Canadian National Railway Company

As a reminder, forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and factors such as economic conditions, competition, fuel prices, and regulatory changes could impact actual outcomes. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to CN's President and Chief Executive Officer, Tracy Robinson.

Thanks, Stacey, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm pleased this morning to share our Q4 and full-year results. 2025 was a year in which this team delivered strong performance against a backdrop of significant volatility and a challenging macro. The actions we took over the past year were proactive and exactly what the environment demanded. We've been disciplined. We've completed an important investment cycle. We've maintained a relentless focus on productivity improvement and increasingly on commercial intensity. And these actions drove our 2025 results. They helped us navigate a tough year and have set us up well for when volumes start to grow across the industry again. Now, on our last call, we made three commitments to ensure we deliver the type of returns we know CN is capable of. The first was on performance. As Q4 demonstrates, we continue to intensify our commercial execution while maintaining strong, disciplined network performance. Our focus is simple. Concentrate on areas we can control and deliver through execution, regardless of the macro backdrop. Our results today reflect this focus, with improvement across all key operating measures. Second, on financial discipline, we reset our capital programs to reflect today's environment with concrete actions to reduce costs and improve productivity. These actions are strengthening free cash flow, and we remain committed to returning excess capital to shareholders while maintaining a strong balance sheet. And third, on guidance. Now, given the elevated level of macro and policy uncertainty and limited visibility, We think it's appropriate to provide directional guidance tied closely to volume trends rather than precise targets that can change quickly or become outdated. So let's turn to the fourth quarter. We closed the year with solid momentum, reflecting strong execution, reliable service, and continued discipline on costs and assets. In the fourth quarter, we delivered 14% EPS growth and 7% for the full year, in line with our mid to high single-digit guidance. I'm also pleased with our efficiency. In Q4, our operating ratio came in at 60.1%, our best quarterly operating ratio of the year, and a 250 basis point improvement over last year. For the full year, we posted a 61.7% operating ratio, improving 120 basis points versus 2024. On cash flow, we generated $3.3 billion, up 8%, driven by cash from operations. and we remain disciplined on capital spending, continuing to tighten throughout the year. Cash flow remains a top priority, and the actions we've taken continue to support a strong trajectory. Now, volumes held up well through year-end, led by grain and intermodal. We set a number of records on grain, and on intermodal, we benefited from an easier comparison as we lapped the ILWU strike in 2024. We saw notable strength in segments where our service and commercial execution have helped us drive share gains. Janet will walk you through the key revenue puts and takes in just a few minutes. Across the network, we continue to make meaningful progress in operating performance and efficiency. In the fourth quarter, we saw improvement across all of our key operating measures. Car velocity improved, terminal dwell reduced, train and locomotive productivity increased, labor productivity strengthened materially, and we achieved a fourth quarter record in fuel efficiency. Now these gains reinforce my confidence in our ability to perform consistently, even in a challenging demand environment. Pat will take you through the initiatives he and his team are driving to build on this momentum. So to sum it up, despite tariff pressures that intensified in the second half of the year and ongoing trade uncertainty, we executed, we stayed disciplined, and we delivered. Now looking to 2026, our focus will continue to be on disciplined execution. We'll prioritize the levers we control, stay close to our customers, and stay grounded amidst a volatile macro environment. As we look ahead, uncertainty remains high and visibility limited. Economic growth looks muted, and it's hard to call where the tariff situation will land or what it means for trade flows. The outcome of the USMCA review could influence trade and freight demand in ways that are tough to size up today. So against that backdrop, we believe a more directional framework for guidance tied to volume trends make sense. Given what we see today, our base case expectation is that volumes will be flattish with 2025. It's important to note that at this time the most reasonable approach is to assume that current tariff levels stay where they are. So our base case expectations do not build in any upside or downside from further tariff action. As the year unfolds and hopefully visibility improves, we'll keep updating our view. And we're going to continue to pull every lever on productivity across the organization, and we will see incremental gains, although not as significant as those we achieved in 2025. We have some headwinds to work through in 2026 on mix, and in some expense categories that Ghislaine will take you through. So on relatively flat volumes, we expect EPS growth to slightly exceed volume growth. Free cash flow will continue to grow in 2026, and we remain firmly committed to returning that cash back to our shareholders. We're also taking a deliberate, temporary step up in leverage to drive share repurchases, reflecting our confidence in the underlying earnings power of this business when volumes return. And as a team, we're staying locked in on delivering for shareholders in any environment. Now, we're building an engine with strong operating leverage, strong cash generation, with resilience and with flexibility, one that will accelerate earnings and margins as volumes improve, whether through a better economic backdrop clarity on a reasonable tariff arrangement, or continued progress on Canadian trade diversification. And importantly, the muscles we have activated over the last 18 months around costs and productivity are now firing across CN. That gives us meaningful leverage as volumes return without requiring a significant step up in capital, and our teams will continue to push hard for efficiency. Now, just a few words on the proposed industry consolidations. We know this is top of mind from any of you, and it certainly kept us busy as we worked through the details. UP and NS filed their application, and the STB, as we expected, deemed the filing incomplete. The industry still has a long road ahead in evaluating this transaction. It is not at all clear that the transaction as proposed addresses many of the questions around the negative impact on competition, as well as the bigger issue of increasing rail competition. The concessions required to achieve this will be significant. This should be the focus as UP and NS prepare their refiling, and we're eager to see how they'll address these issues in their revised application. I'd say they've got a long way to go. Now, while this process plays out, the majority of our team remains focused exactly where they should be, on running our business and driving value to our shareholders. The team is fully aligned on executing day-to-day, winning every carload, delivering safe and reliable service for our customers, and continuing to convert strong execution into growing free cash flow. I am impressed with how decisively our team has stepped up, and you'll see this continue. Longer term, our opportunity set as the Railroad of the North is compelling. We sit atop an incredible natural resource base with enviable access to North American markets and an unparalleled port network that provides a path to every global market. This uniquely positions us to support customers in both our current markets and as trade flows evolve. And we're seeing to start this play out in some sectors now. Decisions we've made over the last 12 to 18 months, we will continue to refine, positions us with strong operating and earnings leverage as these volumes lift. And throughout, we'll stay disciplined on capital and focus on execution and free cash flow. Pat, you're up.

