Canadian National Railway Company

Good afternoon. My name is Charlie, and I will be your operator today. Welcome to CN's third quarter 2021 financial and operating results conference call. All participants are now in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Butcher, Vice President, Investor Relations. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Butcher.

Well, thank you, Charlie, and good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for CN's third quarter 2021 financial and operating results conference call. Before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to the forward-looking statements and additional legal information available at the beginning of the presentation. As a reminder, today's conference call contains certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. and Canadian securities law. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements and are more fully described in our cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements in our presentation. After the prepared remarks, we will conduct a Q&A session. I do want to remind you to please limit yourself to one question. The IR team will be available after the call for any follow-up questions. Joining us on the call today are JJ Ruet, 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. James Cairns, our Senior Vice President, Rail Centric Supply Chain. Helen Quirk, our Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer. And finally, Keith Reardon, our Senior Vice President, Consumer Products Supply Chain. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to JJ Rueck.

Thank you, Paul, and good evening, everyone. Today we will do our prepared statement in two parts. Gisle and I will cover the highlight of the third quarter. We'll keep that section tight. And then the team will cover the progress on our September 17 action plan. Well, let's first start with the highlight of Q3, and I'm on page five. All in, on an adjusted basis, the base business produced an adjusted diluted EPS growth of 10%, an adjusted operating ratio of 59.0%, and free cash flow for the first nine months of just over $2 billion. The operating ratio started high in July, resulting from the two-week loss of our CN Mainline's report of Vancouver, but improved afterward in August and September to an adjusted 59.0 OR as the average for the quarter. Regarding pricing trend, James Karn will provide evidence of solid pricing at CN in the last couple of quarters. Regarding headcount of the 1,050 that we mentioned in our September 17 conference call, about 70, 75% are completed. At CN, we have a long-term strategy and we railroad for all key stakeholders. We make sure the railroad has enough infrastructure to support the economy. We railroad to reduce carbon emission. We railroad to support our customers so they succeed and grow in their market. We are on our road to produce good return for our shareholders, and we are on our road to create an engaging and safe workplace for our employees. I will now turn it over to Gisle, who will walk us through the quarter.