J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to J.B. Hunt 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone or touch tone key. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Brad Zelko. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. Before I introduce the speakers, 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 Litigation 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 that are 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. Now, I would like to introduce the speakers on today's call. This afternoon, I am joined by our CEO and President, John Roberts, our CFO, Executive Vice President of Finance, John Kulo, Shelly Simpson, Chief Commercial Officer and Executive Vice President of People and Human Resources, Nick Hobbs, our COO and President of Contract Services, Brad Hicks, President of Highway Services, and Darren Field, President of Intermodal. At this time, I would like to turn the call to our CEO and President, Mr. John Roberts, for some opening comments. John?

Thanks, Brad. As we open our earnings call for the second quarter of 2021, it makes sense to consider our comparison data with recognition for where we all were this time last year with the onset of the COVID virus. That said, we will continue our discussion on our views of our progress across the enterprise. A general term we believe fits our current position is momentum. We noted for you during our last call that we have meaningfully increased our equipment orders for containers and intermodal and trailers for the J.B. Hunt 360 box program. Through the quarter, we gained confidence in these decisions and are working with our vendors to accommodate delivery of this equipment throughout the balance of the year with a keen focus on being able to meet the needs of our customers as we approach the traditional peak season. This is a fluid situation and we are deploying some new and creative ideas for ongoing equipment delivery. Shelly will add color for us on how we plan to work with our customers heading into the second half of 2021 and 2022. A high-level overview provides visibility for us to see that the company increased revenues, operating income, and earnings per share in total and in all segments compared to the unusual second quarter of 2020. Further review shows that intermodal, dedicated, and truckload all increased both revenue and operating income over Q1 of this year. ICS and Final Mile increased revenue but failed to increase operating income when looking sequentially and adjusting Final Mile services for the gain we called out in our release. As our segment leaders will discuss for you, the segments are all performing well and present solid evidence that support both our strategy to this point and what I believe to be strong momentum as we move forward from here. Given the work we have completed with our customers, current demand trends, order flows, and sales pipelines coupled with the data revealing some of the lowest inventory levels we have seen give us confidence in this momentum continuing. One last point I'd like to highlight is the progress the company has made in increasing our transparency and focus on our overall sustainability efforts. Under the leadership of our Chief Sustainability Officer, Craig Harper, we have recently published our first sustainability report in accordance with the GRI SASB and TCFD frameworks, which is easily accessed via our website. I think it's also worth noting that over the last year, our broader sustainability disclosure efforts have been recognized by SmartWay, CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project, Sustainalytics, and EcoVotus, with meaningful improvements in our scoring across these platforms. Craig calls out 25 unique people internally and many more who have helped with this improvement. As noted, this is a journey, and not just for a few, but for our entire organization. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, John Kulow, for his comments. John?