C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the C.H. Robinson First Quarter 2019 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listening 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, May 1, 2019. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bob Houghton, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, Donna, and good morning, everyone. On our call today will be John Wiehoff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bob Easterfeld, Chief Operating Officer, and Scott Hagan, Corporate Controller and Interim Chief Financial Officer. John, Bob, and Scott will provide commentary on our 2019 first quarter 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 Robinson Fresh transportation results are now included in our North American surface transportation segment. The remaining Robinson Fresh results, which primarily include the sourcing and marketing of fresh produce, will be reported under the all other and corporate category. To provide a basis for comparison, we provided certain historical segment information under the new segment organization in our press release issued on April 1st. I'd also like to remind you that our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. Slide two 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 first quarter earnings call. For the quarter, we achieved high single-digit net revenue growth and double-digit growth in both operating income and earnings per share. Operating margin improved 250 basis points in the quarter. Our North American surface transportation business generated double-digit net revenue growth, and we delivered significant operating margin expansion in both our NASP and global forwarding businesses. We also expanded our global forwarding presence in Spain and Colombia with the acquisition of the Space Cargo Group. We continued to make improvements in working capital, which, combined with increased earnings, allowed us to generate over $250 million in cash flow from operations and increase cash returns to our shareholders. We feel good about our first quarter results, and they are in line with our longer-term goals and expectations. I also would like to highlight a couple of the macro themes and how they impact our business. The first theme is around pricing. In the back half of 2017 and into 2018, we had meaningful price increases in all of our services, including unprecedented increases in truckload. So far this year, we are seeing pricing and cost declines in many of our service lines, including truckload. Many public data sources are indicating that we are in a softer market today than we were a year ago, or even last quarter, and our view of the market is consistent with that public data. and many more. But with meaningful scale, we are typically a reflection of the market, both in terms of pricing and in our contractual versus transactional mix. When markets are balanced, customers typically engage us in more contractual volume, and when markets are tight, more of our volumes move to transactional freight. One of our network's greatest strengths is adapting to changing market conditions. We view it as our primary job to help our customers and carrier partners understand current conditions and manage through cycles with high levels of execution, and we feel good about how we are positioned to continue to do that. Regardless of the freight cycle, we are focused on taking market share, achieving operating leverage, and improving cash flow. We are confident in our long-term value creation strategy and in our ability to continue to win in the marketplace. With those introductory comments, I'll now turn it over to Scott Hagen, our corporate controller and interim CFO, to review our financial statements.