Norfolk Southern Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation third quarter 2022 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 today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce Luke Nichols, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Mr. Nichols. 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 disclosure 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 any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable gap measures. A full transcript and download will be posted after the call. Turning to slide three, it's now my pleasure to introduce Norfolk Southern's president and chief executive officer, Alan Shaw.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Norfolk Southern's third quarter 2022 earnings call. I am joined today by Cindy Sanborn, chief operating officer, Ed Elkins, chief marketing officer, and Mark George, Chief Financial Officer. The Norfolk Southern team delivered strong financial results in the third quarter, achieving quarterly records for revenue, net income, and earnings per share. We also demonstrated our focus on productivity and efficiency with significant OR improvement, as Mark will describe in a moment. Thank you to all the men and women of Norfolk Southern for their remarkable work this quarter and throughout the year proudly serving our customers and improving the quality of our product. We are qualifying conductors at a robust pace, executing and refining our top SPG operating plan and further strengthening our leadership team and operations. The impact is evident across our network. We see improved operating metrics, such as higher train speeds and shorter dwells. We see improved customer facing service metrics, We hear improved feedback from customers who are talking to us about adding business. Volume is the lagging indicator, and we are confident our broad and continuing service improvement will drive growth opportunities in the months ahead. Today, the NS team is providing better service, creating network capacity for growth, and demonstrating the customer-centric, operations-driven approach that is the foundation of our success. During the quarter, we reached tentative agreements with the unions that represent our craft colleagues. This was a critical first step. The tentative agreements recognize the significant contributions of our people and keep them among the highest paid craft workers in any industry. In my continuing field visits with frontline railroaders and local supervisors, I've been able to express my appreciation for the vital work they do for Norfolk Southern, our customers, and the U.S. economy. Working on the railroad has always been a great opportunity to build a fulfilling career and we want to keep it that way. In the final days of the cooling off period, as the possibility of service disruption loomed, we took a transparent, no surprises approach to communicating with our customers, which helped them make informed decisions about how to keep their goods and materials moving. This is an excellent illustration of what it means to be customer-centric. Even though it created a modest headwind on volume, as Ed will describe, we received positive feedback from many of our customers. We'll take that same no surprises approach every time because it's how we will deepen customer trust and enhance long-term value creation and growth. Now, I'll turn the discussion to Cindy for additional detail on our strong operating progress during the quarter. Cindy?