Fantastic. All right, we're going to get going with our next session with CSX. Really happy to have Kevin Boone, Chief Commercial Officer, back at our conference. Thank you, Kevin, for being here again. I'm going to pass it to you for some opening comments, and then we will get right into it. Okay. I do not have a lot of opening comments. I do want to thank Matthew Korn's joining us here. I would like to say the award-winning Matthew Korn. He leads our IR and strategy. Great to be here. He will be supporting me all day. Look, I have been at this conference for a number of years. It is great to be back. I have been in a number of different venues. Always good discussion and a lot going on in the world that we can discuss. Clearly, a lot of policy that is changing, trade flows, and other things that I am sure we will get into, but a lot of exciting things that are happening also at the company. We will talk about some of the challenges that have occurred here over the last quarter or two, what we are doing to solve those issues, and some of the optimism that we have as we move out of 2025 into 2026 and 2027. Fantastic. All right, so we always start pretty short-term, near-term, just talking about recent volume trends, and we'll get into all the other big things to be talking about. We are seemingly starting the quarter pretty well from a volume standpoint. Volumes are tracking up, I think, over 3% quarter- to- date. From your perspective, what's doing better than you would have thought? Anything doing worse than you would have thought? Yeah, I think that's a fluid question. Obviously, expectations are changing pretty rapidly in market- to- market, but Intermodal has clearly been a bright spot. We'll probably see a lull here as we get into the next month. As you've heard in the news, we expect a lot of volume coming into the ports here as we move into July and into the third quarter with the 90-day, obviously, relief on the tariffs from China. We've heard from a number of customers, there's 700,000-800,000 loaded containers ready to go. We're seeing that in the market right now. We expect that to happen. You know, from market- to- market, things move around. Aggregates is a very, very strong market. We continue to see strength in the Southeast. A lot of road infrastructure activity. We're staying up against that volume pretty well. Probably some opportunities there from a network perspective. Grain is a very, very strong market. We're starting to see a lot better performance from our network on the grain side the last couple of weeks, and we see additional opportunity there. I guess on the other side, obviously, coal continues to be strong as well. We are seeing some more domestic demand. We are looking at moving a few more sets into our system thoughtfully, obviously, given some of the challenges the Blue Ridge Sub and Howard Street Tunnel create. We want to do that in a very thoughtful, network-aware way. We see opportunities on the domestic side that will benefit us. We've had some issues on the mine side. We have two mines that are out currently. One of them should come back and hopefully operational in the third quarter, and then the other one probably late this year and the next year. Chemicals has been a little bit—we've seen some choppiness on the chemical side. We do have one particular large customer that's been down. Their production should be back up this week, and we'll start to see that ramp back up. That was fairly significant for our network and a lot of other moving parts that we're trying to watch and stay up against. Forest p roducts is probably the one where we've seen some near-term weakness, just some more idling, maintenance outages as they're trying to figure out where the market goes. Some optimism as we move in the back half of the year, but we've seen some paper mills and box plants slow down here probably in the last two to three weeks. That's probably on the watch item list for us. Great. There has been this very well sort of publicized import cliff into the U.S. It does not feel like we have seen that show up in rail volumes yet. I guess the question is, is it a yet? Are we going to start to see it over the next few weeks, and there is just a natural lag of when it comes into a port versus when it shows up on a rail, or is there just not going to be the same degree of volatility? Even in international intermodal volume, is what we are seeing on the ocean side. Yeah, I think cliff is a strong word. We'll see some softness on our port side of our business, and that has yet to show up, especially on the East Coast yet. I do think there are strong inventory levels on warehouses, particularly on the West Coast and in California, where we'll continue to see shipments. There was a lot of anticipation that this was going to happen. You had some pre-stocking that will help our domestic intermodal business, I think, over the next few weeks kind of hang in there as we see this lull in the import side. Does that mean if we have some healthier inventories and we do not see a big drop-off, should we then not count on a big spike in volume later in Q2 or in Q3 as this next wave of imports comes in? Or do you think we can sort of see a big benefit to the volume as we look out to Q3? Yeah, we'll certainly see a benefit. I think the magnitude is still a debated item right now, but we'll see some healthy growth, I think, as we move into later July, maybe into August is our anticipation. I think the question is, are we going to see a second kind of pause if we do not get more clarity on the tariffs, obviously? I know you've talked about positive volume growth for the year. Are you still comfortable with that sort of view? I guess how dependent, in your mind, is your ability to grow volume on macro versus, hey, if we can just get some better service, we can grow volume just because we're underserving