CSX Corporation (CSX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everybody. I'm Jason Seidl. I want to welcome you to TD Cowen's 16th Annual Global Transport Conference. I'm the senior transport analyst based here in the U.S. and thrilled today, I have Joe Hendricks from CSX. I've been following CSX now, I think, 25 years. It been a long time. And Joe, we want to kick things off. I mean, you got some time under your belt here now as CEO, and the railroad, I mean knock on wood someplace, has been running pretty well on your service metrics. So give us an update on some of the business trends that you last talked to investors?

Yes. So I would say, at the market level, the message continues to be somewhat mixed. It has all year really. If you think about it, some parts of our business have been strong, autos, minerals, metals, coal, especially in that coal but the areas that all year have been somewhat slow, chemicals, forest products, domestic intermodal is improving, but international intermodal has been down all year. So it's a mixed bag. We're seeing some strength and some weakness. Our service metrics are good. We're leading the industry in service. August was a little bit tougher month for us for several reasons, some was weather, some was availability of manpower because it's heavy vacation period and it was a hot summer. It actually helped us with domestic coal. We did more coal in the southern utilities because of the heat but -- so I'd say this year, it's been mixed. A lot of the things that helped us last year, fuel surcharge, supplemental revenue, demurrage and things of that nature aren't repeating, at least so far this year. But our operating business has been -- our operating metrics have been stronger. So we feel good about where we are, but we're watching the economy very closely.

And so you're still comfortable with sort of that low single-digit RTM for the year?

Yes. We still see that happening. RPU will be affected by other things like the fuel surcharge and some of the haul distances, but we still see single-digit RTM growth.

And there seems to be a lot of mixed views on sort of the traditional peak season. What are your views on that for this year?

Well, we actually do -- we are optimistic that the grain season will be strong coming up. It wasn't as strong in the South, but we think it will be strong coming out of the Midwest. So we're gearing up for that. The other peak season, we typically talk about for us at least, is UPS and traffic along that lines getting up to the holidays, what to see how that plays out. But certainly, we think the grain business will be a strong season coming up.

Now you guys, the railroads are fresh off of a union contract where probably, at least from the investor side, gave up a little more than people thought, but it's been a strong union year across the board for all different types of industries. Where are you at with price negotiations with your customers and how are you going to recoup some of that?

Yes. We've been very pleased with the pricing discussions this year. It's helped by the increased service levels, which makes it a little easier to have those conversations but there's inflation everywhere, the customers are aware of it. Our team has done a really good job. We -- even looking into '24 now we're seeing some of that -- those contract discussions happening. We're really pleased with where we are on pricing. It's been a supportive environment for us. On the union side, just another friendly reminder, we get to do it all over again next year because when it takes you 3 years to do a 5-year contract, we're 3 years into it. So next year, we get to do it again. I hope -- I mean I wasn't involved with the last one, but I'm certainly hopeful that we've all learned a lot of lessons from the last one and will be able to manage it in a different way.

Yes. Well, I hope we don't have to get right down to the end and...

I don't want to go back to Congress.

I don't think anybody wants to go about to Congress.

I was there for several days getting fingers pointed at me, and I don't need to have that happen again.

No, I'm sure you don't. You brought up intermodal. It's sort of been the year where you had trucking rates, they continue to fall on the spot side. Diesel dropped like a rock from January to late July. It's rebounded a lot since then, up until then was at. And then you have that soft demand on the background. So other than that intermodal is great, right? Talk a little bit about the future growth of intermodal and maybe what it means to the rail space? And then maybe we can jump back to the international side and when you think that could rebound for you because you said it's been a little bit weak.

Yes. On the domestic intermodal side, we've actually been encouraged by what we've seen over the last several months. We mentioned this on our Second Quarter Earnings Call, we've actually seen it continue in the Third Quarter. Our domestic intermodal has been growing in the last several months year-over-year, which is encouraging.

Is that -- do you think directly tied to the service improvement?

