All right, we're going to get going with our next session with Norfolk Southern. I'm happy to have Jason Zampi, CFO, at the conference this year. Michael, Nil, and Luke from the team are also here with us in the first row. Jason, I'm going to let you make some opening comments, and then we will get right into it. Thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thanks, Scott, and thanks for having us. You know, I think it's pretty incredible when you think about what we've been able to accomplish over the last year. I think John Orr was sitting here with you 12 months ago. If you think about what he and the team have done from increasing network fluidity, really providing a great service product for our customers, and driving productivity really throughout the P&L, it's really an impressive story. You know, sticking on ops for a second, I mean, we've got some really good momentum operationally. You see that in our weekly service metrics. You know, we've also demonstrated our ability to run a very resilient railroad. First quarter continued to test that. We had 18 winter storms across the railroad, and you saw a lot of the pictures during our first quarter earnings call. You know, up and running in a matter of hours and days versus weeks, and probably events like that would have taken us months to recover from. Really strong progress on the resiliency front. Like I said, productivity. You know, we're seeing that labor productivity, fuel efficiency, purchase service costs coming down. Really good progress on that front as well, all while operating safely. You see our safety metrics continuing to improve. Really good momentum on the operations front. I'd also say, you know, we've got a really cohesive and energized team that is driving towards our strategic objectives. Really, really proud of the group that we've got there. Bless you. As we move forward, you know, thinking about where we are going into 2025, we laid out some of our key goals: $150 million of productivity savings and cost reductions. Made great progress on that in the first quarter that you saw. We talked about 3% revenue growth. You know, we still have a lot of, obviously, uncertainty in the macro, but still feel good about that. Volumes are still kind of hanging in where we thought they'd be. The math comes to 150 basis points of OR improvement. Feeling good on that side as well. You know, are ready to pivot if necessary. We kind of know what's in front of us and feel good about our path. All right, fantastic. I'll start, but we have a nice full room. If people have questions, raise your hand. We'll get to you. Let's just start. Near-term volumes tracking up about 6% quarter to date in 2Q. Good start. How are what commodity segments maybe doing better than you would have thought? What, if anything, is worse than you would have thought? We'll go from there. Yeah. As you mentioned, volumes have accelerated. We're up about 1% in the first quarter. Through April and the first part of May here, you know, that low single digits. Like you talked about, mid-single digits. I'd say coal and auto are coming in a little stronger than we thought. Coal from a replenishment of stockpile perspective. Auto, we had some production issues that were kind of plants coming back online for. I'd say intermodal is pretty much in line with where we thought. International is still coming in pretty strong. We haven't seen really a drop-off in that yet. Our domestic intermodal business is staying pretty steady. Let's turn to that intermodal side because we've all been talking about this big import cliff into the U.S.. Feels like we've seen it, but it doesn't seem like it's showing up in the rail intermodal volumes yet. Is this just a timing lag, and we're going to start to see it over the next few weeks? Or is there some reason that, hey, there's enough inventory still at the ports and a backlog to clear, so the intermodal volumes are going to be a lot steadier than maybe what you would have thought given this import cliff? Yeah. I think two things there, Scott. One is, you know, probably much more pronounced on the West Coast, right? That's where we're kind of hearing that about the air pocket, if you will. As you mentioned, kind of seeing those volumes come down now. You know, we haven't really experienced that yet on the East Coast for us. I mentioned our international volumes are still holding strong. If there is an impact, I'd expect it to be much less magnitude than what they're thinking about on the West Coast. I think the key with all of this is, you know, with all this uncertainty, is really sticking with our staying close to our customers, trying to understand, you know, what they're seeing. I think the other thing that's really good is for us, you know, we've shown our ability to be agile in this market. You know, you can go back to last year with hurricanes, the port strike, things like the Port of Baltimore closure, and then this year with winter weather. You know, those kind of shocks and uncertainty in the system, this is a way that we've kind of proven that we can help our customers work through those. So we feel really good about that aspect. When you think about some volumes up mid-single digits, like there's nothing, doesn't sound like there's any reason to think that that in the near term gets a whole lot worse. Does this feel sustainable to you right now? