Canadian National Railway Company

Good morning, my name is Krista and I will be your conference operator today. I would like to welcome everyone to the Canadian National Railway second quarter 2026 financial results conference call. 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 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 conférence sur les résultats du deuxième trimestre 2026 du CIEM. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us for CIEM's second quarter 2026 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 Shisayo, 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.

Merci, Jamie. Merci à tous et à toutes de participer à notre event. Thanks, everyone, for joining our call. I'm pleased to walk you through our second quarter results and some recent developments. This team has delivered another quarter of strong performance. EPS growth of 12% FX adjusted on 5% volume growth. We're staying focused on what we control and this is driving results. And we're running the railroad well using service to convert customer growth opportunities, driving cost and capital discipline, and continuing to position CM for growth. With this momentum, we're raising our guidance to now expect earnings for the year of mid to high single digits on the back of low single digit volumes. The engine is running well. We're executing against our strategy and we can see the results. Our productivity continues to improve while we're supporting the customer growth across our franchise and at the same time running a safe, fluid, efficient and reliable railroad. Now we're seeing this in fuel efficiency where we delivered record performance in the first half of the year. In labor productivity where we're moving more volumes with less people. and in locomotive productivity. Now our team is always challenging itself to use the assets we already have more efficiently. On the commercial side, our teams are focused on winning business and converting opportunities into growth. Now whether it's metals moving within Canada, energy related traffic, domestic intermodal or other areas across the portfolio, we're seeing benefits of stronger commercial intensity and a team that is focused on creating value for our customers. It's all about speed, and Julie. Simply put, when strong service, disciplined operations and commercial intensity come together, results follow. And that's exactly what we've seen in the first half of the year. Now before I turn the call over to the team to walk you through the quarter in more detail, I'd like to spend a moment on the two agreements with Union Pacific that we announced this past Wednesday. Now these were rigorous negotiations. but Union Pacific runs a great railroad and they're good partners and I'm happy where these discussions have landed for both of us. These agreements are strategic and they bring long-term benefits. Now for CN, they structurally enhance and extend our network by giving us direct and very competitive access to important markets in Kansas City and Mexico. They'll also increase the density in parts of our U.S. network where we have capacity. The first is a commercial agreement that extends our reach into Mexico. It grants CN new rights for volumes between Canada and Mexico via Memphis. This gives us a competitively advantaged route and extends our length of haul from Chicago to Memphis, densifying our southern network. In exchange for the Mexico route, we've granted UP rights to additional capacity over the EG&E for US traffic. This monetizes available surplus capacity on the J while protecting the capacity that CN needs now and into the future. Any additional capacity required to accommodate UP volumes will be funded by them. These provisions will be effective as soon as a definitive agreement is in place and are not contingent on the merger. The second is a settlement agreement and it is contingent on the STB's approval and closing of the merger. It secures for us competitive access into Kansas City and the use of UP's NEP yard. It positions us to compete on new business in an important rail market and provides the opportunity to lengthen our haul and traffic currently moving in this corridor. We've also secured remedy production, allowing us to provide competitive options for the 2-to-1 and 3-to-2 customers and agreements that provisions granted to others through the STB process will also be extended to us. Now, through this strategic agreement, we have largely addressed the risk of the proposed merger to CN, and we have created new opportunities for us to grow. And we've agreed to not oppose the merger. Overall, the opportunities created through the new strategic commercial agreement with UP and the potential merger-related remedies improve the position of our railway and create new avenues for growth. These agreements reflect how we operate. staying close to the opportunities in front of us and acting with discipline to create long-term value for our customers and shareholders. CN is very favorably positioned for the long-term. We can see the impact of our actions in 2026, but what's more exciting to me is the opportunity that is unfolding across 2027 and beyond, supported by unique long-term tailwinds in our economic exposure and a team that has shown it can drive results through cycles. So I want to thank our railroaders across the network for their commitment and execution this quarter. Their efforts continue to make the difference. Now let me pass it to the team. They'll give you more details on the quarter. Pat, over to you.