Union Pacific Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the Union Pacific second quarter earnings call. At this time all participants will be 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 and the slides for today's presentation are available on Union Pacific's website. At this time it is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Lance Fritz, Chairman, President and CEO for Union Pacific. Mr. Fritz, you may begin.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, and welcome to Union Pacific's second quarter earnings conference call. With me today in Omaha are Kenny Rocker, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Eric Geringer, Executive Vice President of Operations, and Jennifer Heyman, our Chief Financial Officer. We're also joined by our newly elected Independent Chair of the Board of Directors, Mike McCarthy, who will take a couple of minutes to address the announcements we made this morning regarding my successor and our board. Mike, the floor is yours.

Thanks, Lance. This morning, the board of directors announced that Jim Benna will be appointed the next chief executive officer of Union Pacific. The board has also appointed Jim to the board of directors. Jim brings a strong rail operations background to Union Pacific with over 40 years of experience. This includes two successful years as our chief operating officer from 2019 to 2020. After a comprehensive search process, it was clear Jim's track record of operating excellence was unparalleled, and he was the right candidate for the job. Jim will start as CEO on August 14th, and we look forward to welcoming him back to Union Pacific. The board also announced that Beth Whited will be appointed president of Union Pacific. Beth has over 35 years of experience at our company and has held leadership roles across multiple departments. Recently, she has led our strategy, sustainability, and workforce resource teams with great success. Going forward, the operations, finance, marketing and sales, supply chain, and technology functions will report directly to Vena. Whitehead will report to Vena, and her responsibilities will include the strategy, workforce resources, sustainability, law, corporate relations, and government affairs functions. In addition to these management changes, the Board is appointing two new Board members, Doyle Simons, former President and Chief Executive Officer of Weyerhaeuser, and John Weoff, former Chairman, President, and CEO of C.H. Robinson. Both bring to our Board a wealth of skill sets, including operational expertise from leading large industrial public companies. As Lance indicated, As part of these changes, we are adopting a corporate governance best practice by splitting the role of company CEO and board chair. With my election to independent chair, Director Sherry Edison will take over leadership of the Corporate Governance Nominating and Sustainability Committee. In addition, the board has created a new committee, Safety and Service Quality, which will have responsibility to review, evaluate, and monitor compliance with safety programs and provide oversight of the company's service performance. Director Jane Lute will lead this committee. The Board is very pleased to make these announcements today, which represent a continued commitment to Board refreshment to ensure that we have the right mix of skills and experience to oversee the company. We are confident that these new appointments set Union Pacific up for long-term value creation. Before I turn it back over to Lance, I would like to thank him for his leadership these past eight years. His accomplishments are many, and over the next few weeks, we will properly celebrate them. Most importantly, though, his leadership has set our company up for great success for the years to come. Thank you, Lance, and I'll turn it back over to you.