All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to day one of Barclays' 43rd Annual Industrial Select Conference down in warm Southeast Miami. Thank you for joining us. I'm Brandon Oglenski, airline and transport analyst, and first up today on the transport and freight side, very pleased to have Tracy Robinson attending here from Canadian National. So I know we have a lot to talk about with railroading here. But very quickly, throughout the fireside presentations for the next three days, we're going to have audience response questions. If you look at that old-school clicker there, kind of looks like a BlackBerry, if you remember what those were. We're going to ask you six questions of each presentation, so if we can go ahead and queue up question number one, and we share all these results post-conference. Do you currently own Canadian National? Yes, overweight, 2, market weight, 3, underweight, or 4, no. We'll give everyone a few seconds here to vote. Are we live on voting? You have to tell them to hit Send. Okay. Did we do question one back there? There we go. Okay. Okay, question number two. Looks like you could convince some folks here to buy- Yeah, looks like. What's your general bias towards Canadian National right now? Positive, negative, or neutral? Go ahead and have the votes, please. Thank you. Okay, and then question number 3: In your opinion, through cycle, EPS growth for Canadian National will be above peers, in line with peers, or below peers? You can hit the vote button, sir. Well, Tracy, while we wait for these responses here, really appreciate you coming down to Miami with us. I know you had a couple prepared remarks I think you wanted to walk through here first. Why don't I just start us off, Brandon, if that makes sense? Yeah. Thanks for the invite down here. Of course. It's always a pleasure to be in Miami Beach, early in the morning or on any day. Right. But as we come through 2025, it was a very strong year. We made some impactful decisions in 2025. Starting part of the year and throughout the year, we leaned in heavily into productivity improvement. We intensified our commercial presence, in particular with the Boots on the Ground program. We reset our capital program, and we continued what has been a multi-year journey on operating performance and our scheduled operating plan. So the railroad is now running the best as it has in a decade or more, and those paid off. We ended up with a 14% EPS growth on Q4, the best in the industry, 7% on the year on 1% volume growth. We're happy with that. We drove 8% free cash growth and 250 basis point operating ratio improvement in the fourth quarter, 120 basis point on the year. So it was a very strong year. Really pleased with what the team has produced there. As we turn into 2026, you know, it's going to be an interesting year. As you and I were talking earlier, not a lot, not very strong macroeconomic growth. It's going to be a year of the reset or the renewal of the USMCA. So not a lot of clarity on where trade flows are going to end up this year, but we're focused on what we can control. Janet is out with her commercial team, leveraging the sectors where we have considerable growth and strength, mitigating the impact or attempting to mitigate the impact of those sectors that have been hit by tariffs. Pat's going to the next level with the operating plan. We'll have a strong push again on productivity. We do have some non-recurring headwinds this year as we do a reset on the capital program. We've got the impact of the unfavorable traffic mix. We've got the capital credit impact, the tax. We're watching the currency, which is moving against us right now, but we'll work as hard as we can on the productivity side to offset those things. We will generate free cash flow growth this year, and we'll—we, our plan is to return that to shareholders. Over the longer term, we're set up very well. We're building considerable operating leverage. We're getting very fit. We've got the capital work done. We're getting leaner and more productive every year. We've got a great network that sits on top of North America's natural resource base. No matter where the trade flows kind of end up, we're really well-positioned, both in North America and to deliver for our customers globally. So, we'll continue to deliver with discipline on capital, on execution, on free cash flow. Tracy, I appreciate that, and definitely want to talk long term here today. But I guess, can you give us any update maybe on the first quarter? I think your volumes are slightly up right now, but we've had pretty difficult operating conditions, I think, across North America to start off the year. So anything you can comment on the trends that you're seeing early on in 2026? Yeah, we had foreshadowed that of the contour of the year, the first quarter was going to be the most difficult. But the guys have done a great job in what are some extreme winter operating conditions to keep the railroad running, velocity up and a reasonable level of customer service where it needs to be. And so, it, you know, our volumes are up a little bit, versus last year, which is good news. We are now starting to lap what was the period in February last year, late February, where it was pretty tough operating conditions as well. So you'll see us kind of show up very positively over the next few weeks relative to last year. But, you know, the Q1 should come in solid, I would say, and then you'll see, as we go through the year, the contour more. It's more back-end loaded. Okay, and by backing well, is that just because you have customer expectations that growth can accelerate, or what's driving that? Well, if you think about it, right now, we're moving a really strong grain crop, which is great, and, and the guys are doing a great job. We hit records on moving grain in September through December of last year, almost records for the history of the company. We hit a, I think we're second from the history of the company in, January, from a volume