tons of underground coal. We are perfecting our water rights and feel that the prospects for developing this steam coal deposit for use by utility companies has been enhanced by WEST's program, for Craig could well be the location of a generating station anchoring the northern end of the WEST Associates' system. The timing of this development is some time in the future, but we feel that its day will come. Conclusion If in these remarks about our Company I appear to have labored too long on our present and future mining activities at the expense of our other operations, there are good reasons. First, your Program Chairman suggested to me that this was the phase of our business that you would find of particular interest. Second, our mining operations lend themselves much more easily to forecasting and analysis than does either construction or land development. While the national trends of construction activities can be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy, there is little historical correlation between the amount of construction work we as a company will be performing and the national volume; nor is there necessarily a good correlation between the size of a company's construction backlog and the construction profit that it will realize on that backlog. Land development projects tend to have lower earnings early in their life when interest, development, and promotional expenses are high and to report greater profits when the project matures and is nearing completion. Both construction and land development are "project-type" businesses and cannot be analysed accurately without a detailed knowledge of the ever-changing mix of projects. Therefore, the Security Analyst must in large measure rely upon the fact that activities of this type will be managed in a manner that will ultimately produce a satisfactory return on investment within the general conditions which competition permits. 14 On the other hand, Utah as a mining company is somewhat unique because historically it has rarely entered into a mining development without an initial sales contract from which the Company anticipated it would recover its investment and earn a profit as well. Secondly, the greater part of the production from its existing mines is presently sold under long-term contracts with a growing percentage of its earnings tied to sales to public utility companies. This gives an assurance of sustained earnings in the future that are relatively unaffected by fluctuations in metal prices and the volatility that has been sometimes involved. Thirdly, our backlog of mineral sales contracts in the last ten years has increased from $25 million to over $380 million at the present time and could go very much higher if we are successful in bringing into being some of the programs which I have described to you. The importance of mining as a source of present and future profits testifies to the competence of our mining organization, and this provides the basis for my confidence in our future performance. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to be with you today and to outline for you the plans and the programs on which we base our optimistic view of the Company's future. 15