I think it's definitely influenced by the service. And as you said, while we saw diesel fuel prices dropped dramatically, Matthew just reminded me this morning that Diesel fuel is up 40% since May. So we're seeing an increase in Diesel cost. So we'll see how that plays out. So I think it's a combination of service and you're seeing Diesel fuel come back more recently in the last few months. And we're optimistic about the domestic intermodal side. It continues to march up, and we feel good about that. But it's definitely a service-driven product because you're competing with truck, right? And all the other components that go with that. We still see opportunity for that to grow over time. We're optimistic about it. Of course, we're establishing a new interchange point with CPKC and Myrtlewood, Alabama, which will be a great opportunity to service the Southeast from Texas and Mexico and [whatnot]. So that's another opportunity for us. And we're bullish on domestic intermodal. On the international intermodal side, we feel really good about the contractual relationships and with the freight carriers over the oceans, it's just the volume hasn't been there all year. Actually started in the second half of last year, and it's continued into this year. We haven't seen much signs of any growth there, frankly. We were expecting to see some in the second half of this year. That's what we're being told earlier in the year by our partners, but that hasn't really materialized. So that's going to be something to watch very carefully. When it comes back and it will we feel really good about how we're positioned.

We saw a lot of freight move from the West Coast to the East Coast and some of the Gulf ports. And I think a lot of it was just a supply chain, but I think some shippers just gone through their arms of knees and said, we're done with this. How much of that freight do you think will find its way back? And how much has already found its way back to the West Coast?

Yes. I don't think a lot of it is has found it's way back to the West Coast. Of course, the Panama Canal situation is also influencing things and should affect things for a while. In some respects, either one of those works for us. I mean we have great relationships with the ports on the Eastern Coast, and we're happy for them to have the business. But in some respects, if it comes into the west and still goes east, it's a longer haul from Chicago or somewhere to the East Coast, whereas if we're bringing it in, in New York, New Jersey, we're bringing in even from the South it's a shorter haul. So for us, it's traffic. It's more about the traffic flow than it is where it comes in, but we're very happy with what's going on with the eastern ports. So I don't think a lot of it has moved, but maybe some of it will now with what's going on in Panama. But long term, I think we can -- both can work for us. And I know the ports on the Eastern seaboard have big plans for growth, and they're investing in technology and capability and in capacity. So I would expect that to continue to grow.

From a revenue standpoint, is it better if some of it moves back to the West Coast cause the [indiscernible] that you mentioned?

It depends on what it is, but it can be. Again, depends on where it's going. If it's going to the Northeast and it's coming from the West, that can be an opportunity for us.

You mentioned the CPKC in Alabama. One of our IMCs that we cover Schneider, multi-mobile company really was singing CPKC's praises running out of Mexico, 3.5-day service into Chicago. Talk a little bit about that product because if you go back to the Port of Lazaro, sort of when it was conceived, it was going to be an alternate entrance for people for the West Coast, right? Sort of bypassing L.A. Long Beach. That never really materialized. Even though that port grew over time, it was intra-Mexico traffic. So talk a little bit about the opportunities to sort of access the fastest-growing population centers in the U.S.

Yes. So we're really excited, as I mentioned earlier. I mean if you think about the Southeast Florida and the rest of the Southeast is where a lot of the growth is and to have a high-speed really competitive option for people from, like we said, places in Texas or Mexico across CPKC to us in Myrtlewood then to Birmingham or Montgomery and then into other places, we feel really good about that. We'll be submitting our to file to the STB this month, and we hope and expect for approval over the next few quarters, and then we should be able to get going sometime in '24. And this is very pro competitive, so the STB should be very supportive of it. But we believe, we're just looking at the traffic flows, looking at the plans that we have and CPKC have, we feel really good about the opportunity.

And how much investment might be needed to?

Yes. I mean there's a decent amount of investment. I'm not going to give the numbers, but a decent amount to get that MNBR rail line up to our speeds that we want it to be, but there's a lot of bridges. There's a lot of trestles across that, but both CPKC and ourselves are committed to doing that and really making it a very high speed, very competitive offering.

