Canadian National Railway Company (CNR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Thanks, Paul, and hi, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for joining us on Day 1 of the 2-day conference here at Scotiabank. I'm Konark Gupta, Scotiabank's Transportation and Industrials analyst. As Paul mentioned, we have some of the most respected industrial leaders here at the conference today. So I'm really excited to kick off this year's conference with none other than CN Rail. And I'm very pleased to have President and CEO, Tracy Robinson with us. Tracy, welcome and any opening remarks you want to make, and -- or we can jump into Q&A.

I'm going to follow your lead, Konark. You're on top of all of the issues, and I know you'll guide us well.

Perfect. Thanks so much for coming in. I know it's been an exciting -- an interesting year for the industry and for CN, for sure. So maybe I can kick off like with the volume environment right now. Obviously, we are seeing -- there was some softness initially in the spring, in the summer with the fires and with the labor, with the ports now. Hopefully, it's behind us with the CIRB intervention. So tell us about the volume environment today for you. How do you see sort of the last few months shaking out, where do you see sort of the strengths and weaknesses?

Happy to. It has been an interesting year, hasn't it? I look forward to the next year of full railroading. As you say, we're coming out of the latest round of labor disruptions. We've had over the past couple of weeks, outages at the terminals in Port Metro Vancouver and Rupert on the West Coast, not all terminals, but most of them, the grain has kept running. And some of the coal has kept running in a core support of Montreal, we've had basically 2 weeks on some terminals one week or just over a week on another terminal. Last -- yesterday, the Federal Minister of Labor has asked the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to binding arbitration. And he has extended the duration for the expiry date of their collective agreements. So in effect, there's a little bit of more process work to do. But in effect, all parties will be back at work here over the next couple of days, which is tremendously good news. I think we've had 1 month of clear operating outside of labor issues since middle of May of this year. And that month was October, and we ran like stink over October, you're going to see us running hard through the last, what is it, 7 or 8 weeks of the year. Behind all of that, of course, is some softening of the macro or maybe the better way to say it is an absence of strengthening of the macro. We've seen the Fed start to make some adjustments in rates, not as fast as I think we all thought they would have at the beginning of the year, but they've started. It's going to take some time for that to manifest. And so throughout the second quarter, we were feeling very bullish about the volumes. We've reconfigured our international program. We were running 7% ahead on volumes, and we went into all the labor issues of this year. So we think it will be a softer economy. We're going to run hard. We're going to try and catch up on the volumes that were impacted by the latest round of labor, anything that touched the port. And then we'll go into next year, probably with a little bit more muted expectation on the economy, but hopefully clear railroading.

Okay. That's great. You talked about obviously these factors that influenced the environment this year so far. What's your sense of the underlying growth environment today or this year, at least I know like industrial production has been a little bit soft-ish. But you also talked about some of the self-help initiatives that CN had. So can you talk about like what CN's underlying growth so far without these labor, the fires and other kind of issues?

There's been 2 drivers. One is, of course, railroads. We believe we power the economy. We need to show up to make sure that the economy moves. And so we are a great bellwether of how the economy is faring. And over the past couple of years, it has -- the economy is moving along, but it's not recovering at the level that we all would like it to. If you look at the consumer health, if you look at consumer demand, if you look at the housing sector. And so we are feeling we had expected more from it this year than has materialized. If we look at housing, which we know has a -- there's a fundamental structural shortage of housing. But with interest rates where they are, it's just not the forest products, the metals, all of those materials that go into construction, they're not moving like you would expect them to. I think that will work its way out over time as we see the changes in the interest rates kind of making their way through the system. If you look at automotive, we saw a couple of years of the inventory in automotive being replenished at the dealerships and all coming out of COVID. Now we're seeing automotive levels based more on what you and I are buying, right? And consumer sentiment is a little bit softer. If you look at just basic consumer demand for goods, it's softer than what we would have hoped. And as we look forward, there's a lot going on in the world from a policy and a political and economic perspective, and we're watching all that closely. But we're taking the view that it's probably going to take a while for all of what the Feds are doing to make its way through the system and to see that consumer start to come back. Now having said that, if you look at the commodities that we export, if you look at the grain and grain products, if you look at some of the fertilizers and potash, if you look at, the energy products, those are all moving very well and very strongly. If you look at some of the industrial sector, I would say it's kind of middle of the road. So we have a very diversified portfolio. We get the benefit of the strength of some of the global markets, but we also feel the weakness in the general economic and the consumer sentiment. The one thing we have going for us in the midst of all of that economic question is our -- what we call our CN-specific initiatives. And these are based on the partnerships that we have with our customers. And what we look to do is to leverage our network where it goes, and our network is highly advantaged. We go through the energy sector. We go through the best growing regions. And so we look at our customers and once we're working with them, they're getting great service. We partner with them to get them into new markets. And these are efforts that are less tied to what the economy is doing. And that is driving -- we thought it would be about 50% of our growth this year. It's now over 50%, but more because the macro growth has been a little bit slower, but those are coming in pretty much as we had planned, some faster, some slower, and that pipeline is being replenished. And so that's a very positive. I'm very pleased with the discipline the team has shown in that regard.

