Canadian National Railway Company

Good afternoon. My name is Krista, and I will be your operator today. All participants are now in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session, during which we ask that you kindly limit yourself to one question. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Stacy Alderson, CN's Assistant Vice President of Investor Relations. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Alderson.

Thank you, Krista. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for CNX's first quarter financial and operating results conference call. Of note, we have forward-looking statements and non-GAAP definitions for your view on page two of our presentation. These forward-looking statements include estimates, goals, and predictions about the future based on current information and educated assumptions. These come with risks and uncertainties, And with that, there's always the possibility that the outcomes may differ from the expectations. That being said, forward-looking statements aren't guarantees, and factors like economic conditions, competition, fuel prices, and regulatory changes could affect actual results. Joining us on the call today are Tracy Robinson, our President and CEO, Derek Taylor, our Chief Field Operations Officer, Pat Whitehead, our Chief Network Operations Officer, Remy Lalonde, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Gislain Houlle, our Chief Financial Officer. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to CN's President and Chief Executive Officer, Tracey Robinson.

Merci, Stacey, and bienvenue a tous. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on today's call. We are very pleased today to be reporting strong first quarter results. We delivered 8% earnings growth and a 20 basis point improvement in the operating ratio. This gives us a good start on the year. particularly as we expect earnings growth to pick up in the second half as we lap last year's labor-related disruption. The team delivered these results despite experiencing a more normalized Q1 weather pattern, which meant tougher comps versus last year, especially in February. The resiliency we saw is again proof that our operating model is the right one for this railroad. Now, we're also pleased with the conclusion of the arbitration process involving our Canadian conductors and locomotive engineers. It resulted in a three-year deal and annual wage increases of 3%, in line with our expectations. We continue to make progress on labor agreements in the U.S. as well. We've now reached or ratified agreements with nine unions representing roughly half of our U.S. workforce. Now, in terms of the outlook, When we spoke with you in January, we expected that there would be some uncertainties during the year around tariffs and trade in particular. We've been certainly playing out that way. We've not seen a significant impact to our volumes thus far, but there's no question that uncertainty has increased over the last few months and we're seeing a heightened risk of recession in both Canada and the U.S. Now, it's difficult to say what will happen from here. While we remain optimistic that the U.S. will ultimately reach trade agreements with Canada, China, and other countries. We don't know what those deals will look like nor when they will happen. What we do know is that CN is well positioned to enable global trade regardless of potential changes in trade patterns. We have the right service and available capacity at all three coasts of North America to provide our customers with gateway options. So we're ready. Now for Prince Rupert specifically, We continue to believe that it will play a large role in our future growth. Rupert has an available capacity and its ability to expand intermodal and bulk shipments is unique in Canada. There's a tremendous amount of ongoing investment and business development to diversify the commodities handled by the terminals in Rupert. It's an increasingly important outlet for liquids and plastics from Western Canada that are in high demand in Asian markets, for example. I know that some of you on the call will be joining Remy and the team in Rupert in June to see firsthand what we're so excited about. Now getting back to the quarter, Derek's going to take you through our field ops performance. Pat will provide an overview of our resource and labor productivity and our progress on our mechanical and engineering efficiency. Now our operating measures, although off from last year, are in the range of a more normal winter. And most importantly, we showed incremental margin improvement coming from tighter resourcing and cost management, in addition to strong same-store pricing. All in, EPS grew by 8% on 1% RTM growth in the quarter. Now, as we look forward, we're keeping a very close eye on the external environment and staying close to our customers to understand potential changes in traffic flows. Remy will give some more color in a moment. And we continue to assume year-over-year volume growth driven by our CM-specific initiatives and lapping last year's disruptions. We expect that this will translate into volume and margin growth acceleration to the last half of the year. So we have four months under our belt with performance in line with our plan. We continue to assume RTM growth in the low-to-mid single-digit range. We are intentionally keeping resources tight and driving efficiencies across the organization to deliver better margins. And we're focused on running this railroad efficiently, serving our customers well, and driving value for our shareholders, our employees, and all stakeholders. Our full-year guidance of 10% to 15% EPS growth remains unchanged. And we do recognize that there's an increasing risk of recession. And if the economy moves into a recession, this could impact our outlook. But we expect to deliver within our guidance range as long as we see year-over-year volume growth. So I'll now turn it over to the team to fill in the details. Derek, you're up first.