Norfolk Southern Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Megan Akamasi, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Ms. Akamasi. You may now begin.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Please note that during today's call we will make certain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Our presentation slides are available at nscorp.com in the investor section, along with our reconciliation of non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures. A full transcript and download will be posted after the call. It is now my pleasure to introduce Norfolk Southern's Chairman, President, and CEO, Jim Squires.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Norfolk Southern's second quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining me today are Cindy Sanborn, Chief Operating Officer, Alan Shaw, Chief Marketing Officer, and Mark George, Chief Financial Officer. Building upon our momentum to start the year, our team delivered another record-setting quarter as dramatic improvement in both revenue and volume, up 34% and 25% respectively, outpaced an 11% growth in expense. And while the year-over-year improvement is aided by easier comps from last year's economic shutdown, our performance in the quarter also improved sequentially in a number of ways as shown on slide four. Our results include second quarter records for net income and earnings per share and all-time records for operating income and operating ratio, which was 58.3% this quarter. We're excited to share more details about our results. But first, I want to take a moment to thank each and every one of our employees for helping us run a more efficient and safer railroad while serving our customers. And I'll now turn to Cindy to go through our operations. Cindy?