Thanks, Tracy. I'll be speaking to slide six first. The team delivered a strong fourth quarter, and I'm pleased that the three areas we are laser-focused on are paying off. These are, one, ensure our people are at their safest and most productive, two, delivering our promise to our customers, and three, to maximize margin by controlling unit costs and asset utilization. It starts where it always does for us, safety on the ground. In Q4 and for the full year, we achieved the best injury frequency ratio in our history. That reflects consistent execution and is core to our performance this quarter and going forward. I want to first recognize our frontline teams who approach their craft as true professional railroaders. While this record is meaningful, our focus remains on every one of our CN family members going home safely every day. We want this for the families and the communities that count on us. That foundation allowed us to take on more work and deliver for our customers. Our workload increased 5% year-over-year, a bump partly supported by our grain customers. We carried record-setting grain tonnage for Western Canada for four consecutive months while maintaining reliable service to our merchandise customers with local service commitment performance well above 90%. From a network standpoint, Q4 tested resilience. Particularly in December, when winter operating conditions required shorter train lengths for the entire month. Despite this, car velocity improved 2%, and dwell declined 1% year over year in the quarter. That tells us we're not trading service or velocity to manage disruptions. We're improving both. The takeaway from the quarter is straightforward. We handled more volume with discipline, even under a full month of winter constraints. Turning to the next slide, this is where the operating model shows up in the bottom line. On labor, T&E productivity improved 14% versus Q4 last year. We entered the quarter with approximately 800 furloughs and exited with about 650, selectively adding resources to support the grain program and winter readiness. On a full year basis, we improved our T&E labor cost per GTM by 6%, with GTMs up by 1%. That's more output with a smaller cost base. That same rigor shows up in how we manage our assets. On locomotives, productivity improved 5% year-over-year in the quarter, with roughly 10% of the fleet stored on average. Looking under the hood, locomotive availability reached an all-time high, nudging up 1% over 2024 to 92.5%, creating a knock-on effect that cleans up our balance sheet. The result was a $20 million reduction in our mechanical inventory, or 14% full year-over-year. We also achieved a record level of fuel efficiency in Q4, improving nearly 1% year-over-year with full-year results just shy of our best performance on record. On infrastructure, we completed all eight capacity projects we committed to at the start of 2025 on time. Our engineering team maintained its tight control over installation costs, totaling nearly $40 million of productivity gains from 2024 while materially reducing reliance on contracts. Where conditions allowed, including an earlier onset of winter in some regions, we advanced productive capital work deeper into the season rather than defer it, improving asset readiness while reducing contractor spend significantly. As we look to 2026, we're well positioned. The network, locomotive fleet, and car fleet are in good shape, and we're not satisfied stopping there. To move from good to great, our focus is on precision. That means reducing yards well, eliminating non-value-added costs, and ensuring cars spend less time waiting and more time earning. Yards are the anchors to the whole network. Three-quarters of our traffic hit our major terminals, and more than half of our staff work in these locations. In engineering, we're continuing to strengthen in-house capabilities, control unit costs, and remove engineering-related delays. Reducing yard dwell only matters if cars move over the road without disruption. Together, these levers expand margins, strengthen cash flow, and allow the railroad to perform through any cycle. We see an opportunity to lower our operating expense in 2026 through our cross-functional terminal reviews and continued operating discipline with additional margin upside as volume grows. With that, I'll turn it over to Janet.