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think on the intermodal side, we're going to stay close to it. You know, everything else is feeling pretty good. I think on the coal side, like I said, we're seeing some replenishment of stockpiles there. Kind of three things if you think about coming out of the harsh winter. Second, preparing for summer electricity demand. Third, if you look at forward natural gas prices, those are elevated. I think utilities are starting to rebuild those stockpiles. All three of those things are kind of helping to drive that. Yeah, I think we feel good about our volume outlook and the 3% that we've guided to. It's been a while since we've talked about coal in a positive way. Like you just gave us the three factors. How long does this period of replenishment last? Is this just a Q2 phenomenon and gets to Q3 and we're back to flat to down coal? Or do you think that there's some duration to this strength in coal? Yeah, I think it's probably a little bit of a mixed bag there, maybe trailing into third quarter a little bit. You know, we don't see this being a reversal of what we've seen kind of over the last couple of years. I think the other piece with coal that we got to keep in mind is, you know, I'm focused on the volume side, obviously, here. You know, the price side, especially for export, is really depressed. That is kind of mitigating these volume gains when you think about all-in revenue growth from a coal perspective. Just we'll do that maybe very quickly just because you mentioned it. How should we think about the coal RPU Q1 to Q2, just given what you just talked about? Yeah. Sequentially, we think about from first quarter to second quarter a continued degradation in export coal yields and then kind of flattening out from there going forward. That will be a headwind to overall coal RPU for the rest of the year. Should we be thinking like down in that low single digit range? Or Or could it be worse than that? Yeah, I think that's fair. Low single digits. Down low single digits. OK, great. One more just on the volume side, and then there's a lot of other stuff to talk about. We've seen over the last six to nine months just like really, really strong growth in West Coast port volumes, right? Maybe just putting tariff aside, like obviously there were East Coast labor uncertainty that caused that shift. Do you expect to start seeing you preparing for a shift back to East Coast ports? Is that a good thing, bad thing for you? I'm guessing there's some puts and takes with that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think to your first point there that it's another example of how uncertainty in the market kind of disrupts the supply chain. Like you said, you know, there's a port strike and then maybe a delay on when they were going to fully decide that. Customers continue to ship to the West Coast. We're starting to see that come back to the East Coast to kind of a more normal equilibrium there. When we think about where the volume comes from, I'd say this. I think, again, I think we're well positioned to handle it wherever it comes from. On the East Coast, you know, we've got some really great port partners that have done a lot of great work from a growth and efficiency perspective to handle that volume coming in from the East Coast. You know, obviously the other benefit the East Coast has is just the density. You know, two-thirds of the population, half of the manufacturing in the United States being right here on the East Coast. I think those are all good things. You know, West Coast, you'd say, all right, we've got longer lengths of haul. The trade-off there is you maybe lose a little bit of that freight as it kind of moves across the country. All in, I think we're ready to handle that volume wherever it comes. You know, we obviously can't control where it comes in, but we're ready to handle it. A couple of times you've mentioned the 3% revenue growth for the year. It felt like on the Q1 call, the message was, we're keeping it, but there's a lot more sort of uncertainty. Since then, we've got at least a 90-day pause. Are you feeling now we know the volume trend's been pretty good so far in Q2. Are we feeling better about that 3% than we did just a month or so ago? Yeah, I'd say, you know, and just to kind of go back there, that 3% revenue growth was really all volume. The yields were kind of flat when you think about the mix of the commodities. We can talk about that in a second. You know, the volume side was really what's driving the 3% revenue growth. I think the volumes that we're moving right now are encouraging, but you know, relatively in line with kind of where we were expecting it to be, maybe a