perspective on grain. So grain is moving very well. We're being surprised a little bit on the upside of potash, which is good for us. But from a contour perspective, we're not expecting the international intermodal volume to be strong across anywhere in North America through the first half of the year. So we'll see that start to come only towards the second half. Our energy volumes are strong. That'll continue to strengthen through the year. Our coal volumes will continue to strengthen through the year, so we'll see a contour that is a little bit stronger as the year progresses. What we can't see right now is what the impact of the tariffs are going to be. Right now in Q1, Q2, it wasn't until, I think, Q3 of last year that the tariffs were increased on steel, aluminum, and forest products up into the roughly the area of 50%. And so we are seeing now we're kind of cycling through that impact in the first half of this year as well. So that's the negative that we're trying to offset. In your plan, what expectations do you have for tariffs, especially with USMCA or being renegotiated this year, potentially? Yeah, it is under renew, and I wish I could tell you. So it's a little blurry out there. Do you know what's going to happen on the negotiation? So what we've done in our plan, because we think it's the only thing we can do, is we've assumed the same tariffs as we have now. There is opportunity if in the negotiations that the tariffs on lumber, on steel, aluminum, and automotive are moderated somewhat. But we do think that, you know, we face the prospect of tariffs on other sectors. We'll see how it goes. The good news is that we're focusing right now on what we can control. Bringing our cost base down is going to be lower this year than it was last year. It was lower last year than the year before. The network is very fluid. We have capacity in every part of our network, and we're lean, and that makes us nimble. We're working very closely with our customers as they contemplate all of their plans, and either investment plans or just getting products to new markets, you know, in the face of an ever-evolving tariff environment. Well, I appreciate all this, and the last few years have definitely been difficult, I think, not just for CN, but a lot of freight transportation companies, because we just haven't had a lot of core industrial growth across North America. But I guess, can we go back to, I think it was the October conference call, your third quarter 2025, where, you know, you guys effectively came out and said, "Hey, our prior view on where we could take top line and earnings maybe was a little bit too aggressive, and maybe we need to dial back our capital investments as well." I think that was pretty well-received by the market, but I guess at the end of the day, is that the right message as well, that like, "Hey, there's just not a lot of growth right now, so. Listen, we're in the fourth year of a freight recession. I don't think there's ever been a four-year freight recession before. Yep. And at the beginning of every year, we all look at it and say, "Perhaps by the end of this year, we'll be turning." I can tell you, we're not counting on that, but we're ready for when it happens, and that's gonna lift considerably. Separate from, you know, the general impact of the general economy, we continue to have some very significant and unique growth opportunities given where our network lies. So with the railroad of the north, we sit on top of most of the significant natural resource base, either in Canada and in the Midwest through the United States. If you think about where the energy sector is going, the NGLs that are producing, we're exporting more and more globally, but also, it's also a North American market. Think about refined fuels, think about the plastics development that's coming. If you look at mining, the frac sand franchise that continues to strengthen, the potash development that's taking place in Saskatchewan, you look at the metallurgical coal mines. Quintette came back on last year on coal. And if you look at the domestic intermodal programs, you look at the investments that are going in at Rupert to make the international volume stickier. You know, I think there's tremendous prospects. The Iowa Northern acquisition that we made that has solidified kind of our customers' access to new markets down there. The natural resource base offers us significant growth uniquely as we go in, no matter whether it's to global markets or whether it's to North American markets. So as the economy turns and that starts to, you know, the trade flows start to stabilize, and the tariff question kind of gets resolved, you know, imagine putting that kind of growth. So let's imagine a mid-single-digit volume growth on top of a much leaner, more nimble cost structure, where we've got capacity everywhere now, so it doesn't require capital. And that'll generate kind of outsized EPS growth relative to revenue and, you know, you know, create value generation through a cycle. So we're pretty excited about where we sit and what the future holds once you get past the murkiness of what may happen on tariffs this year. Okay. I guess along those lines, though, there's been a bit of turnover in the executive leadership of the company- Mm-hmm. especially in the marketing position, but even operations as well. I guess, do you feel you have the right team in place now? I really like this team. I gotta tell you, if you look across all the functions in the railroad, you know, we've got very strong leadership in place that understands the business, and I think most importantly, is aligned around our plan. We're running the plan, we're taking our cost base down, we're serving our customers. And so, you know, we have had some change, but when I came in, we had a lot of work to do. We needed a new operating model. We had to do some capital work to debottleneck the system. We had to make some big changes to how we plan and execute our capital program. We need to work