Energy. Several years ago we began our relationship with EDD working closely with their staff developing an understanding of how their products could bring value to our membership. EDD strength is research and solving the evolving challenges in today's modern electrical system.

However, they do not have the in-house expertise required to monetize their products like marketing, communications, legal, cyber, software distribution, project management, and educational services. It is those critical skills that NISC, along with our significant national brand recognition, can bring to this partnership.

About three years ago we purchased 21% of EDD that transaction gave us a board seat and the availability to develop a better understanding of the organization and its products. Within the last nine months, we received word that several of the original shareholders wanted to liquidate their shares and sell the company. NISC was selected as one of the bidders.

Now I'll spare you the emotional ups and downs in negotiating tactics of the last several months only to say that in the end NISC has been selected by the shareholders of EDD as its new owner. Our accounting, legal, people services, and product teams have been working on due diligence for the last several weeks. Last week we conducted an on-site EDD employee meeting in Blacksburg Virginia the location of EDD's office. Our presentation included the history of NISC our culture, present market, and financial positions and in general what it means to be an NISC employee. We also took the time to meet individually with each employee to answer their questions and develop a better understanding of their responsibilities and the role that they play in that organization.

Now if all goes according to plan, we should close this transaction on March 1st at which time EDD will become a wholly owned subsidiary of NISC. I cannot express our excitement and our confidence that this bold step will significantly advance the value of NISC enterprise and be a strong differentiating factor between NISC and our competition.

Could we have developed these solutions on our own within NISC? Yes, I'm confident that we could, but frankly, we didn't have the knowledge or the staff to develop these solutions in a timely fashion. The need for these products is real and immediate and for NISC to bring them to market very quickly and efficiently by way of this transaction will be a real coup in the marketplace.

So stay tuned. I'm confident the acquisition of EDD will be a significant development in NISC continuing efforts to grow our enterprise and increase the value that we deliver to our member-owners.

Thanks for listening. I appreciate you,

Vern