resulted primarily from the disposition of our heavy construction business to Fluor in mid-year. The decision to dispose of our heavy construction business was a hard one for your Board of Directors to make for sentimental reasons, but the business advantages were clear. Construction was the business for which the company was founded and it had been its principal business throughout most of its corporate existence. It occupied the attention of 40% of our permanent salaried staff and represented 75% of our total employment. The people involved were in many cases those of long service with the company. They had worked extremely hard and in the past 3 1/2 years prior to the sale had achieved the highest rate of construction profits that the company had ever experienced. However, in the opinion of the Board of Directors, continuing the heavy construction business was no longer in the best interests of our shareholders for there were brighter prospects for profits by increasing our mining activities. With our mining expansion program we have a heavy demand on our capital resources and must become heavy borrowers. An inherent characteristic of heavy construction is the risk of incurring large unanticipated losses from time to time and this is the kind of risk that it is imprudent for a company carrrying a heavy debt burden to assume when it has better uses for its capital elsewhere. All of our personnel engaged in heavy construction were transferred to Fluor and now, though the corporate rela-tionship is severed, the long time personal associations continue for Utah is now their client if no longer their employer. Dividends were increased for the 19th consecutive year and after the close of the year in the December meeting the Directors increased the quarterly -2-