on our locomotive fleet. We need to work on our grain car fleet. And so there was a lot. That requires different capabilities, and that evolves over time. I like the team that we have now. Pat is one of the best scheduled railroading operators in the industry. He did a lot of that work, and now he's turned to taking the operating plan to the next level. Janet did move it worked and reconfigured our whole stakeholder and communications kind of plan, and now moved over into commercial. She knows our business extremely well, and she's intensified that Boots on the Ground approach. So we are in a great place. You know, turnover is very natural, and we're being proactive about planning for it. And in the meantime, this team delivered a fantastic year last year, and you know, we'll do the same this year. Okay. And if there's questions, by the way, we try to keep this open format, so there's a mic running around. Just raise your hand, we'll get to you. I guess, Tracy, another issue facing the industry, I want to talk about AI, too, 'cause I think you guys are doing some unique things there. But on the M&A front, with UP-Norfolk Southern, pending another application, which I think they're going to submit soon, I think Canadian National's come out pretty negative on this transaction. Can you speak to your views on this? Yeah, look, we are, and I think we're aligned with many in the industry. We're very positive on competition, and we're very much aligned with the industry on wanting a lighter touch on regulation to make us more nimble and able to invest properly. And this merger application works against both of those things. So if you imagine, you know, these two railroads coming together, and one railroad will have, you know, I don't know what the number is there, they'll come out with it, say, 50% of the nation's freight. No matter, it's not an end-to-end, there's areas on the two networks, where you will, in effect, see a reduction in competition. And they've done some work on how to address that, but not nearly enough. Of course, the standard in today's regulations in the new rules is that the merger would have to increase competition and increase it in a way that you couldn't do in any other way but a merger. So it's difficult to imagine how bringing together those two railroads and having one railroad that large is going to reach that hurdle. However, if this is approved, I mean, we know there will be an impact to us. We've done our work. I think we'll have the smallest impact. We're a bit ring-fenced. We originate 85% of our volume, and we originate and terminate 65% of our volume. I think we're unique in the industry that way. So the impact is likely to be less on us than anyone else, but there will be an impact. As we think about it, there are ways that our network can be used to help not only make sure that the customers we serve don't suffer from reduced competition, but that we can use our network to increase the broader competition. We'll be working very hard to make sure that happens. I mean, are there specific things that you would be looking for if the deal were to get approved? There's certain areas. Yeah, I mean, it's obvious there's certain areas on the continent where we would look for the ability to get into new markets, the ability to serve customers that we don't serve right now, and enhance that through the ability to increase competition. There's various mechanisms, so pricing, trackage rights, those kinds of things, that I think you'll see come out as a revised merger application comes forward. Okay. I think you guys have announced some new agreements and interline agreements, new offerings, especially in intermodal. Is that correct? Yeah, we are all, as an industry, looking for ways to use our network. The beautiful thing about railroads, if you open up a map of the railroad industry in North America, you can get from wherever you want to go to wherever you want to go on existing network. The railroads need to find ways, and it's what we're all working on, to work closer together such that we can be seamless, as though we were one railroad. So as we've worked with, say, like the UP and the FXE on the Falcon Service, for example, that's three railroads, and what we imagine is if we were all owned, we're one company, how would this operate? And that becomes the guiding principles. It's not an easy thing to do over time, but it is an important part of bringing the next level of service to the customers across the markets. Okay. We can queue up question four, please. In your opinion, what should CN do with excess cash, both on M&A, larger M&A, share repurchases, dividends, debt paydown, or internal investment? We can go ahead and vote. Do I get to vote? We always say we're going to put one up here. In the back, we can vote. Thank you. And Tracy, I thought maybe this is a good time to talk about CapEx, because you did take down your relative spending levels a bit- We did. Just given the slower growth profile in the near term, I guess, what are the priorities on the capital budget? Priorities haven't changed. When I came in, we had a lot of work to do. We had the oldest locomotive fleet in the industry. It wasn't operating well. We had a number of pinch points, particularly in the West, where we saw a lot of the growth. And so we've gone through an investment cycle, and we're now at a place where we've taken care of that. You know, our locomotive fleet is in the middle of the pack. It's operating better than it has in the history of the company, and we have capacity across the network, and so we've readjusted the capital program to reflect that. But the first use of our cash will always be to ensure that we've got into the business, to ensure that we've got the right capacity, and the right fleets in order to serve our customers. After that, you know, we want a consistent dividend growth, right? And that's, you know, we've done that since we've been a public company, and we're going to continue to do that. And as capex