Canadian Pacific Kansas City

Good morning. My name is Sylvie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Canadian Pacific's third quarter 2021 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 number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then number two. And I would like to introduce Megan Albiston, AVP Investor Relations and Pensions, to begin the conference.

Thank you, Sylvie. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. 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 filed with Canadian and U.S. regulators. This presentation also contains non-GAAP measures, which are outlined on slide three. Today, we're joined by Keith Creel, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Nadeem Balani, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, and John Brooks, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer. The formal remarks today will be followed by Q&A, and in the interest of time, we would appreciate if you could limit your questions to one. It's now my pleasure to introduce our President and CEO, Mr. Keith Creel.

All right. Thank you, Megan, and welcome back. So let me start by thanking the 12,000 strong CP family that obviously continue to drive the results that we're presenting today. As we're all aware, the industry is experiencing some pretty unique volume challenges in the quarter, and as you've seen in our press release, we've updated our volume guidance to reflect those challenges. But in spite of that, we've reaffirmed our guidance for double-digit EPS growth in 2021. The team remains focused on the elements we can control, delivering excellent service for our customers and managing our resources and lockstep with our business, which obviously creates a compelling value for our shareholders. The results themselves, the collective efforts, third quarter revenues, more than $1.9 billion, an increase of 4% year-over-year, an operating ratio of 59.4, driving earnings growth of 7%. Continued improvement in train weights and lengths as we continue to become more productive at Canadian Pacific, all-time records in fuel efficiency in the quarter. Happy to say that we've improved our fuel efficiency by more than 20% just over the last decade, which makes CP's ESG value proposition even more compelling for our customers, and the time's never been more important to the customers or to the environment. So that's something we're certainly excited about. John's going to speak to it. Another record quarter in domestic intermodal, building on four consecutive record years. We certainly had a tremendous amount of success converting share from truck. We're looking to replicate that. That same success on a much larger scale, obviously, with our combination with the KCS. We've got capacity in our terminals, capacity in our network. We provide a truck-like, reliable service, and especially in today's market, that's extremely compelling and value-creating, both for our customers as well as for our shareholders. We're extremely excited with the future holds for Canadian Pacific, in particular in combination with the KCS from an operational standpoint, a financial standpoint. and an environmental standpoint. So that said, let me say a couple of things about the KCCS. Obviously, it's been a journey, an epic journey. It's been a great battle. I think one for the ages, but one we were extremely proud to participate in and extremely pleased with the outcome. So speaking to the path forward, as we're all aware, September 30th, the SDB reaffirmed our trust approval, which certainly we were pleased by that decision. We plan on filing a merger application with the STB before the end of this month. We continue to expect to close the transaction actually in the fourth quarter. That's still a very real potential outcome. We're making some progress with COPC, which is encouraging. So assuming that continues to proceed well as it is now, we've got our comments back from the SEC on our F4. We intend to have our shareholder meeting December the 8th. We expect to have solid support from our shareholder base in support of this historic combination. With those things said, we do see a path to get closed in the fourth quarter, and in the worst case, perhaps that rolls over to the first quarter, but again, we're focused on the fourth. From there, the STB will begin their review process of the merger, which we expect to take 10 to 12 months. Obviously, we make commitments. As far as the application that we'll honor, but the facts of the combination are extremely unique. I know some have spoken to concessions, and I'll say this now and happy to take it in questions. Significant concessions are required to offset losses of competition, issues of network overlap, issues of predatory pricing, or poor service, which this combination uniquely does not represent any of those concerns. We've got zero overlap, zero shippers losing options. We're going to create new competition, new service options for our shippers, which are all very positive, compelling facts that support this combination. The combination is going to unlock capacity and create the first U.S.-Mexico-Canadian railroad at a time that's never been needed more. Certainly challenges ahead as we look forward to our base business. We've got a smaller Canadian grain crop. We've got some supply chain issues, challenges that the balance of the industry are also experiencing. But the macro environment is extremely strong. The opportunity set for CPKC is growing, which continues to drive and increase our excitement about what lays ahead for our combined entity, for our employees, for our customers, and for our shareholders. So that said, I'm going to turn it over to John to bring a bit of color on the markets. Nadim will elaborate a bit on the numbers, and then we'll step into some questions.