Canadian National Railway Company

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 now like to turn the call over to Jamie Lockwood, CN's Vice President of Investor Relations and Special Projects. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Lockwood.

Thank you, Krista. Bonjour à tous et merci de vous rejoindre à notre appel conférence sur les résultats du premier trimestre 2026 de CIEM. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for CIEM's first quarter financial and operating results conference call. Joining us today on the call are Tracy Robinson, our president and CEO, Pat Whitehead, our chief operations officer, Janet Drysdale, our chief commercial officer, and Justine Ayot, our chief financial officer. You can turn to page two of the presentation, which includes our forward-looking statements and non-GAAP definitions for your reference. These forward-looking statements reflect our current information and educated assumptions and include estimates, goals, and expectations about the future. These involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ from what we expect. As a reminder, forward-looking statements are not guarantees, and factors such as economic conditions, competition, fuel prices, and regulatory changes could impact actual outcomes. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to CN's president and chief executive officer, Tracy Robinson.

Thank you, Jamie, and thank you all for participating in our call. Thanks, everyone, for joining our call. I'm pleased to walk you through our first quarter results. This was a solid quarter where we delivered on plan. This is reflective of our continued focus on execution and performance across the entirety of our operations. We're doing exactly what we said we would do at the outset of the year, and the results can be seen across the business. We're increasing our commercial intensity, and we saw volume growth in the first quarter. We're executing with urgency, and we're not done. As we look at the quarter, our performance is best understood through key commitments we laid out around execution, financial discipline, and guidance. Now, let me walk you through each of those. First, on execution... We committed to pulling every lever we have in the areas we control to deliver regardless of the macro backdrop. We have leaned into workforce productivity, asset utilization, and operating efficiency, and the railway is running well. All of our key operating metrics improved year over year, and this has contributed to a structurally improved cost base. At the same time, we continue to intensify our commercial execution in this environment where every carload counts. The team is delivering. by staying nimble, empowered, and responsive, capitalizing on our strong service. Second, we committed to strengthening free cash flow and returning excess capital to shareholders while maintaining a strong balance sheet. In the quarter, free cash flow increased by about $275 million. We repurchased 6 million shares and increased leverage to 2.7 times. This reflects our confidence in the underlying earnings power of this business. Expect this focus to continue. And third, we committed to providing directional guidance tied closely to volume trends rather than precise targets. Now, we're encouraged by the start of the year, and our view remains that earnings will grow above volumes on an annual basis. It's too early to change our outlook for the year. But if volumes come in stronger, we're confident we will deliver earnings leverage in the business. Now, as we acted the first quarter, the business is positioned for better financial progression, not just as comparability becomes less demanding through the balance of the year, but in anticipation of the operational leverage that will come through as and when the volume environment improves. So let's turn to the quarter. We are pleased with how we started the year. I am proud of how the team is performing. It speaks to the strength of the network and to the quality of the operating model we've built. We're handling volumes more efficiently with fewer people and locomotives. And that matters because it positions us to convert growth more effectively and improve financial performance as the year unfolds. And from a commercial perspective, volume growth was led by grain, potash, natural gas liquids, and intermodal. In fact, we set a new first quarter record for grain movement. And we continue to see our service reliability and commercial intensity increase. creating opportunities for us in the marketplace. Jana will walk you through the key revenue puts and takes in a few minutes. Our productivity is a key focus for us, and we're hard at work, pulling every lever. Our fast-track initiative, which Pat will speak to in a moment, is progressing as expected, as this cross-functional review further drives network efficiency. Q1 was set to be the toughest year-over-year comparison of 2026, and the quarter came in largely as we expected. Now, the benefits to EPS from our commercial and operational execution were impacted by a few factors that are not reflective of the underlying performance. Suzanne will provide details on those. In addition, fuel and FX had a combined $0.07 drag on the earnings in the quarter. The engine is running well, and you will increasingly see the benefits drop to the bottom line as the year progresses. The one area in which we're not satisfied in Q1 is safety. We have consistently improved our safety performance over the last number of years. However, in Q1, we fell short of our expectations. We remain fully committed to continue improving our safety outcomes, and we're already seeing improvements in both accident and injury rates in April. Pat will speak to our safety performance in more detail. Looking forward to the rest of the year, our priorities remain unchanged. disciplined execution, increased commercial intensity, and continued focus on cash flow. Longer term, the opportunity in front of CN remains compelling. Our advantage network, our extensive port access, and the natural resource base uniquely positioned on our network provide us with an incredible opportunity to grow beyond what the broader economy alone can deliver. We remain bullish, especially on agriculture and energy, with the potential for increased egress opportunities for Canadian energy to be positive for our NGL business and our Fraxan franchise. We're seeing green shoots and potential in these sectors. Recent announcement around natural gas projects in Western Canada reinforced that view. The investments we've made position us very well to support our customers in both existing and new markets. As we go forward, we'll remain disciplined. Our focus on execution is working. Q1 has delivered the plans with better service, productivity, and asset utilization. We're sharper and faster, and the organization is well-positioned to deliver going forward for our customers, employees, and shareholders. Over to you, Pat.