Okay. Maybe you can elaborate. You talked about some are faster, some are much slower compared to where you think or thought they were. Can you talk about like which areas specifically you're looking at things are progressing much faster, things where you need a little bit more -- some improvement naturally because of an economy, because of regulations or whatever.

One of the big ones we did earlier this year was a reconfiguration of our international program, international intermodal program. And so we have, I think, an incredibly strong network with Rupert, the advantages of the optionality between Vancouver and Rupert. We've got Halifax and St. John and Montreal in the East Coast. We've got Mobile and New Orleans in the South. And so we have been working to build an international portfolio that fits that network and allows us to use it to our customers' advantage. And so we've been working on that for some time. It all kind of came together earlier this year. That's why you saw our volumes in Q2 up so high. Now some of that, the U.S. part of that program has moved for now to the U.S. ports. It's starting to come back, but you'll see that. That's gone, I think, extremely well, and we're looking forward to seeing that at a more kind of normalized level through next year as it comes back from the U.S. If you think about the frac sand portfolio that we have, up in the Montney region, the WCSB, some of the best and most kind of effective, efficient natural gas. And there's a lot of brown sand that's proximate to that. But the really good sand for the drilling for the oil service providers is the Northern White Sand in Wisconsin. And we've been able to demonstrate a kind of supply chain that gets white sand by train load from Wisconsin up to Northeast BC in a ratable, predictable way that allows them to count on that and to do that and to reap the economics from it. And so we've had customers build facilities there. We've got 2 more that have been announced that will go in next year. And we have -- we're at record levels of that frac sand moving from Wisconsin up to Northeast BC. Of course, that's all for natural gas drilling. And all of that -- those natural gas liquids need a market. And so we've been working that with some of our customers. The one that we've talked about a lot is AltaGas, who we've helped find a market in Japan over Rupert. And so we're continue year-over-year to set record volumes of propane into Rupert. If you look at the northern part of our network cut through the Prairies and through the Midwest, which is the big grain and egg sector, some of the canola crush investments where our customers are investing in crush facilities in areas proximate to our network. Now this allows us to take canola into the facility and depending on where it is, take oil out into a refinery type of operation and take the leftover meal out and that normally goes into export markets. So that's happening in the Midwest. That's happening in the Western part of Canada. If you think about -- in Eastern Canada, we have the Greater Toronto fuel facility. And this is an opportunity that we found with a customer, actually 2 customers who came together on it to replace and we're going to continue to invest in the pipeline system regionally in Eastern Canada. So that now is going rail truck. We had some strategically located real estate in Toronto in our backyard. And so even before we got Phase 1 of that up and running, there was another customer who realized that potential. And so we're building Phase 2. And so these are all being executed pretty much on plan. There are some that are slowing down. Some of the EV potential that we saw is now kind of going a little bit slower. It will be interesting to see that goes, where that goes with some of the change in administration in the United States. So that's slower. But we're having -- we're seeing the replenishment of that pipeline and we're getting more and more structured and disciplined around how we pursue and execute those initiatives. So as we go forward, this will be a big driver of our growth.

Okay. That's fair enough. You mentioned Trump, obviously. So that's one question that we get a lot now since November.....

Me too.

So can you talk about the risks and opportunities, right, you see in 2025 with the new administration in place in the U.S. And obviously, there's a lot of theories about Trump 2.0 and like the tariffs and all that. So how do you perceive all those things and like plan for the business for the year ahead?