particularly now, as capex continues to grow, we'll redirect that back to shareholders. Okay, maybe on that point there, question number 5 for the audience: In your opinion, what multiple of 2026 earnings should CN trade? You see the multiple ranges there. We can go ahead and vote, please, in the back. I've been asking these questions for 20 years, so multiples have come higher in that timeframe. Okay, and then question number 6, please: What do you see as the most significant share price headwind facing CN: core growth, margin performance, capital deployment, or execution and strategy? We can vote, please. Okay, core growth. Well, Tracy, interesting results here, but you spoke many times about lowering the cost base of the company, and actually, you guys did have a pretty good fourth quarter. Can you talk to some of the cost initiatives that you have underway this year? So the basis, the foundation of everything that we do is a scheduled plan. Whether you're running trains, whether you're in mechanical, whether you're on the engineering side, whether you're in finance, it's how do we run the plan and how do we execute it with an increasing levels of excellence? We did a great job of that last year, and so we are running faster with less dwell, fewer locomotives. Our locomotives are working harder. Our trains are longer and heavier than they were before, so that's making good use of our assets. We're continuing that this year and leaning in even harder. And so Pat, right now, in the operations side, is going into the terminals. That's where something like 50% of our operating labor is, and he's going through every terminal. They're calling it fast-tracking to redo the processes, relook at to make sure we're fluid, we get the right resources, but we're not over-resourced, whether it's facilities or locomotives or people, and then create that next level of fluidity in there. So that is the big push on the operations side. We're going to continue in engineering. Big gains over the last two years, and Jamie was there, who's now our head of investor relations, was for the last two years the vice president of engineering, leaning really heavily in with Pat on how do we plan and execute our capital in a scheduled operating environment. And we've seen tremendous productivity improvements in that, but we're not done on that either. And then, as we look at some, you know, all the rest of us in, you know, the head office and in the other offices, we're continuing to focus on. Now we're leaning a little bit into AI and what we can produce, where we can change the way that we do business on that. So it's a relentless drumbeat in our organization of how we can get better and better. We're creating kind of a lean. We call it getting fit. Now is the time to get really fit, and that creates operating and earnings leverage as we go forward and the right platform for that growth when the volumes come back. Well, you hit on AI, and I think there's a question, so we'll get to that in one second. But, how are you guys using AI? And I think earlier you said that there's a lot to come here. So can you share your thoughts on that and how you guys are deploying it? Well, listen, it's been a long-standing kind of, If you think about technology and AI in its various forms, we've been at this for a long time, largely on the operations side. So it's around how we run our trains, most particularly how we inspect the infrastructure and how we inspect the rolling stock. And so you'd be familiar with a lot of the wayside detections and that's out there, our ATIP cars, and what we can do with that data. If you think forward on that, the predictive capability as we enhance our capabilities to grab that data and use it is significant. Separately, as I said, we're looking at where we work everywhere. As I get more informed and educated on AI and the capabilities, this is amazing, and I do think that in the next five years, much of the work that each of us does will be very different. We're going to be able to use our human resources in a very different way, but we'll be able to automate and even use some of the predictive capabilities, even on just the day-to-day work we do in the office. We are engaged with that. I can't tell you for sure exactly where it's going to go, but we are. It's going to be very interesting times. Okay. David? Quick question. You have different access rules in Canada for competitor railroads. Just speak to your experience there and contrast it maybe with the proposal that's going through on the STB now and how that could affect the rail in the U.S.. You're talking about the interchange, the Interswitch rules, right? Yes. The interchange, yeah. So in Canada, it is very different than what has been proposed in the U.S.. In Canada, there's long-standing regulations that have different distances. So what you can do if you're a customer that wants access to a railroad doesn't serve you within—there's certain rules that you automatically have access, where if I'm the serving railroad, I must deliver that car then to the interchange under prescribed rules and under prescribed rates. What has been—It's long-standing. It's not used very often, but it's long-standing. And if you look at what's being proposed in the U.S. it's very different. It's not a standard kind of approach. It's a kind of, it's a one-off. It's a case-by-case kind of basis, and instead of the serving carrier delivering to the other carrier, it would be you would give access to the second carrier, which is very different. So in any case, you know, we're not too worried about this. I think if you provide good service, you know, you don't, you don't deal with a lot of these issues, and we are at the levels in a decade. I think the industry is largely running very, very well. And so it's, we'll see how this one plays out, but it's not something that, we're very worried about. Okay, you spoke to mixed headlines this year. Can we dig a little bit deeper into that? Yeah. The biggest impact that we've had