Okay. The prior presentation. Brad from H&E talked a little bit about onshoring. And I think what he said was now he sees the signs, but he thinks there's just no doubt that this is an ongoing trend. Clearly, more manufacturing to North America is going to help the U.S. railroads and the railroads have always been very acutely involved in industrial development projects. Can you talk a little bit about your views and how CSX is involved in?

Yes, thanks. I mean I'm really pleased, I mean I obviously inherited it when I do the job, I'm really pleased with the work that our industrial development team has been doing. We have over 500 projects in the works, it's spread out. If you look -- there's a lot of density in the Southeast, but we're also seeing success in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, I mean up to Kentucky and Tennessee as well. The 500 products are spread out about most sectors of our business, actually. The auto is EVs get a lot of the attention and we've been very successful there. I'm very proud of that. You've got VinFast and Rivian and Ford's new plant outside of Memphis and Hyundai growing on our network. We've got Piedmont Lithium coming on with some of the battery technology but we're also seeing significant growth in steel, aluminum, [proposed] with Novelis and et cetera. And a lot of activity on the aggregates, minerals side, frankly, which doesn't get much more high profile, but a lot of activity there, too. So we think we're in a great spot. I mean we're blessed to have a density in the Southeast, which is a great spot to be in. We have a very talented and aggressive industrial development team that's already added 9 more sites to our network availability this year. We've [ cured ] them so that people can work on it. But the key for all of these is, obviously, land availability, workforce availability, power and then to be able to access our network. And then incentives are a big part of it as well and different states are offering different incentives or there's the IRA and other things. So there's a lot of enablers in place right now to make this happen, and you're seeing it happen.

Well, typically, how early does the railroad get involved in an industrial?

Very early. And we'll partner with the state first to designate the sites and make sure it has availability of power and rail access and et cetera. And then oftentimes will go hand-in-hand with the economic development folks in the state to these companies if they're looking at options, and we'll be able to put our best foot forward and trying to be a part of that solution.

Eventually, you talked about availability of manpower. I guess it will lead into the next line of questioning. I mean, the railroads sort of got behind a ball with COVID. I don't think anybody could have predicted the economy with a snapback or could you have predicted sort of where attrition rates went through? And then for the first time in my career, there was a real difficulty hiring people. Usually that was a trucking phenomenon like -- and even to this day, I'm hearing people are still having difficulty hiring people. So I guess a 2-part question. I'll ask the first one. Where do you stand now with staffing? How difficult is it to hire people? Is it across the network difficult? Or are you just looking at certain pockets?

So we're, overall, I mean, this is the thing, it's difficult to -- because you talk about in aggregate, that's an interesting number, but it doesn't really tell the story because if you're 30 people over in Louisville and 30 people under in Cincinnati. It doesn't do you any good. And so we have to look at it by each key location. I would say we're down to less than a handful, about a handful of key locations where we're still a little tight. But in general, we're in a pretty good spot. But in those key spots, they're important to us. So the art and science here is to be able to not just get your total numbers right, but make sure they're in the right spots. And we've got a lot more science going into that and more predictive measures going into that try and help me better at that because we gave you better at that. If you look at during the summer, we were still a little tight in certain spots because of higher vacation period and other things. So we're challenging the team to get better at that future. And we try to get -- we're probably about 100 people lower than we wanted to be through the summer, and that showed up in a couple of spots, especially in August. It is difficult in many spots. There's a lot of competition, maybe it's Amtrak in certain spot or maybe it's a Amazon warehouse or other things. And the railroad is a lifestyle on the T&E side, and it's hard work and you're gone. There's times away from home. And so it's a lifestyle. And so much of our feeder stock over the years or decades came from family and friends recommending it because it can be a good paying job. It can be a lifestyle. If you adjust to it, that can be rewarding and a lot of people take pride. A lot of our realtors take pride in what they do. They're building and moving America. I mean these are important jobs. What we need to do and what we're working hard at CSX is to make it a better job for people to be attracted to. The younger generation doesn't necessarily want to work outside, work with their hands other than playing video games. And so we've got to create the opportunity for people to see this as a career. And that also involves the culture because the railroad companies over the years have not been known as being very employee-friendly institutions to say the least. So all these factors are contributing and the noise around single-person crews and everything contributed to making it an environment where we weren't able to attract and retain as many people as we wanted to. So that's why it's so important, our one CSX initiative and what we're working on to create a better environment, a better culture for our employees is so critical. So simple answer is it's still difficult in certain locations and critically important, and it takes about 6 months to get somebody trained to be a conductor. So it's a long journey and about half of them fall out in the training process from and you invest a lot in them. So there's still a big opportunity here for us to get better.