little bit accelerated. I don't think we're feeling, excuse me, worse than where we were, but I also don't feel a lot better just again because while we have a delay here, there's not definitive guidance of how this is all going to shake out. I think that ultimately customers and shippers are looking for that certainty. You know, maybe some pull forward here in second quarter, but we'll have to see how it shakes out the rest of the year. OK. Maybe similar question on the 150 basis points of margin improvement. Do we need 3% revenue growth to get that 150? Or do you feel like we have line of sight to that even if we do not get all the way to the 3% revenue growth? Yeah. So you know, a big part of the 150 basis points of OR improvement is on the back of increased productivity. And we've really, you know, we delivered $290 million of productivity and cost takeout in 2024. We're continuing down that path this year with a guide of $150 million plus and made really strong progress towards that in the first quarter here. So that's a big component of that. You know, if that volume, that revenue growth doesn't come through, you know, we're scenario planning right now, thinking of other things we can do. But you know, we do need some revenue growth to hit those targets. If you think about when we laid out our longer-term targets last spring, you know, it was 150 basis points of OR improvement each year. And that was with 3% revenue growth and this overall $550 million of productivity savings. Last year, we had flat revenue. We did not get that 3%, but yet we still were able to accomplish that 150 basis points. We have proven we can do it. I just think on a sustained basis, we do need some revenue growth to help hit those targets. That makes sense. And then any way to help us think about sort of near-term operating ratio expectations where we see some degree of sequential improvement Q1 to Q2? You know, typically, every year is a little different, but the range I see, you know, 200-400 basis points is a pretty wide range. But I do not know, where do you think we should end up in that spectrum? Yeah. We always joke around. We have to use air quotes when we talk about average seasonality. It is kind of all over the place. But we think about it probably more normal in the like 150-200 basis points of sequential improvement. You think about where we were in the first quarter at a 67.9%, we feel very confident of beating that normal seasonality as we move from first quarter into second quarter. You know, a couple of things that were kind of one-time or non-recurring, if you think about it, we had $35 million of weather costs and another $35 million- ish of incentive comp adjustments. So you know, those will not continue on. You pull those out, and then you think about kind of maybe that normal seasonality gets you to where we are kind of thinking here that we need to be in the second quarter and going forward. Take Q1, take out $70 million of cost, give or take, and then layer in 150-200 basis points. Yeah. I think that gets you to right around, you know, like call it a 64%, which is, you know, based on the 67.9% that we printed in the first quarter, we really have to be at a 64%, sub-64% for the rest remaining three quarters of the year to hit our 150 basis points of guidance. It's obviously not going to be even each quarter, second, third, and fourth. There's still obviously some seasonality there, but I think that's a good way to think about it, Scott. OK, perfect. I know, you know, going back a year ago when you guys were giving all sorts of long-term guidance, the long-term guide was a sub-60% OR right over the next few years. Is that still the right framework to be thinking about? What do you think's the realistic timeline to get there? Yeah. I think that, you know, that's absolutely our framework. I think the only thing that's probably changed is maybe the timing of that. When we laid out that framework, we were looking at, you know, kind of the three-plus year range. I mean, really top line thinking about 3% revenue growth each year. We also called out, you know, really to take that next step from, call it, a 62% OR down to a 60% OR or sub-60% OR, we kind of needed this market recovery. Another 2% of revenue growth. You know, we think that's still going to come. It's just, again, the timing of when that may ultimately come to fruition. 