Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited

Good afternoon. My name is James and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to CPKC's fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call. The slides accompanying today's call are available at investor.cpkcr.com. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, simply press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star 2. I'd now like to introduce Chris DeBruin, Vice President, Capital Markets, to begin the conference.

Thank you, James. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Before we begin, I want to remind you this presentation contains forward-looking information. Actual results may differ materially. The risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could influence actual results are described on slide 2 and in the earnings press release filed with Canadian and U.S. regulators. This presentation also contains non-GAAP measures outlined on slide three. Please note, in addition to our regular quarterly financials, there's supplemental Q4 and full-year combined revenue and operating performance data available at investor.cpkcr.com, which some of today's discussion will focus on. With me here today is Keith Creel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nadine Balani, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, John Brooks, our Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, and Mark Redd, our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. The formal remarks will be followed by Q&A. In the interest of time, we do appreciate if you could listen to your questions to one. It is now my pleasure to introduce our President and CEO, Mr. Keith Creel.

Hey, thanks, Chris, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Give us a chance as a team to share our fourth quarter results as well as Our view for this exciting year ahead in 24 that we have to create value for our shareholders, for our customers, and our CPKC family. So that comment, let me start by thanking that CPKC family. 20,000, three nation strong family of railroaders, industry best. Their body of work enabled the results that we get to talk about today and obviously the work that's ahead of us as we create value for all of our stakeholders. And I can tell you, as the leader, it's my honor to be able to be at the colleagues that are with me here today to represent their body of work. So that's able to speak to the results. For the quarter, this team delivered revenues of $3.8 billion, which is up 4 percent, volume growth of 4 percent, an operating ratio that represents 220 basis points of improvement versus last year to 58.7, core EPS of $1.18, also up 4 percent versus last year. And for the four-year revenues, 13.9 billion, up 5%. Volume growth of 1%, a very unique industry story. An operating ratio of 62%. Core EPS is $3.84, up 2% versus last year. So standalone, certainly unique and impressive results. Even more so when you think about this is a railroad in the early stages of an integration, working against a challenging macro environment all at the same time. So here we are, 10 months into our forever story at CPKC, and I'm telling you, I'm extremely proud of the progress this team has made across the organization, be it operationally, sales and marketing, finance, IS, all areas of the business, this is a team that's committed in creating value. As we said we would, we're doing exactly what we said we would do. And I can tell you, a tremendous amount of work went into preparing for this merger, for this combination. and even more so has gone into executing it. As leaders, I believe this. We're not here to sustain performance. We're here to make it better. We're here to make an impact, to improve the product. And that's exactly what this team has been doing for the last 10 months. We've launched new services, market solutions across the industry that this transaction has uniquely enabled, be it our 180-181 service, our Mexico Midwest Express, which is the gold standard in the industry in spite of what anybody else might say, trying to imitate it. It's best-in-class, delivering fast, reliable, single-line service across a very fluid and always open border. A closed-loop service solution for the automotive industry that provides a differentiated level of service and reliability that the OEMs are embracing and recognize the value that that creates in their reliable supply chains. Connecting origins, destinations of ACP, MNC, Forrest products, again with a unique single line service across all three nations. We've made gains in operating efficiency, service, reduced assets, we've increased velocity, we've reduced dwell, we've eliminated handles. We've also made strong progress, I'm very pleased to say, on the labor side. On the U.S. side, we've expanded our very unique hourly agreements, which I believe gives unique competitive advantage, not only to serve our customers, but also to attract and retain the best railroading talent in the industry. And in Mexico, Establishing trust and respect with our one union that's there working towards agreements that not only improve service but also benefit the employees. So it's truly a win-win for Mexico, for employees, as well as our customers that utilize our service. Also through the year, while we're doing all that, we've continued progress on our hydrogen locomotive program. We've now got two low-horsepower hydrogen locomotives that are servicing customers every day in Calgary come rain. Come shine, come snow, we're reliably producing the zero emissions of Calgary customers in that market, as well as we've fabricated our first high-horsepower locomotive, which we completed late last year. It's completed its first test movement. We'll be putting that into service later this year in a coal loop with a tender car, cycling coal between the coal mines in British Columbia and the Tidewater in British Columbia in partnership with our largest customer tech coal, creating a green corridor. And above all that, while we're doing that, most importantly, we've improved and continue to make vast improvements in our safety performance as a combined company, building upon CP's long history of industry-leading safety performance. So all that to say we've entered 2024 in a position of strength, industry-leading results, and we're going to continue to build upon that. Mother Nature has humbled us a bit. In the first month, that said, it's a challenge. It's not an excuse. We're well-positioned to recover. We've regained our momentum. that we started the year with, and we're in a great position to continue that through this quarter and into the balance of the year. So let me close by saying 23 was a very special year. We brought two great companies together, CP and KCS, to create a very unique, industry-leading, most relevant rail network in CPKC. We've connected a continent in a way that's never been done before, and I would suggest will never be done again. Three continents. Since the combination took effect in April, We've seen a steadily built momentum, and I can tell you we're just getting started. 2024 is shaping up to be an even exciting more year than 2023. So that said, let me hand it over to Mark. I want him to expand, speak to some operational points. John's going to bring some color in the markets, and maybe we'll bring this home on the numbers, and then we'll open it up to questions. So over to you, Mark.