Yes. Well, I must say, I'm sure you agree, it was a fascinating election to watch, and we paid a lot of attention. I don't think it's getting any less fascinating as it goes. We paid a lot of attention during the election to what both candidates were talking about and saying, and we'll be watching very closely as the Trump administration gets reestablished as to what they'll actually do. So we've had a Trump administration before. So we have some sense of what -- I think all of us have some sense of what this may look like. And we see some opportunities, as you say, and some risks. I think without a doubt, there will be a focus on the economy, and there's going to be a focus on trade without a doubt. So from an economic perspective, anything that helps to make the economy grow is good for all of us. 50% of our revenues touch the U.S. So if you think about a stronger consumer, a stronger economy, more consumption, if you think about housing getting going again and all the material inputs into housing, if you think about the energy sector and some of what President Trump is talking about from the energy side, I think that there's going to be opportunities there. So anything related to the economic growth and consumer, we would view as an opportunity. Now we need to see how that works out. We're also watching the trade side very well. We have revenues just within the U.S. But as you know, we have a lot of volume that moves cross-border between Canada and the U.S. and a lot less between Mexico and the U.S. but we'll be watching that very closely. We have worked with Trump's administration on trade issues before. He was the President when the USMCA was negotiated last time. It looks like that's going to be opened up in 2026, where there's an opportunity to do it. So we've seen kind of that behavior. And -- but ultimately, we ended up with a deal that I think we all needed and life progressed. We do, do a certain amount of business or facilitate with China. We're watching that very closely. So I don't think anyone knows for sure what it's going to look like, but we'll be watching. We're pretty nimble. We've got a really good, resilient operation. We've demonstrated a tremendous amount of resiliency when it comes to pivots in the operation and issues in the operation. We'll be pretty nimble, and we're staying very close to our customers, which, of course, is the bellwether for us.

Okay. So TBD.....

TBD.

On 2.0.

I think you said it much more succinctly than others, TBD.

Okay. So let's talk about CN-specific things then. This year, spring into the summer, we saw some operational issues kind of surfaced and like we discussed about that on the calls to you, but on the work blocks, et cetera. Can you elaborate like what those issues were? And like any sort of learnings that you got those issues for the next few years?

Well, I wouldn't actually call them operational issues. Our operation has been running extremely well all year. If you look at velocity numbers, if you look at on-time performance, if you look at the customer service metrics, you look at our -- the feedback we're getting from our customers on customer service, it's run extremely well. What we ran into in May, kind of right when the labor issue was intended to start for 6 weeks on the directional running zone, which, as you know, is where both railroads share infrastructure to increase the capacity. So we run all of our trains jointly, one side of the Canyon and all on the other side going the other direction on the other side of the Canyon. There was a tremendous amount of work that was executed in work blocks over that 6-week period. Some ours, mostly theirs. And we, of course, have 65% or 70% of the volume in that corridor. So you could see it on ours more. But what that meant was that there was periods of time, 8 hours a day, mostly, where we couldn't operate and therefore, you had to stage trains. So it wasn't an operational issue. It wasn't a congestion issue. We're just staging trains for work blocks. But you see that in the velocity and you see that it did muck with our kind of crew availability and a few things. And so that is -- I think that was a concentrated period in the anticipation of a labor outage that then didn't occur. I don't imagine we're going to have that confluence of events again, but we need to work very closely with our partners at CP. They're a strong partner in the directional running zone. And so our teams are working at that. And we're continuing to invest. Our investment program is always looking at where the pinch points are and where the volume growth is going to be. So this year, we're finishing off some work around the EJ&E, which is, of course, our bypass of Chicago that's going to make us faster there. We're working on some more capacity on the Edson sub, which is that highest density line that between Edmonton and Jasper, and we're putting some siding capacity in there so that we make that faster and more resilient. This year, we've done a siding at Kamloops that will help on staging of trains. We are queued up for next year a siding just as you get to Vancouver that will help kind of facilitate the throughput in Vancouver. So we're always tweaking this and thinking about our ability to make sure that we're resilient and we move quickly. But this operation, this railroad has been -- the thing I'm most proud of this year is the strength and the resilience of the operation.

Okay. That's fair. Let's talk about some of the cost optimization initiatives that you have kind of started to think about lately. Any specific examples of what areas of focus are there right now? I know you have started to kind of like naturally wind down the head count through attrition, et cetera. Anything specific that you're looking at in the next few quarters?

