Canadian Pacific Kansas City

Good afternoon. My name is Christine, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Canadian Pacific First Quarter 2020 conference call. The slides accompanying today's call are available at www.cpr.ca. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. I would now like to introduce Megan Albiston, AVP, Investor Relations and Pensions, to begin the conference.

Thank you, Christine. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Our sincere apologies for the delayed release and start to our earnings call. We ran into a few technical difficulties, but those are now behind us, so we appreciate your patience and understanding. Before we begin, I want to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking information and that actual results may differ materially. The risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could influence actual results are described on slide two in the press release and in the MD&A that's filed with Canadian and U.S. regulators. This presentation also contains non-GAAP measures, which are outlined on slide three. With me here today is Keith Creel, our president and CEO, Nadim Villani, CFO, and John Brooks, our chief marketing officer. The formal remarks today will be followed by Q&A. In the interest of time and so that we can get to as many analysts as possible, we'd appreciate if you could limit your question to one. It's now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Keith Creel.

All right. Thanks, Megan. And let me start by thanking all that have joined us today during what are certainly unprecedented times. In fact, better said, I would say there are extraordinary times which have and will continue to require extraordinary efforts and sacrifices to endure this battle that we're all facing. With that said, before we review our results, I want to say thank you. Thank you to our 13,000 strong CP family that's not only enabled these results, but who are sacrificing day in and day out ensuring the essential services that we provide continue for something bigger than any one of us, and that's for the health and the well-being of society. A picture's worth a thousand words, which is exactly why we share the picture that's in our deck today. It was taken trackside in Ontario last week, erected by someone in that community. to thank the true heroes at CP that are risking their lives day in and day out to serve. I also want to thank and recognize the first responders, healthcare professionals, and all other frontline providers for their ongoing dedication and sacrifices during this COVID-19 crisis. I can tell you as a leader and as a human being, I'm extremely proud of our CP family, the professional railroaders, for the body of critical work that they're doing right now for the Canadians and Americans alike. to protect our lives and our livelihoods. The shift in my comments to our results would speak for themselves. I'm going to be short on my comments. I'm going to spend more time speaking to them to highlight what this PSR model is truly capable of. In a quarter where our other railroads experienced negative volumes, CP grew RTMs by 9%. For the first time in CP's history, we produced a sub-60 OR in the first quarter. enable us to grow earnings by 58%. Rest assured, the same operating model that produced these results is just as resilient heading to the challenging times that we're facing. It's a model and a team that's proven its ability to adapt our resources and our cost in a rapidly changing volume environment. And respect our updated guidance, recognizing there will be volume headwinds ahead. We're now expecting RTMs to be down mid-single digits for the year. That said, given the buffer that we built through the first quarter, we felt it comfortable guiding to flat earnings. Not only can we weather the storm unconvicted based on the strength of this team and the power of this operating model, we will come out on the other side a stronger and more resilient company. We're entering these turbulent times with a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity. The management team is battle-tested. We're ready to weather the storm. We're not panicked. We're not distracted. We're prepared. We're engaged. And we're agile. There's certainly no playbook for times like this, but as a leader, I know this is where a culture and a discipline sets strong companies and teams apart from the rest. We certainly recognize there are going to be challenging times ahead. That said, I've never been more confident in our companies and our team's ability to succeed in spite of this environment we're all facing. To me, it's a unique opportunity where the uniqueness and the potential of our team and uniqueness of our story at CP will shine the brightest for our investors and our customers, and our employees. So to wrap my comments up, I'll leave you with this. At CP, we continue to invest in our network. We're going to continue to invest in our people. And we continue to look for ways to support and grow closer to our customers. That's what strong companies do and what strong leaderships do. We turn our challenges into opportunities. We'll grow stronger. We'll create our own unique success at CP. With that said, I'm going to turn it over to Nadim and John. to cover the balance of our numbers as well as our customer opportunities.