over the last year has been the impact of the tariffs and, you know, in fairness, some pretty muted housing starts that just aren't responding yet on lumber and forest products. And that's some of our highest margin business. So we've seen that business fall quite considerably. Same with steel and aluminum. When those tariffs got to 50%. At 25%, we were still moving volumes cross-border. When they hit 50%, we're not. So Jan and team have been working very hard to get that steel into domestic markets. Aluminum has been going into, more into export markets. Aluminum is now moving again, even at a 50% tariff rate across the border. But so the impact of these, so we get a reduction of the high-margin business. We backfilled it, but not always with the same level of margin business. And so we said tariffs cost us about $350 million last year, but separate from that, it's the margin impact of it, just the mixed impact of it. So those tariffs went on forest products. The highest tariffs went on, I think, Q3 last year, and so we continue to see the impact of that until we lap it fully into Q3. Okay. I think on the positive side, though, you mentioned grain, but also domestic intermodal, is that right? Domestic intermodal continues to grow, and this is largely on the backs of some really good service. We continue to pick up share, and it has grown, I think, in every quarter through last year, and as I looked at it this morning, it's continuing to grow. So that's really positive. The international intermodal volume grew last year. We are still seeing strength. I mean, the Gemini service up at Rupert has been a very strong outcome for us, and we're expecting that to continue. I like our network on international intermodal. The big question is, you know, where the tariffs go, how healthy is the underlying consumer, and what that market looks like this year. Okay, and on the pricing side, what's the environment like right now? Because I think with that mix, obviously, your backhaul traffic may be lower margin, but still getting positive traction on price? We are. I mean, I think, you know, we've got a strong track record on pricing outcomes, and Janet is out there. We stay very close to our customers. We want them to be successful. Pat and Janet work very closely together. We know exactly where our capacity is. You know, we have opportunities to just put more, more business, more cars on the existing trains. We've got corridor capacity in every corridor. And so but our objective is, and we hit it every year, is that we will price stronger than inflation or rail cost inflation. So we work pretty hard to keep inflation down. This year, it'll kind of fall under 3%, and we'll price above that. It's hard for, when you look at the rails, particularly us, to see exactly where the pricing lands. You've got the impact of fuel and FX. You've got the carbon surcharge that's coming off, the carbon tax surcharge in Canada. We've got one more quarter of that. You know, we've got the mix issue, and you've got kind of. One of the headwinds this year is VRCPI, which is the price change for the regulated grain in Canada. Came in a lot lower than it has in previous years. So there's a lot going on, but at the end of the day, we're gonna pull more contribution home this year than we did last year. Okay, and then longer term, if the growth comes back, how do you think about the incremental earnings power of the company? Oh, man, we're poised, right? So if you think about, we've come through our big investment program, which means that we have capacity across the network. We've now got the Edson Sub, which is a pinch point between Jasper and, between Edmonton and Jasper. We've got that 63% double track. That was our big pinch point. We've got six or seven more trains of idle capacity there, that we could sell. So we've got capacity across the network. We're not finished investing. We're continuing to do that. We're getting leaner and more productive every year, so we've got a lot of operating leverage, and we're nimble. We've got locomotives tucked away. We've got 800 or 900 people furloughed that we're staying very close to. We've showed a great kind of ability to get those guys back on the property, and so we're poised. And if I look at where our network is, the growth in energy that's coming, whether it's in NGLs, whether it's in refined fuels, the growth in, you know, the mining sectors, the potash, the coal, the metallurgical coal, the frac sand. You know, we've got domestic intermodal growing. We've got the big growth story in ag. You know, when it comes, we'll have considerable operating leverage. You'll see that fall directly to the bottom line. I mean, without a lot of incremental variable cost then, is the idea? Yes, we will have. We'll get the next tranche of volume with no incremental capital, which is good because that was one of our issues, is we had to build for the growth. And we've got, you know, operating capacity out there now. Our trains are longer than they were last year, but our merchandise trains still have capacity on them, and we've got the ability to start up new trains in every one of our corridors across the system. So we can turn very, very quickly. Well, Tracy, we've only about a minute left here. I guess, outside of us ending tariffs and kumbaya, like, what can CN drive this year? We are really focused on controlling what we can control. So there is growth out there unrelated to tariffs, in energy, in ag, in some of the mining sector. Janet and her team have been very successful in both shifting share but also getting even the small wins, but they're leveraging all the prospects that we have out there. We are going to reduce our cost structure again this year, and we're gonna offset as those headwinds that we discussed to the greatest extent possible. And you're gonna see us do a bit of a reset this year, but we'll be talking to you next year as the volumes come back on considerable earnings leverage. Great, Tracy. Well, thank you very much.