100% our goal, that's still what we're driving towards. You know, when we laid out those targets, we laid out $550 million in cost savings. You know, that's not the end goal. We're going to continue to press on that. That will be a big component of how we hit those targets. By the way, if there's questions, raise your hand. Wow, we have a question. I don't know if we have mics, but if I need to, I'll repeat it if need be. Question, if I heard it right, is it feels like you've had some opportunities to gain some share, other Eastern rail having some service issues. As their service gets better, what's the, you know, how much volume you think can go back to the other rail? Yeah. I would say, you know, we're recapturing share from all modes of transportation. I think, you know, a couple of years ago, we did not have a strong enough service product for our customers. They needed to make other choices. What we're seeing is, you know, some of those customers kind of bringing more share of wallet back to us. Things that should already be on rail in the first place and things that make sense to move on NS's network. You know, we feel good about that, the progress we're making there. It's really on the back of this great service product. We have to prove that we can consistently provide that service to our customers so that they have that confidence and trust that they can bring it back to us to be a key part of their supply chain. I want to talk a bit on the pricing and the yield side a little bit. If I look at yields excluding fuel in Q1, they were up a little bit, you know, half a percent. That is the first increase. You know, we had six quarters of declines. I guess, how should we think about that yield trajectory going forward? It looks like when you just look at the mix of volume right now with coal strength and merchandise is really good, it feels like mix is in a much better place than maybe the last bunch of quarters. It feels like we could see some strong yield growth this quarter. Are we thinking about that right? Yeah. Let me, I'll hit the last part of your question first from a mix perspective. You know, I think what you're seeing is, you know, from a high-level commodity perspective, you've got strong growth in coal, strong growth in merchandise. From a mix perspective, you'd assume that's positive. I also think you really need to dig kind of within mix, within the mix. Again, when I talked about export coal pricing and then in the merchandise side, maybe some of the lower-rated commodities within merchandise are growing more outside. We don't expect that to be a tailwind here in the first quarter, excuse me, as we move into the second quarter. Back to your original question on overall yields, I think you really need to break it down into three pieces. You talked about ex-fuel kind of, you know, slightly positive. You know, if you look at the three commodities broken out within merchandise, we've had really good pricing progress there. We've got a great service product that's obviously making those conversations, those pricing conversations easier with our customers. And we've had really, like I said, strong price within the merchandise product for quite some time now. You look at the other two pieces, intermodal, obviously heavily dependent on the truck market, kind of bouncing along the bottom there from a pricing perspective. In our current plan, we are not forecasting any uptick in that for the rest of the year, kind of assuming that's flat. Hopefully, we're wrong and it comes in higher, but that's what's in our base plan. Then coal, again, you know, just really being weighted down by those Seaborn coal prices. That's what kind of mixes together to get you kind of flat yields. But I think it is really important to look at the pieces because we are making really great progress on that merchandise. Just a couple of thoughts. Merchandise was up ex-fuel 4% in Q1. I do not know if there is mix within that, but is that a good sort of assumption of what merchandise yield should be right now or? I think probably a little bit lower than that as we move forward again, just to do that mix within the mix. Mix. Mix. OK. And then intermodal, you said you're not counting on any intermodal yield uplift. They were up 2% in Q1 ex-fuel. Right. And different components there. When you think about rate, you know, you've got your core pricing. Obviously, we're taking fuel out of here. You've got accessorials, things like that. But overall, we're kind of assuming flat from here on out. Maybe let's just, we talked about yield. Let's talk about more like price. Because I think for so long, right, the given in this industry was just inflation plus price. It certainly feels like the last few years, it's been less of a given. Where are we in that sort of, hey, let's not, instead of saying, oh, if you exclude this and this and this, we're inflation plus. When can we say, you know what, like no excuses, we're inflation plus price? I was going to say exactly that. Exclude this and this. I mean, in fairness, you really, when you look at that merchandise business, we are and have been at inflation plus pricing, as you call it, for quite some time now. That is really, you know, on the back right now of a great service product, something our customers can count on and bring more share to us. I think to get to a, from an overall book of business, back to that place, you are going to need a recovery, you know, higher truck rates. You know, we are going to need some help on coal price, which I think is going to be all in, is going to take some time to do. For right now, you know, again, think about this controlling what we can control. We are getting that inflation plus pricing in our merchandise segment. Maybe now let's turn to the cost and productivity side. Been very strong labor productivity trends the last bunch of quarters. Felt like Q1 volumes up one, headcount was down six. Now we just got the April headcount data, you know, down a little bit more and volumes are up even more. I think you're leading the industry right now in terms of labor productivity. How much more is there to go on that front? Because your service levels with really good labor productivity are also hanging in quite well. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I appreciate you noticing it because we're very proud of that labor productivity we've got. If you just think about it kind of sequentially from a headcount perspective, we expect to kind of be flat from here on out, kind of which is right around where we ended fourth quarter. Yet we're bringing on more volume is our expectation. We're not seeing, as you pointed out, we're not seeing any degradation in the service metrics with that additional volume and with this level of labor productivity. I think those are key. You know, you can kind of manufacture, if you will, a higher labor productivity, but you might, you know, harm service or volume in the process. We're doing it all together, which is the key to really drive value there. I think that's an area that we are continuing to push on. For sure, that's a big component of the $150 million of productivity. I mean, it feels like for months, if not quarters, you've been saying it's going to be sort of headcount's going to be flat sequentially from here. It feels like every month it comes out a little bit more. Like at some point, does that get? Yeah. I think there's, you know, you kind of saw that in first quarter here where we let attrition on the T&E side, you know, take hold a little bit. We do have some CTs, some of our conductor trainees starting up again here. That will kind of start to replenish that pipeline and get us probably more flattish with fourth quarter. OK. Now, while labor productivity was really good, you know, the other side of that was comp per employee was up 7% in Q1. How does that trend from here? Yeah. So I think the best, or in my mind at least, easiest way to think about comp per employee. So you know, we talked about the incentive comp adjustment that we booked in first quarter. We also had some weather-related costs that hit comp and benefits. If you take both of those out, comp per employee was like $35,500 per quarter in the first quarter. That's about what it was in the fourth quarter. And that's a good run rate for the first half of this year. If you think about moving into the second half of the year, you've got a 4% contractual wage increase for our union employees going into effect. So you know, increase it off of that $35,500 going forward. But you know, there will be some partial offset to that wage inflation due to increased productivity. OK. What about some of the other cost buckets, right? Just looking at our model, like purchase services is what still feels like the highest versus maybe history at Norfolk, maybe versus some of the other rails. Is that an opportunity on the cost side? Where, if anywhere, do you see the most risk of inflation? Where's the biggest opportunities on savings? I think if you think about other areas of productivity, you know, I've talked a lot about labor productivity. We've focused, you know, really heavily on our T&E productivity. As we move into 2025, and we're already starting to see it, it's kind of pushing that labor productivity into all of the other crafts as well. Whether that be mechanical or engineering workforce, we're continuing to press on labor productivity there. That's kind of, you know, double, not only the T&E side, but we're moving to other crafts as well. We'll continue on that front. Fuel efficiency. You know, John, you've heard John talk a lot about what he and his team are doing from a fuel efficiency perspective. We just had our fourth quarter in a row of record quarterly fuel efficiency. You know, it's not just a fuel efficiency, though. It's also thinking about like how and where we fuel locomotives to get the best price, how we're distributing fuel, all those kinds of things that'll also add to that fuel efficiency. And then, you know, Scott, you mentioned purchase services. We've actually made some pretty good progress there in the first quarter. Purchase services were down about $20 million year over year, about down $10 million sequentially. So that is absolutely an area that we're focused on and an area where there is, you know, for sure some more work to do and some more improvement to come. I think it's when I think about purchase services, I kind of think about it in three big buckets. About a third of that bucket is really volume variable. And that's for our intermodal and automotive terminals. You know, the operation of those terminals are outsourced. You have got, you know, lift costs, drayage, crane maintenance, you know, things like that that fall into that that