Canadian National Railway Company

All participants, please stand by. Your meeting is ready to begin. Welcome to the CN first quarter 2020 financial results conference call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Paul Butcher, Vice President, Investor Relations. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Butcher.

Well, thank you, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for CN's first quarter 2020 earnings call. I would like to remind you about the comments already made regarding forward-looking statements. With me today is J.J. Rouet, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Gislaine Houlle, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Rob Riley, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Keith Reardon, our Senior Vice President, Consumer Products Supply Chain, and James Cairns, our Senior Vice President, Rails Centric Supply Chain. Once again, I do remind you to please limit yourselves to one question so that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the Q&A session. The IR team will be available after the call for any follow-up questions. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to CN's President and Chief Executive Officer, Monsieur JJ Ruet.

Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter earning call. In keeping with our commitment to safety, I hope you and your families are staying safe practicing social distancing and helping to reduce the spread of COVID-19. We at CN have been diligent in providing a safe environment for all of our employees, and I'm happy to report the railroad is safe and CN never slowed down. As we look back to the quarter, my first message is that despite the unusual challenge we were faced with, the men and women of CN produced solid financial results. But I also believe it is important to look ahead. My second message is that the resiliency of CN, which we demonstrated last quarter, will serve us well through this challenging time and position us for the recovery. Our investors know we manage the business to deliver long-term performance, and we continue to build for 2021 and beyond. We will balance the need to manage through the short term with a focus on long-term performance of the business. The network is currently in full operation and very fluid. We have the capacity to move goods and enable the eventual recovery of the economy. We also continue to build on our technology big ideas, such as automating track inspection, automating train inspection, fully enabling a connected and paperless train cruise, and increasing the automation of trains. Rob will walk you through the strength of our operation and highlight some specific progress we continue to make in technology and safety. Our financial strength will also serve us well in the near to long term. We have a very robust balance sheet and a proven track record of dealing with any type of business disruption. Gislaine will give you more color on our financial strength, our costs, our free cash, as well as a balance sheet. Our 2020 CapEx will further enhance capacity in the strategic and maintenance to Rupert growth corridor, as well as the infrastructure required for our growth in and around the Port of Vancouver. Keith and James will speak as to how we are building businesses even in this tough marketplace. ESG is a strength for CN. Our carbon footprint continues to decrease, and our fuel costs continue to improve. In this unusual time, we are beefing up our cybersecurity, as well as pushing further on a broad range of key ECS aspects related to gender, human capital, and environmental strategies. So, in summary, a good quarter despite a month-long of illegal rail blockade, a proven resilience that will help us deliver in the near term, and we are ready to support the recovery and deliver long-term shareholders' value. On that, I will pass it on to Rob. We'll talk to you about the operation.