Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited

Good morning. My name is James, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to CPKC's first quarter 2024 earnings 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 speakers and marks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star two. Now I'd like to introduce Chris DeBruin, Vice President, Capital Markets, to begin the conference.

Thank you, James. Good morning, 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 two, in the press release, and in the MD&A 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 Q1 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, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Nadeem Vellani, 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'd appreciate if you limit your questions to one. It is now my pleasure to introduce our President and CEO, Mr. Keith Creel.

Good morning. Thanks, Chris. Listen, before we get to the results, I think it's only appropriate on behalf of our CPKC family to extend our heartfelt prayers and condolences to Jim Foote's family and friends. As many of you know, we lost Jim last week. Many of us in this industry have had the honor to serve Jim during his multiple decades of service to this industry. I can tell you myself personally, I'm going to cherish the memories and the experiences. He was a wonderful man, a dedicated man, dedicated to this industry, dedicated to the railroads that he worked for and the people that he served with. If you knew him, there are a couple of things that are undeniable about him. He loved his friends, he loved his family, and he loved the companies that he served and that led this industry. It's a man lost too soon. I can tell you he left it better. The memories and the experiences will not be forgotten nor will Jim, nor will his impact on this industry. So all the best, again, to his family. Prayers and condolences. So with that said, I want to thank you for joining us on the call today so we get to share our results. As I always will, I want to start my comments thanking the 20,000 strong family of railroaders that enabled the results that we get to share today. As you're all aware, we just celebrated our one-year anniversary just last week of this historic combination. We're here to celebrate actually today in Calgary another historic event. We're going to launch our final spike steam tour this afternoon. So super exciting day in Calgary after we get to share these results and do our AGM. We get to celebrate with our employees and start this historic and iconic trip across all three nations. So for the next probably 35, 40 days. We're going to get to spend time and thank the communities that we're operating in through all the way from Calgary down to Mexico City. So I thank the employees, again, that have been specifically involved in enabling this creation, this vision we created two years ago with the culmination of the launch today. So thank you for that. And I hope any of you across this network will have a chance to participate in that. So looking back, you know, this last year of our forever story, I tell you, I can't be more pleased with the progress. We're delivering on the commitments we made to create competition. We're delivering a safe and efficient service, and we're expanding our service continually. We're creating new and expanded customer relationships over the new markets that we're creating, collaborating, that is only enabled because of this historic combination. I'm pleased with the results we produced in the quarter. It's been a strong start to the year from an RTM and an operational perspective. Yes, it was a tough January, but I can tell you Mark and the operations team recovered quickly, and the bonds have exceeded the expectations that we provided during our Q4 earnings call. So specific to the results, the first quarter we produced revenues of $3.5 billion, which is an increase of 2%, an operating ratio of 64, which is about 50 bps, Increased versus last year, core UPS of 93 cents, an increase of 3%. Despite a challenging start from the year, the volume finished up 1% for the quarter. On the operating performance, I'm extremely pleased with how the network bounced back from the January challenges and the resiliency that the team displayed. The momentum that we created and carried it in the quarter with strong gains across the network and speed dwelled on locomotive productivity. The improvements were pronounced in Mexico, where we continue to see large improvements across our operating metrics. Several of the key metrics that we follow internally have improved significantly in Mexico this quarter. Car miles per car day, locomotive productivity both up over 20% year over year. Active cars online down 15%. Dwell down. Productivity improving. The gains we made in Mexico, the improved velocity, they've allowed us to optimize our asset base. We've been able to park assets. We've been able to redeploy as many as 60 locomotives, in fact, during the quarter to other parts of the network to address winter weather and serve stronger than expected demand. So huge credit to the operating team demonstrating the power of a true precision scheduled railroading operating model. In fact, I think it's better said at CPKC as PSR prime. And importantly, these improvements continue to come at a time when in Mexico we're delivering an all-time highly GTM performance. Some animate change. As you would have seen in March, we made a change to our leadership team in releasing John Orr from his commitments to CPKC. Again, I'd like to thank John for his contributions and the impactful leadership that he had. As a leader, I believe it's your challenge to lead it better, and John did that. He did that in his service to the KCS. while the company was in trust, as well as to CPKC until its departure just last month. We're fortunate to have an extremely talented and deep bench of PSR Railroaders on our team, so the decision to release John was not an easy one, but it was made possible by the strength and the depth of the teams we actually have at CPKC. The plan was always for the Mexican operations to eventually report into Mark as our COO, and with the strong performance in Mexico that I've mentioned, the experienced team that we have in place, It just simply made sense to accelerate that plan. So credit to the entire operations team since John's departure. They haven't missed a beat. We're continuing to execute, drive improvements, and provide great customer service to our customers. So in closing, I'm happy with the start that we've had to the year, our performance so far in the second quarter as well. We're poised to be the most relevant rail network in North America, uniting a continent, adding competition to the industry and delivering new options along with safe and efficient service to our customers. So with that said, I'm going to hand it over to Mark to speak to the operating performance. John's going to bring some color to the markets, and then Nadine will close elaborating on the numbers before we open it up to questions. Over to you, Mark.