are volume variable. As you know, intermodal volumes have been, you know, going up over the last several years. That is a piece of that driver. That is about a third. You have got about 25% of that bucket is due to what I would call like operation support services. Things like, you know, taxis and lodging for our crews, rail grinding, those types of things that are, you know, obviously necessary for our operation. Then, you know, another big chunk of that is technology. All in, those three pieces are about 80% of that purchase services bucket. Just to give you a kind of flavor of what is in there, I think it is helpful to think about it that way. You know, you've heard us talk the last couple of quarters about what we're doing from a technology standpoint to really rationalize that spend, make sure we're getting, you know, strong returns on those projects, quick delivery, and, you know, fast benefits. That's really Anil, our new CIDO, is really helping to drive that. Really good progress there. I think, sorry, I talked for a long time. I think the last piece of your question was inflation. Yeah, just like are there areas that have the biggest risk of cost inflation? Yeah, I think the, you know, where we see where you'll see inflation probably most pronounced in our P&L is within that comp and bend line. Like I said, we've got a 4% wage rate going into effect July 1 for, you know, +80% of our employees. So that'll be a big driver. You know, we're also seeing inflation, obviously, in our materials line item and, you know, other lines as well. But comp and bend is the one that sticks out the most. Just one or two just like quick ones. I want to just touch on just with your CFO hat. CapEx coming down this year. Any incremental opportunities there? And then how much what's the cash flow benefit if we get 100% bonus depreciation? Yeah. So, you know, as you mentioned, our CapEx in 2024 was $2.4 billion. We've guided now to $2.2 billion, reduced that about $200 million. We're really able to do that through the work that John and his team have, you know, have really accomplished having a more fluid network. We're able to set down a lot of locomotives and freight cars so we do not have to spend as much on those asset categories. What it allows us to do is really spend on our, you know, steady state areas like infrastructure, rail ties, ballast, things like that and the safety of our network. That is going to continue on. We always will invest in those areas. It is just we are a lot, we have had the opportunity to kind of take it down again from that network fluidity. I wouldn't think about that number, the $2.2 billion coming down going forward. I would think about, you know, I think on a, you know, kind of shorthand basis, a lot of people think about CapEx as a percentage of revenue. You know, that percentage will get better from a standpoint of growing our top line, not reducing our CapEx. We feel like this is kind of a good area to be at. On the, you know, bonus depreciation, obviously, that would be a, you know, a significant help to us. We're going through the process right now of calculating that from a, you know, cash tax perspective. It's definitely a benefit. Just last thing. We've asked all the rails. No one has announced any plans to do mergers. We've asked all the rails just like there just seems to be more chatter for whatever reason. Your thoughts on does this make sense? Is the timing right? Is this just sort of are we wasting our time and breath right now? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, obviously, I read the Trains article, like I'm sure you did, you know, and heard, you know, kind of two different perspectives there. One on, you know, a Transcon merger, others on just, you know, partnerships across the industry with other rails. I think, you know, I see a lot of benefit in a Transcon merger. I think there could be a lot of, you know, synergies there and cost takeout. I also view the, you know, the regulatory framework as pretty challenging right now. That said, you know, is this administration, is this the time to, you know, to try to progress that? You know, I don't know. We'll see how it shakes out. But, you know, I think what we really are focused on at NS is, you know, kind of coming back to our core strategy, you know, delivering a great service product for our customers that they can count on and they can trust, which helps us grow, brings more volume onto the network, brings, you know, volume that should be on rail, should be on NS back to us, enhancing our productivity and cost profile and doing it all safely. Those are the things that we're focused on right now. Again, I know there's a lot of talk about, you know, these mergers and other components. For us, that's what we're kind of laser focused on right now. Awesome. Thank you, Jason. That was great. All right. We're going to get our next, we're doing a truck brokerage panel in a couple of minutes with Landstar, RXO, Echo Global, and Arrive Logistics. So please stick around for that. That was great.