And you mentioned culture. I remember when you were named CEO, that's one of the things you actually harped on in your conference call with some of the analysts, one of the ones that I joined. So I've heard good things since that point in time. Talk about some of the things that you've done on the culture side.

Well, you have to step back first and realize why is this so important? We're a service business. And I've said this many times, but I'll say it again, we're a service business, and we have to be focused on delivering better service to our customers. We haven't talked about it yet, but this industry hasn't grown largely because we pushed customers away by not serving them well in my judgment. I was a customer on the other end for decades. And so if you start with we're a service business, and we've got to be all about customer service to be able to generate revenue but also to be able to grow, and it's our employees that create that service and provide -- any good customer service organization understands and appreciates that the employees being motivated, being inspired, being a part of that is a critical part of delivering that high-level service. And we weren't motivating and we weren't appreciating and respecting our employees, why I thought we should. So we've made a lot of progress, but there's a long way to go. There's a long history. The CSX team has been through a lot. Since scale railroading was implemented in '17, '18, then COVID and a lot of change. I've been in 4 CEOs in like 7 years. And so there's been a lot of change. And so we need to just really focus on the fundamentals and get our people to feel motivated and inspired to serve again. Serve our customers and serve our company which ultimately will benefit everybody. And so we've made progress, more to do. I've visited 50-some site, I think about 54 sites, unique sites on our network in the first -- not quite a year yet, spent a lot of time with our employees, give a lot of feedback. We do surveys, a lot of interaction to understand what problems need to be solved, how can we solve them? And also then how can we encourage more people to be part of the solution.

One of the things on the getting back to the head count side. There's been obviously a clear concern from the regulators that the railroads are properly staffed because I think a lot of the service issues were linked back to that. Many of the railroaders have said they're really not going to furlough this year. We just saw UP for a very small amount of people. Where do you stand on furloughs at CSX?

Yes. So we don't -- our view is the same as it was, and we said in our Third Quarter Earnings Call way back in October, and that is we don't see a need to furlough T&E employees as we arrive through the cycle. One, we have a high level of attrition. If you think people forget that. So if we just stop hiring for a little bit, our numbers come down. Second of all, we're still hiring. So we can stop hiring if we wanted to. But again, talk about those key locations. So there's a lot of ways to manage your costs without having to furlough employees and there's also the other -- the rest of the business, if we needed to, in a significant downturn, we could take a look at the rest of the business other than just the T&E employees. But right now, we don't see a need for that. Our focus has been on constantly working to improve our service levels, getting better and better and better to give confidence in our customers that we're serious about delivering better service so that we can have a conversation with them about growing the business. And so we're having some of those conversations, which is encouraging and good, again, in an uncertain economic environment, but we feel good about the contracts and relationships we're establishing with our service levels. So there's a number of ways to -- there's over time still in the business. So there's a lot of ways to manage costs. So we have to remind ourselves that there's nothing in the principles of scheduled railroading that says you should optimize your manpower for the low point of the cycle. And so we have to -- we still get confused by that. And so we all acknowledge that we've left a lot of revenue on the table by not having manpower. And I just took you through the challenges it's right now to get manpower and the investment it takes to train them and hire them and retain them. So it's a significant cost if they're not -- they don't -- I think at COVID, heard rough numbers. Half didn't come back when they were furloughed during COVID. You can't replace half in take 6 months, right? So we're all trying to balance that out. But I just want to leave you with confidence there's lots of ways to manage costs if we need to in our business that are in the business today, whether it's over time, whether it's attrition rates, whether it's hiring rates, et cetera. But we want to be very clear that we want to be able to take advantage of the cycle when it comes back up because that's a big loss opportunity. And we also want to continue to get better at service.

