Canadian National Railway Company

Second 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, Patrick. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for CN's Second 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, Ghislaine 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, Rail Centric Supply Chain. I do want to remind you to please limit yourself to one question so 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, Mr. J.J. Rouet.

Well, thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter earning call. In keeping with our commitment to safety and essential services, our people have quickly pivoted to working safely under the new normal of COVID-19. In Q1, we told you about our proven ability to be resilient to any challenges. In Q2, we proved it again, and CN's operation never slowed down for the pandemic. And we will be ready and prepared if there is a second wave. As we look back, this was among the toughest quarter of my career, with heightened pandemic concern of our employees and a sharp drop in volume of 18% in revenue ton miles. But thanks to our people and our leaders, we perform very well. We take pride in delivering essential services to our national economies. Our perennial financial strength is serving us very well in these current times. CN generated $1 billion of free cash flow during a quarter of severe recession. We delivered an adjusted operating ratio of 60.4%, and we continue to aim for a minimum of $2.5 billion of free cash flow this year. CN is built to last. And even in these challenging times, I'm proud that we continue to demonstrate why ESG is a hallmark of CN. Namely, our carbon footprint continues to decrease exponentially, having delivered another record of pure efficiency. Today we will speak to the short term, our costs, and our resiliency to last this pandemic. And today we will also speak to our investment in the long term in our contribution to the economic recovery. Rob will walk you through the strength of our operation in this new normal. He will highlight progress we are continuing to make in cost takeout, in bringing technology to the railroad industry, and in the safety culture at CN. He will also highlight his outstanding performance in fuel efficiency. James and Keith will speak to the expected sequential volume trend for the quarters to head. And we know also, by now you know, our long-term commitment to the grain business and the major investment that we've announced here today. Ghislaine will give you color on our solid balance sheet. and the special non-cash charge that we are using to push PSR further by trimming non-core parts of our network. So in summary, a good quarter in the middle of a recession. We quickly learned how to operate under the new normal of COVID-19 for quarters to come. We proved again our cost resiliency that will help us deliver in the near term. And we reaffirm our confidence in the future by maintaining our dividend policy reaffirming our $2.9 billion capex in 2020 and announcing a new $150 million investment for 2021 targeting the long-term grain export business. On that note, I will pass it on to Rob. Rob?