demand right now? Yeah, I do not think when we came into the year, we were expecting a macro environment that was improving. We certainly cannot have a macro environment that falls off a cliff necessarily, and that is not our expectation. We are not seeing that, just to be clear. We do think as a service, as a network becomes more fluid, as we gain speed on our network, that that will manifest in additional opportunities and also obviously help our cost structure as well. I think the big focus, when we just had a meeting earlier this week as a leadership team, is we are going to build momentum into 2026, and you should see quarter- over- quarter improvement, both on the cost side and hopefully the revenue as we build on some of the network improvements that we are achieving. I think there are markets. We obviously have an easier comp in many of the markets that we serve on the merchandise side as we get in the back half of the year, and we hopefully can take advantage of that from a year-over-year growth perspective. As I mentioned, on the coal side, we should have a large substantial mine come back online. We're going to see some more domestic demand. We had a very good winter from a domestic coal demand perspective, and we expect a very, very hot summer as well. We'll continue to be thoughtful of adding more sets into our system to handle that demand. Those are things that should be positive for us. Hopefully, on the forest product side, we'll see a little bit of a pickup from where we've seen a lull here over the last few weeks, months, and that should be helpful as well. Maybe let's spend a minute or two on coal because it's rare that we talk about that as a bright spot. You're up mid-single digit on volume. NS is up 20% on volume. UP is up over 30% on volume. Why is it so broadly strong across the rails? And in the context of what I just said about Norfolk and UP, does your coal volume actually get even better from here? Yeah, I mean, the W estern, obviously, railroads are more focused on the domestic side. When you look at UP's business, not really an international business for them, export business. I think that's where you're seeing the strength year- over- year. Strong winter in terms of what we saw in the South, and a lot of inventories are at levels where they're going to want to be replenished. We're seeing that. I think from a policy perspective, we are seeing on the margin from some of our customers maybe a little bit more willingness. That pressure is not there. There are instances where we're in the early stages of hearing some hopefully extensions on some of the plants that we serve. They weren't going to be shut down, but well into the future now, and that's benefiting us as well. I think that's the strength we're seeing. Obviously, where we are on met coal price is not a horrible market, not a great market, and hopefully we'll see above $200 and then into that $220-$225 range, which I think is a lot more supportive for us to see additional volume. Right now, I don't think you're seeing producers really run full out to try to meet that demand that's out there, just given the lower prices that we're seeing. Very strong on the domestic side, I think, versus the expectations coming into the year. That's an opportunity as we get into the back half of the year. The export market's pretty dynamic right now. We'll see how that happens. The hope I have on the international side is purchase agreements. A lot of talk about balancing trade deficits. If you have agreements, let's put it out there where whether it's China or India or another market makes commitments to take more of our coal, I think that could be a very, very bullish outcome for our domestic or for our production to go in the international market. Just a couple of quick thoughts. How long do you think this domestic strength can last? We're being really thoughtful, and it's not going to be you're not going to have a peak and then come down. I think it'll be sustainable through the end of the year. Obviously it'll be weather dependent on another strong, hopefully winter this year and then into next year. Yeah, we see it kind of sustaining over the rest of the year. On the met side, it sounds like you think that we're going to get back above $200. Why do you think that's right? Is that just the historical average, or is there some fundamental reason why the price should go higher from here? Yeah, we've looked at this a lot. The cost curves, when you look at the significant inflation that has been absorbed in that industry, the cost curves are much higher than they have been, obviously, pre-pandemic. We think the balancing the right area is kind of that $220, $225 where it makes it sustainable, where you can reinvest and support production. We think over time that's probably the right price. At some point, let's say we get to $225, do you think about going to the customers and saying, "Hey, this volatility in the price, what it does to our earnings and our stock, it's just not worth it? Can we just lock in? Can we shift away from this quarterly reset of price that gets so much sort of attention relative to what's at the end, it's still not a huge part of the business, right?" Do you think about going back to the guys and saying, "Let's just do a normal rail pricing setup again, instead of this quarterly reset?" I would love to do that. I think when you look at their business models, they have to compete in the global market, and we have to make sure they're competitive in the global market. Our ability, we're a fairly good portion of the cost, delivered cost, and we have to move with the market to make sure that they're sustained through downturns. We participate, obviously, when the market is very healthy. I think that's worked really well to keep them in the business. The great thing right now is they're all delevered. They have strong