CSX Corporation

Speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. Bill Slater, Head of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you and good afternoon, everyone. Joining me on today's call are Jim Foote, President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Boone, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Jamie Boychuk, Executive Vice President of Operations, and Sean Paukey, Acting Chief Financial Officer. On slide two is our forward-looking disclosure, followed by our non-GAAP disclosure on slide three. With that, it is my pleasure to introduce President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Foote.

Great. Thanks, Bill, and thank you to all who are joining us today for the call. I want to begin by thanking all of CSX's employees for their extraordinary efforts to help our customers navigate the strained global supply chain. Across virtually every industry, there are challenges presented by extended lead times, poor congestion, shortages of labor and key materials, and lack of storage capacity. While the current operating environment is challenging, we are not sitting idle. We are designing new solutions to help reduce congestion, adding container yards and dredge to keep intermodal terminals fluid. And we are investing in both people and network capacity to ensure CSX is able to reliably meet customer needs today and for years to come. In a few minutes, Kevin will go through the revenue numbers and discuss some of the steps we are taking to provide new service offerings to our customers to help them overcome these challenges. And Jamie will provide an update of our hiring initiatives as well as actions we are taking to keep our network fluid. So let's first turn to the presentation and begin on slide four with an overview of our third quarter results. Operating income increased 26% to $1.44 billion. Earnings per share increased 34% to 43 cents. And the operating ratio improved by 50 basis points to 56.4. These figures include the results of quality carriers. which did not have a significant impact on operating income, but increased third quarter operating ratio by approximately 250 basis points, excluding transaction and integration expenses. I'll now kick it over to Kevin.