J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to J.B. Hunt's first quarter 2020 earnings call. Our lines are currently in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, simply press start and the number one on your telephone keypad. To remove yourself from the queue, press the pound key. A replay will be made available after today's call on the company's website at jbhunt.com. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to hand the call over to Mr. Brad Delco, Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us. Hopefully everyone has had an opportunity to review our earnings release that was issued earlier today. If not, you should be able to access the release on the investor section of our website at jbhunt.com. Before I introduce the speakers on today's call, I would like to take some time to provide some disclosures regarding forward-looking statements. This call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Legation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, anticipates, intends, estimates or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on J.B. Hunt's current plans and expectations and involve risk and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. For more information regarding risk factors, please refer to J.B. Hunt's annual report on Form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that out of the way, I would like to introduce the speakers on today's call. This afternoon, I am joined by our CEO, John Roberts. John Kulo, our interim CFO, Chief Accounting Officer, Controller, and Senior Vice President of Finance. Shelly Simpson, our Chief Commercial Officer and President of Highway Services. Nick Hobbs, our President of Dedicated. And Darren, our President of Intermodal. At this time, I would like to turn the call to our CEO, Mr. John Roberts, for some opening comments. John. Okay. Thank you, Brad.

Thank you, Brad. Continuing with our format of opening remarks, let me start by thanking the J.B. Hunt teams around the country for the tireless commitment and hard work that has occurred and will continue in response to the conditions we face during this pandemic. And in particular, I want to recognize the efforts and sacrifice of our driving forces and our maintenance teams. We have had virtually full staff show rates every day. As you all know, drivers and maintenance teams cannot work remotely. Lastly, I wish to recognize the work of all office personnel in making a swift and effective adjustment to remote-style work to support our drivers and customers. On behalf of the leadership team, we greatly appreciate you all. Obviously, our commentary on this quarter and the balance of this year will be disrupted by the impact of the COVID-19 situation in many ways. Please be advised that senior management across the company meets via conference twice daily on all micro issues relating to staffing, human resources safety, and customer dynamics to stay very current and agile. We clearly cannot predict the timing or depth of the coming cycles, but by covering this data frequently, we do get a sense for direction and potential magnitude of change. Our views on the current situation include focus on capital deployment, margin recovery, cost-saving levers, prior recession performance, recent weekly, monthly performance trends, cash flow generation, CapEx projections, balance sheet strengthening and liquidity preservation, portfolio exposure, and recovery trends. We will touch on these topics and others as we review our work with you today and in the coming calls we will have. In all, we see the environment showing near-term disruption and turbulence, but expect the longer term to present opportunities to capitalize on many of our existing priorities, including our efforts with 360, our final mile and private fleet outsourcing businesses, and both our highway services and intermodal. We are evaluating several categories of internal and external data to better understand the slope and timing of the import activities that will impact our intermodal networks, which Darien will comment on during discussion. We are also studying market information to help us estimate how the domestic freight trends will move in the coming weeks and months. As mentioned, we are working remotely where possible, which includes above 90% at our corporate campuses and approaching 50% in our field locations. We are pleased to report that recent investments in strengthening all aspects of our technology infrastructure and resiliency have delivered the results needed. Our ability to stay connected with each other, our customers, and our drivers has kept us fully operational. In addition to our traditional workflows, the positioning of our digital freight management platforms, known as 360, is enabling a different type of response to fast-changing needs by our people, customers, and carriers. A recent expansion to the baseline connectivity we have been reporting on, we are currently testing a comprehensive electronic bill of lading program to capture needed proof of delivery and signatures in a no-touch environment. This option will be available to all carriers and customers in early May. Shelley will cover some of the details for us here. This is a good example of our continuing development in 360. The comprehensive nature of our transportation offerings create many benefits to our customers. In addition to those long-held advantages, we are seeing that our broad reach of services presents us with options to reallocate our assets and people. As noted, we are seeing declines in some channels with surges in others. There are several options available to us in the way we handle the demands from our customers in intermodal, DCS, truckload, and ICS. During our discussions today, we will call out some examples of how we are providing resources within and across – I'm sorry, pivoting resources within and across segments. A new element of our presentation includes the breakout of final mile services and Last week we provided some historical data to help get you acclimated to the trends in this offering. Of all our business lines, this one has been hit the hardest in our ability to relocate assets, drivers, and contractors due to the nature of the equipment and services provided. Nick will be able to provide more information on our near-term expectations for final model. While the environment we are in will make it difficult to effectively model this business in the near term, We are hopeful that at least you can get more familiar with our recent trends. Even in the current turbulence, we have seen nothing that changes our strategic direction in any area of the company. In fact, we are encouraged by our positioning, and while we plan to be thoughtful about discretionary cost controls in the near term, our long-term plans and expectations have not changed meaningfully. At this time, I'll ask John Kulow to make some comments on our current financial state, and then Brad will close up our planned remarks. opening for questions following that. John?