balance sheets. We're going to help them through a little bit of a lull in this market, and then we'll participate when the market really gets stronger here, hopefully, maybe as early in the back half of this year and the next year. Okay. I want to think a little bit longer term for a minute. I go back to the analyst day last year, and you talked about we've got 600,000-700,000 carloads of opportunities from discrete opportunities. You talked about Transflo, Quality Carriers, Inland Ports, Pan Am, and MNBR. You talked about at some point the Howard Street Tunnel project and double-stack trains and 500 new customer sites and merchandise pipeline, more than a billion. I'm like, "Oh my, there's this huge opportunity." R ight? You end the analysis saying, "But volume is going to grow low to mid-single." Right? It felt like there was a disconnect a little bit in terms of this huge opportunity that you laid out versus sort of what you actually think you're going to actually do. Help me sort of connect the dots. Yeah, I think I look at 2025 and quite frankly, 2024 as investment years when you look at what we started to put in place. You'll see a lot of these investments starting to ramp into the back half of the year. When I think about industrial development, you're going to continue to see more and more of a contribution from those efforts into this year. Certainly in 2026 and then 2027, when you think about things like the largest steel plant on our network that's being built, that's going to obviously be hugely beneficial to us. That's coming. We're not seeing volume today from that, but that'll really start to be fairly substantial as we get into that 2027 period, which was the end of the three-year guidance. Those things are happening. The shovel's in the ground. The projects are moving along. We have a lot of confidence in those things. MNBR, very, very early on, working with the CPKC on that one. We are very positive on what we are doing from an incremental volume perspective and also how we are transitioning some volume from a cost savings perspective and having some benefits there. Inland Ports, I think we not only have some announced projects, we are working on a number of other things that I think you will see benefit us in 2026 and 2027. Certainly with all of the port activity and what is happening in the world, the decoupling from China, I think we are well positioned as more and more freight wants to move on the East Coast and will benefit from that. Which one did I miss here? Howard Street Tunnel, obviously not seeing a benefit from that. By the first quarter, we will be double-stack capable. Remember, fourth quarter, we'll finish the project, the tunnel project. In the first quarter, there are two other bridges that have to be double-stack cleared for us to run the double-stack by next year. You will see some substantial new routes, opportunities for us as part of that. These will certainly be benefiting us more as we move into 2026, 2027. You will start to see some signs of that, hopefully, in the back half of this year. Just to follow up on Howard Street, are we on track for completing that in Q4? As I think about 2026, is it just lapping $10 million of cost per month, or is there actually a tangible volume opportunity that starts right away? Or maybe it sounds like it starts right away in Q2. Yeah, I think Q2 will start turning it on. Obviously, you can't fill a train day one, and we'll grow into that. We do think that you'll see quarter-over-quarter benefits from Howard Street Tunnel from a growth perspective from second quarter all the way into the fourth quarter and then ramping into 2027. That's certainly going to be a big benefit. The project is on time, on schedule. We haven't run into any major issues, knock on wood. Mike and I are monitoring that every week. Both that and the Blue Ridge Sub are on track by the fourth quarter, and those will be very, very beneficial to our network, for sure. Maybe let's just talk about the network. Obviously, in Q1, we saw some pretty material pressure on some of the service metrics. Just looking backward, is this just those couple of areas, or is there sort of a broader issue here? It feels like we're starting to see some improvement off the bottom as we're going out to Q2. How do you think the network is performing now, and where do you think we go? Yeah, I think as Mike would tell you, there's been a lot of lessons learned from what we had. I think the storms were pretty significant, what we saw in the first quarter, and that did not help. When you take out two main lines in your network, you have four north-south lines, and you take two of them out, obviously the resilience is not there that you normally would have. I think the benefit of our network and the uniqueness of our network is how adaptable it is and how much optionality we have when things happen normally. When you have access to all your lines to be able to adapt and adjust when weather comes or other things hit you, we have not had that capability, obviously, with those two lines being under construction right now. That has hurt us. Probably in hindsight, probably hurt us a little bit more than what we had expected. I think we've got a good plan. Mike and the team are working around the clock, I can tell you that, every day and are finding opportunities. I think we're learning from it. You'll see adjustments. We're making some adjustments on our intermodal. You'll see 50 lanes here that we made announcement on Monday, 50 lanes that will improve transit times. That's going to benefit us from going to the market as well. A lot of things going on, a lot of learnings, a lot of focus on kind of improving. I expect sequential improvement as we move through the year. Obviously there's going to be probably a step function opportunity as we get these projects behind us. Maybe it's like a chicken