This is a -- it's a very dynamic plan, right? And so it's constantly being adjusted to account for changes in volume, whether up or down or changes in flows or operational issues like the labor issues that we've talked about. And so when we're looking to size the operation, we're sizing it for the volumes that we anticipate. And to determine what we anticipate, we look at the economy, we talk to our customers. We're not always right on that. We've proven ourselves not to be the best economic forecasters, obviously. And so when we -- through this year, we've come to understand and take the position that the economy is going to recover slower over a slower and probably over a longer period of time. So we've made some adjustments. Now those adjustments aren't the same. It's not a single exercise over the whole network. So it depends where on the network. We look very closely at the specific areas. And so we've made adjustments to our locomotive fleet. We've got probably between 145 and 150 high-horsepower locomotives that are tied up right now. We've made adjustments to the fleets in the areas we think are going to have longer-term impact like the forest products, the impact of waiting for the housing to come back. We've made some structural changes to that and retain flexibility. The same with -- in some of the fleets that were impacted by all the labor issues. And of course, we've adjusted the workforce, which is a difficult thing to do. All of these are significant investments, but it's important. We want everybody working. And so it's important that we make those adjustments. And so that is the field force, right? And always unrelated to any specific initiative, we're constantly looking at how we become tighter, more efficient from an administrative perspective. We want the least amount of bureaucracy and kind of head office intervention as possible. And so we're constantly working at that. We had one month, as I said, this year, where we were unimpeded by any labor issues anywhere in the system or 1 month since early May, and that was October. Man, we ran well in October. The margins were exactly what I expected them to be. And so I think you're going to see if we can get a year of running next year, wouldn't that be a gift, you're going to see what this railroad can do.

Okay. So I read that as an operating leverage coming back next year for you guys?

Operating leverage will improve next year without a doubt.

Okay. Great. Okay. Quick word maybe on supply chain. I think I don't remember, like last time when we had a confluence of so many supply chain disruptions for the railroad industry, right, like every different port across North America has some sort of issues. Obviously, it's anticipated because of labor and all that. But where is the supply chain right now? Are you seeing any pinch points in the system across North America where you're like a little bit concerned where you like things to be addressed? What's outstanding?

Actually, you know what, it's -- we've had a big year where always seem to be dealing with this labor. But if I look at where supply chains have been since COVID, COVID had us all focusing. Supply chain became a discussion on every newscast and around every dinner table. But what it did do is focus us all on the importance and the necessity of really highly functioning supply chains. And I don't just mean our railroad or every railroad, I mean full supply chains through ports and terminals and how it all works together because it all has to work together. And there's been a lot of focus on that, individual companies, but beyond that, I think the whole system since then. And I think we've made a tremendous amount of progress. I look at how our railroad is running and the consistency, the resilience, the level of customer service, but how we're running with our partners. If you look at the work that we're doing with our -- even our Class I partners, you look at the efforts we're doing with our short lines, you look at the work we're doing with the ports and terminals around fluidity through -- so we're treating the supply chain, not as only our piece, but as the full kind of supply chain, both through the lens of operation, but also capacity. There's been significant advancements in that. This year has been a labor issue, and it's very frustrating. It's behind us now, I think, for a period of time at least. We've been through. The labor in the U.S. It looks like it's getting settled for a period of 5 years. That still appears to be the trend that's emerging. In Canada, we'll be able to manage through. We're in a binding arbitration with the running trades, which are the locomotive engineers and the conductors. I think we'll be able to manage constructively through most of the rest of it. We've been through it with the ports. There will always be a next round. But it is troubling. I think this is, unfortunately, right now, one of the most problematic effects, and it has the risk to impact North America, the confidence that the world has in our supply chains and their ability to count on us. So it has become an issue of national importance, and I think North American importance. And in Canada, because it's been a significant issue for us, it is a conversation with government who have said that we need to deal with some of the structural issues here. The economic impact has been significant. And we do. And we -- so those conversations will take place once we're through the immediacy of all this, but we need to figure this out.

For sure point taken on that. And then anything on the technology side, you want to mention I know you've said like electrification or EV kind of business is kind of a little bit slower now, hopefully, with Trump 2.0 and Maersk Alliance and all that, things can restart there. But electrification at CN, we had a chance to kind of see some of the locomotive rates you guys were doing recently. Any thoughts latest on electrification?

