Norfolk Southern Corporation

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the North Fork Southern Corporation third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, note that all participant lines are in the listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session, and if at any time during the call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Also note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, October 22, 2026. and I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols. Please go ahead.

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 Corporation 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 NorfolkSouthern.com in the Investor section, along with a reconciliation of any non-gap measures used today to the comparable gap measures, including adjusted or non-gap operating ratios. Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis. Turning to slide three, I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's president and chief executive officer, Mark George.

Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are here in Atlanta, and I'm joined by Brian Barr, our chief operating officer, Ed Elkins, our chief commercial officer, and Jason Zampi, our chief financial officer. Our third quarter was strong, with steady execution, making notable improvements to our network while delivering solid results. We have an outstanding team of thoroughbreds who remained focused on the fundamentals, operating a safe, reliable railroad, serving our customers, growing the business, and improving productivity across the network. So a big thanks to all our team. Collectively, we delivered very strong revenue and operating income growth. while we continued to advance productivity. While we absorbed higher fuel costs this quarter, our team executed well on the controllables, maintaining cost discipline while improving the efficiency of the operations. Overall, we were pleased with how the business performed in a dynamic operating environment and believe that the underlying fundamentals of the franchise remain strong. Demand for rail service is growing. with encouraging trends in areas such as domestic intermodal and chemicals, which Ed will discuss in more detail. The current macro environment is tightening the truck market, and that helps rail be more competitive. And what you saw in the quarter is us capturing the increased customer demand. Operationally, we continue to make progress. Under Brian's leadership, we've made targeted adjustments across the network, and key service metrics are improving. even as we handle higher volumes. Brian will detail some of the changes that helped us achieve record productivity performance in the quarter and we are making other operational improvements while adding resources that will improve network performance going forward. And you should expect to see these efforts show up more clearly as we close out 2026 and continue into next year. Bottom line, we're handling the volume today and we expect stronger results as the resources come online and our demand pipeline continues to fill out. While we're encouraged by the meaningful progress we're making, we know there's more work to do and we've consistently said that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We're accelerating some targeted capital investments into this year to accommodate continued volume growth so that we can deliver the level of service our customers expect. Meantime, We've identified opportunities to build more sustainable processes across our network so we can create a more resilient railroad for the long term. And with that, let me hand it off to Brian.