and egg question. We've got some pressure on service now. Do we need to spend additional cost to get service better, or is it the opposite that as service gets better, cost comes out? Or maybe it's both, I don't know. Yeah, this is kind of the second time I've seen since I've been at CSX eight years where we're in kind of a service recovery mode. I can tell you as a network spins faster, costs fall out. The recrews, there's a lot of things. You need less locomotives, all of those things. We're in that curve. We're bending that curve right now. Obviously, Matthew wanted me to remind you that the Blue Ridge was out for two months in the first quarter, three months this quarter. It is three months that we're dealing with in this quarter that will be a little bit of a cost headwind. That is an opportunity as we move through the year. I think you're going to see cost momentum and then hopefully with these revenue projects and a lot of the things that we're focused on, you'll see that revenue really start to come through, the things that we can control and drive as we move into the year. Maybe just a quick follow-up to that. We are seeing some sequential improvement in service metrics. The volumes are pretty good. We just published labor productivity, actually now headcount down for the first time in four years or something, year- over- year. You are saying, "Hey, we have now three months of this project instead of two months." Any way to sort of frame how to think about sequential margin improvement Q1 to Q2? Yeah, I am the sales and marketing guy now, but second and third quarter are generally better quarters from a margin perspective. I do not think there is any reason to believe that seasonality has changed. We do expect some improvement there in order of magnitude. Obviously, there are a lot of different factors, but we do expect that. Obviously, we are getting burdened by that $10 million a month related to the Howard Street Tunnel. There are some obviously additional costs related to just the network fluidity that will continue to improve as we get in the back half of the year. We do think, I think we said this, Sean has said this, first quarter was the bottom. From that, we expect better performance. I want to talk about price and yield a little bit. It feels like for so many years, price above inflation was the constant, the given for the rails. It feels like that's become much less of a given in the last few years. We do not get same-store pricing disclosures anymore. Where do you think we are now from a price-cost standpoint? As you look ahead, does that get incrementally better? Does it get worse? I don't think anything has really fundamentally changed in our merchandise business. When I look at it, obviously, when inflation was running a lot hotter, we went out obviously to recover that. As it comes down, we still want to obviously exceed the cost inflation that exists there. Nothing's really fundamentally changed. You have moving parts within markets. If chemicals is having a very good year, which it did last year, you'll see obviously good RPU performance overall for our merchandise franchise. When that's a little bit weaker, you'll see that be a drag. The fundamental issue that we've had is the trucking market has been down for a prolonged period of time. When you look at our intermodal business, that obviously has direct impact. We participate with a lot of our customers when pricing improves and obviously don't participate when the pricing's not improving. That has been a challenge. It's been a challenge in some of the markets on the merchandise side to a much, much lesser degree, but it does help when you have pricing strength on the trucking side. We were optimistic coming into the year that at least we would bottom. I think we have bottomed on that side, and we've seen it. What we would like to see is the next leg of supply starting to come out of the market and starting to see some opportunities there. We'll see what this wave of imports does to the market in the near term. That will be an interesting case study here. We are seeing signs that supply is coming out. You obviously track that, Scott, but we are seeing some supply come out from the driver's side, which is encouraging as well. That's been the challenge. I think that's the next stp in our progress towards better pricing is having that trucking market more supportive. Now, we've benefited substantially from obviously export coal pricing, and that's been a drag on us. Hopefully by the end of the year, obviously that's not going to be the drag it has been from an RPU perspective. We'll lap that, and hopefully we'll see some positive contribution from that as we move into next year. As I think from a reported yield standpoint, down 6% in Q1, yields ex-fuel down 4%. Do you think that was the peak decline? Do those declines moderate as we go to Q2? When do you think that could turn positive? Yeah, I think just export coal alone, you're going to see that moderate as you get through the year. That's a substantial drag. Fuel surcharges, unfortunately, we've seen fuel go down a little bit, not substantially, but that's going to be a little bit of a drag here into the back half of the year. That would be nice to see that as a tailwind as well. Yeah, I think you'll see that moderate. Mix is always an important component when you look at RPU overall. We don't see any major shifts in our RPU story. Domestic coal, when you think about the strength that I talked about earlier, that's a lot of the southern utilities, longer length of haul. Good RPU on that side. Intermodal, if you see a lot of influx of international coming in, obviously that runs at a lower RPU than the rest of our business. Still good business from a profitability standpoint, but lower RPU. Mix is always going to play a part in this, but do not see any major shifts. Some of these