I think this is going to be an important but a long journey. And I think the question is electrification is one option when you think about the next level of propulsion. When we're in our efforts to reduce emissions and do our part on that, the first step for us is how we -- it's the same way if you put your 16-year-old in a sports car, it's how you drive the car. It's how you drive the locomotive. And with technology and with throttle settings, we've become very fuel efficient, probably 15% better than the average of the industry. That's also a gift of the network that we have. The next level is we're doing more and more blending. We're going to exceed our own targets this year on blending of biofuels. So it's diesel fuel blend with biofuel, which reduces kind of emissions. But over the long road, if we want to eliminate emissions from railroads, we need a new level of propulsion, a new source of propulsion. And whether that is electric or whether it is some kind of hybrid kind of an operation or whether it is hydrogen, it remains to be seen. So we are all experimenting with different forms and making sure that we understand how those options are going to perform in high-stress environments, in -- if you look at going through mountain ranges and steep grades, in the temperatures that we can have in Canada and the temperatures that you can get in the deep South. So there's a lot of testing that goes on so that we know how -- what to expect. And we know what the investment is going to look like, and we're staying very close to our customers to make sure that they understand this as well and to understand what they need from it. So this is going to be a long effort when it comes to that electrification piece. On a smaller scale, we're doing lots of work with trucking companies. We are -- we have a large trucking operation as well. And we're doing work with various trucking vendors on alternatives around trucking, whether that be electric, whether that be hydrogen or some other fuel as well. So we're learning a lot, but there's a lot more to learn before we know what the answers are here.

Okay. To be seen for sure. Earlier, you mentioned about Mexico and obviously, the tariffs and all that. Nearshoring is one topic that's pretty close to Scotiabank these days. We keep hearing about how the activity levels are kind of bumping up in the southern part of the U.S. and Mexico and all that. You have a Falcon Premium partnership with UP and Ferromex. Can you talk to us about like what nearshoring actually means to you guys? Like how are you capturing those in your volumes and business?

Yes. And I think those are -- those can be related, but they're also very independent kind of efforts. So the Falcon service is an effort we've been, I think, rightly criticized as an industry in our efforts for efficiency of walking away from a lot of business that now moves truck that could be moving rail. And so I think that there is an effort in the industry to demonstrate that we can step back into that business, both from a perspective of efficient economic growth for the continent, but also it's lower emissions, right, if you can move on rail. And so what it takes is us working together very differently. So the Falcon service is a service that we've put in to take trucks off the road between, say, Monterrey, Mexico and Toronto, Canada. Here we are. And there is no reason economically that a truck should be better than a rail, but in that kind of a distance. But for us, it requires a different way of thinking. It moves between 3 railroads. And what we generally have low attention spans in the past when it comes to being -- to sticking with these things for long periods of time. We like big movements. What I'm really proud of is this has been in place for now a year or so. We have a 5-day service design between Monterrey, Mexico and Toronto, which is truck-like. And we do it consistently. In the last 28 days, we're just over 5 days. There's been some issues in Mexico, but we do that consistently. This doesn't happen in the railroad business that used to. And we are -- there's -- if we look at the market, there's probably 2 trains worth in that market to get. We've got a small fraction of that now, but that's going to have to grow over time. These are customers that haven't moved on rail for years and years and years, if ever. And so that's proving out a truck-like product. We have one in place with [ BNs ], into Atlanta, into Kansas City and Canada as well, but it's proving that we can step back into that business separate from nearshoring. It does support the near-shoring efforts. From a near-shoring perspective, I mean, we're seeing this and lots of talk on it, particularly now. And I think there's opportunities and risks with that as well. Anything that gets the North American economy moving, it should be good. It should be -- if you think about greater manufacturing and greater inputs, all of that will be good. If you think about it, if it creates a healthier consumer, that's a really good thing because that's consumption, and we need to help power that economy. If done poorly or the things to worry about or the risks would be if it's just through tariffs, but we don't actually bring that capability and capacity in place, that can become inflationary and might have the negative impact on kind of the consumer. So we're going to watch this carefully. I hope that we, as a collective, do it in a manner that does build on economic growth.

Okay. That's great. I think with that, perhaps any last closing remarks, anything we should look forward to heading into 2025?

Well, you should look forward to the next 7 or 8 weeks of us moving really hard to try and pick up. I think most of the volume has waited for us. And so you're going to see us really rock and roll. And then in 2025, I mean, we are looking to a slower economic growth. We're positioned for that. I'm excited about some of our CN-specific initiatives. We'll be doing a lot of work with our customers. As we look forward to a new administration in the U.S., and we look forward to whatever happens in Canada as we face the same kind of election. I think it will be a little bit of a new world, but I think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity there, and we're ready for it.

Awesome. Perfect. And with that, all the best to you, Tracy, for that.

Thanks for hosting today.

Thanks for coming.