NorthWestern Shareholders Given Rosy Picture

SUSAN GALLAGHER

BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — Electricity and natural gas supplier NorthWestern Corp. has fared relatively well amid the nation's economic turmoil, CEO Bob Rowe said Wednesday at the company's annual meeting.

NorthWestern, which does business as NorthWestern Energy and sells utility service in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, is financially strong and the places in which it operates are "resilient and relatively healthy," said Rowe, CEO since August.

"We are quite pleased with where we find ourselves today," he told shareholders at the annual meeting on the campus of Montana Tech in Butte. The meeting was held in this old mining city after convening in New York last year as NorthWestern moved from NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange.

South Dakota-based NorthWestern's first-quarter earnings will be released Thursday. In 2008 the company had net income of $67.6 million, up 27 percent from 2007. NorthWestern emerged from bankruptcy in 2004.

Rowe said the company wants to develop several major capital projects, among them the proposed Mill Creek Generating Station, a 200-megawatt, gas-fired plant that would be built about three miles from Anaconda in southwestern Montana. A Montana Public Service Commission decision on that project might be issued in May, he said.