Norfolk Southern Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation fourth quarter fiscal year 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a 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 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Luke Nichols, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you. Mr. Nichols, you may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern, 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 GAAP measures. 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 fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Here with me today are Ed Elkins, our Chief Marketing Officer, and Mark George, our Chief Financial Officer. I'm also pleased to welcome Paul Duncan, who moved into the role of Chief Operating Officer on January 1st. At our Investor Day last month, we shared our strategy to create long-term shareholder value through a balanced approach. of reliable and resilient service, continuous productivity improvement, and smart and sustainable growth. At the heart of that strategy is a service product that allows us to compete in that $860 billion truck and logistics market and gives our customers the confidence to build Norfolk Southern into their supply chain. I was at the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers winter meeting last week talking with customers about our new strategy and the reactions were extremely positive. Now, our job is to prove it consistently with performance. We make great strides to close the year and are encouraged by our progress. We will continue to refine and evolve to provide a service product to market values. Service is at the best it's been in more than two years and customers are noticing. Volumes in December were at 52-week highs, outperforming typical seasonality as Ed and Paul's teams worked collaboratively with our customers to attract business to Norfolk Southern. Overcoming headwinds associated with a slower network in the first three quarters that constricted our capacity, our team persevered, adapted, and achieved strong results in a challenging year. For both the fourth quarter and full year 2022, we were able to achieve double-digit growth in both revenue and EPS. We established new records for full-year revenue, operating income, and other metrics that the team will detail later this morning. Also this quarter, we finalized national contracts with the unions representing our craft colleagues. These agreements recognize the hard work and dedication of our frontline railroaders with historic wage increases and an unparalleled health and welfare benefits package. With national bargaining now complete, we started discussions at the local level to address important quality of life issues. I would like to thank the entire Norfolk Southern team for their incredible effort during the fourth quarter and throughout all of 2022. I'm proud of the improvement our team has delivered and the momentum we have created. Our relentless focus on service continues in 2023. You'll hear more from Paul momentarily about how our across the board improvement is now allowing us to target specific opportunities for service and productivity enhancements. We recognize that the macroeconomic environment in which we operate is uncertain. And you'll hear more about the impact of that from Ed and Mark. Longer term, we're building on the momentum we carry into 2023 and the course we've charted in our new strategy. As you heard at our Investor Day, we believe Norfolk Southern is uniquely positioned to deliver long-term shareholder value through top-tier revenue and earnings growth, industry competitive margins, and balanced capital deployment. We will get there. by being a customer-centric, operations-driven service organization, and we look forward to sharing our progress with you. Now, I'll turn it over to Paul for more detail on the improved service we are providing to our customers.