headwinds that we have experienced over the last 18 months kind of start to moderate a lot into the back half. Overall, you still feel we've got coal is going to do what it's going to do. Outside of that, the ability to sort of get back to and sustain inflation plus pricing, you still feel very good about? I do. Yeah, over the medium, long term, I do. Obviously a more supportive trucking market is part of that component. I do not think it is sustainable where pricing is today. Despite where pricing is today, I can rattle off 20 wins that we have had on the trucking side in terms of conversions. We are still going after that market. I would expect that to substantially improve as we have to have a better backdrop on the trucking side. I want to spend a couple of minutes on margins. I know you said that's not your hat, but you're here. Exactly. I get you don't have a long-term operating ratio target anymore, but relative to where we were pre-pandemic, based on our model, the margins are now about 800 basis points worse. Even if we adjust for Quality Carriers, it's 500-600 basis points worse. I guess ultimately, at what point does margin become a sort of bigger focus here again? Is this railroad, should this be a low 60s, sub 60 type railroad, or is that just not the focus? How do you want to answer that? I don't think it's not the focus. We've had a lot of discussion. I think this team is competitive. We obviously didn't like the results in the first quarter. I think we're talking a lot about that internally. Certainly in a model like ours, we have a lot of fixed costs. I need to go out and find a lot of profitable business, obviously, to put on the network that can help margins. I think Mike would tell you, Joe would tell you there's opportunities for us to look at costs, and we're going to do that. As I mentioned at the beginning of this talk, I think the goal is, and I think we have line of sight to that, is both to improve the momentum on the revenue side and the cost side as we move into 2026. I think we have a plan to do that working all together. It is across the board. There are efficiencies you can drive. I can tell you a better network that is more fluid is just going to cost fall out. I have seen it over and over a number of times that occur. We are in the beginning of that. You are looking at our network today, and we are going to see sequential improvement and with that will come opportunities on locomotives, the crew side, deadheads, all those things have costs that are associated with them right now that should naturally fall out as the network improves. What I'm hearing is the service, we're past the trough. As that gets better, and you think it continues to get better, costs come out. Then hopefully some of the company-specific volume opportunities build. The coal headwind, we're going to start to lap at some point. We're going to get to a point where we can see volume, productivity, better price, and sort of in your view, this could all come together in 2026. Yeah, I think it's not going to be like you wake up in 2026 and ta-da. I think you're going to see the natural progression that we're working on this year. Hopefully you'll see line of sight that we're going to build momentum into 2026 and see some visible improvement as we get into the back half of this year. I go back to the, again, back to the analyst day when you talked about the three-year high single-digit, low double-digit earnings growth. Even then you sort of said, "Hey, 2025 is not going to be that." Now maybe it is worse than, I do not know, maybe it is worse than you originally thought. Is that still the right high single-digit, low double-digit? Is that still the right full-year CAGR? Or should we say, "Hey, 2025 is 2025 and we go back to high single-digit to low double-digit starting in 2026 and just sort of ignore 2025"? Yeah, we're a quarter and a half into this 12-quarter endeavor that we guided to. I don't think we've lost any confidence in our ability of all the investments, what they can deliver from a growth perspective. There's a lot of things. I'm very confident in the team and what we built. The foundation of all the industrial development projects has been years in the making, quite frankly. These things take a lot of time and can be frustratingly slow, but we're ready to reap the benefits as we get in the next year in 2027. I think all the things are set up very, very well for us. Obviously, we need the macro to be stable at a minimum. If we had markets like housing and auto, which are incredibly important to our franchise, and have been down for obviously the last two or three years, if we could get some lift from those, I think that would be additional opportunity for us. Those things, we're at cyclical lows in some of the markets that we serve right now. It would be nice to have a little bit of cyclical tailwind as we get into 2026 and 2027. We haven't assumed that when we did that. That provides hopefully some upside to what we can do. We are running out of time, but maybe just the next session is going to be with Chairman of the STB. I do not see him in here yet. Maybe just to help us transition to that, there has been a little bit more, for whatever reason, chatter about rail M&A. I do not know. Why do you think we are hearing a little bit more chatter? Does it make sense? Is this just sort of like fake news and we should move on? I think you should let Patrick handle that question. Look, I think we're really focused on what we can do. We think there's a lot of untapped value that we can control and drive from a share price perspective. You heard about our confidence in what we think we can deliver as we move into the next year and the following year. I'll let others kind of comment on that. It's not really the focus of this team, I can tell you that. Awesome. Thank you, Kevin. This was great. Thank you.