C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the CH Robinson fourth quarter 2018 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following today's presentation, Bob Houghton will facilitate a review of previously submitted questions. If anyone needs assistance at any time during the conference, please press the star followed by the zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, January 30, 2019. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bob Houghton, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Thank you, Donna, and good morning, everyone. On our call today will be John Wehoff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Andy Clark, Chief Financial Officer, and Bob Biesterfeld, Chief Operating Officer. John, Andy, and Bob will provide commentary on our 2018 fourth quarter and full year results. Presentation slides that accompany their remarks can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website, at chrobinson.com. We will follow that with responses to the pre-submitted questions we received after our earnings release yesterday. I'd like to remind you that our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. Slide 2 in today's presentation lists factors that could cause our actual results to differ from management's expectations. And with that, I will turn the call over to John. Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. In my opening remarks, I want to highlight some of the headline themes that we'll be discussing with you today. A strength of our business model is the ability to rebalance our portfolio between contractual and spot market freight as market conditions change. In periods of market dislocation, we experience higher levels of repricing activity across our portfolio. Then as routing guides perform more effectively and freight costs decelerate, we tend to see our volume shift more heavily towards contractual business accompanied by net revenue growth and margin expansion. This outcome is clearly reflected in our fourth quarter results. Over an extended freight cycle, we continue to believe that honoring our commitments on contractual freight while also securing spot market capacity is the best way to serve our network of customers and carriers Grow Our Business, and Create Value for Shareholders With fluctuating levels of freight demand and carrier supply, significant weather events, and changes in tariff activity and government regulations, the last few years have marked a period of high volatility in the freight market. A critical part of our strategy is to make investments that add value for our customers and carriers and drive growth for our business, regardless of where we are in the freight cycle. We are proud of the strong financial results we delivered in the fourth quarter and full year of 2018 and believe that they are a reflection of our strategy of through-cycle investments. Our North American surface transportation business did an excellent job of supporting our customers and carriers through a volatile freight market and delivered outstanding results for the year. Our global forwarding business delivered strong net revenue growth through a combination of volume increases, Thank you, John, and good morning everyone.