Too much freight on the highways and we'll get back to. Way too much, in my opinion. But I want to stick on the regulators a little bit since I referenced them before. Maybe can we talk a little bit about some of the things the STB has mentioned and that, Marty has been pretty clear he wants to implement, which seems like reciprocal switching and then maybe some of the regulations in Congress on the safety side and with the upper end, maybe to hear some of your thoughts.

Yes. Well, first of all, at the highest level, our view on all these subjects has been at CSX, we want to be part of the solution. And part of being part of the solution is being engaged in the conversation, whether it's with the STB or whether it's with the legislators in Congress. So we're frequently in those conversations because we want to be part of the solution, and we need to be part of the conversation. I'll start with the Real Safety Act side, I think it's good that people are taking their time letting NTSB and others do their work so that we can have facts, so we can be focused on what's really affecting safety and we all want the same thing, trust me. We all want safety for our employees, safety for the communities, we live in and work through and drive through. So that's really important. There will be safety legislation. I believe that and I believe the industry will be better when we get there. But thankfully, we're taking our time now to talk through what's really focused on safety and what's all peripheral stuff that was other agendas that maybe people had. I think that's important. On the regulatory side, this STB has a very active and very strongly focused on service levels. And that's driven by customers complaining and customers coming to the STB saying, we've not been getting the service we're paying for it. And so I don't hide from that fact that we've talked about a lot. I mean we have industry-leading service levels, but it's nowhere near where we think it should be, where it needs to be, and we're challenging ourselves to keep getting better and better. And so when it comes to issues like reciprocal switching, we have to wait and see what the STB proposes. So it's a little premature to talk about it. But our view is let's compete on service. And we can defend that all day long to our customers and to the regulators. Let's just keep getting better at service levels, let's keep getting focused on doing that. And whatever happens happen, we'll compete. I come from an industry where you've -- for 30 years in auto industry, you have to compete every day with the best in the world. So I'm not afraid to competition and we're not afraid of competition. The key thing is the balance here because if you make an investment, let's say, you're putting a rail spur into a new plant. You're investing several millions of dollars to do that. Where is the balance here of -- you've made a capital investment for that business. That's the trick here, I think, on the reciprocal switching side as to how do we not disincentivize capital investments to support customers because of potential regulatory action? So that's the fine line we got to walk, but we're very supportive of having the conversation and let's compete on service.

And with the FRA having the upcoming conversations on you guys reporting train weights and lengths I guess, order of pins on that? And do you think this is a precursor for other stuff?

Yes. I mean it's a little more complicated topic, even. I mean our train lengths have not grown in the last several years. They've been pretty steady actually. As a matter of fact, I said they're down a little bit tiny this year because of the intermodal business being down a little bit. But our merchandise side is pretty stable. The key for us is how can we leverage technology and information to work on some of these problems, whether it's railroad crossing, block crossings or whether it's other things. And as an industry, we have to embrace the technology and the capabilities and we need the FRA to embrace it, too, to be able to find solutions to this. I think the solution -- the technical solutions are out there. We have to -- the agency and the air industry has to come together to find those solutions and enable them to happen, which, for many different reasons, hasn't happened over the years. There's solutions out there. Obviously, it's easy for me to say, just keep the trains moving everything will be okay. Get less grafitti, less railroad block crossing, less a lot of things on bad don't happen to keep the trains moving, but it's not that simple. We just need to work together to find solutions. To me, the solutions are out there. We just need to do a better job of working. And that includes the FRA to work together on that.

Fair enough. We're getting close to the limit here. I still have a ton more questions, but I want to at least give the audience a chance to ask any, so I don't monopolize the entire time. Anybody have any questions for Joe before I keep going? On the front row. Mr. Elkott.

Thank you, Joe, and thank you, Jason, for the discussion. Joe, can you update us on your thoughts on locomotives? Do you have more upgrades coming? And do you foresee parking some more locomotives or some locomotives as the volume environment remains anemic?

Yes. So we have parked a few. But with grain peak season coming up, I think you'll see more sets actually go into service. The Wabtec issues lately have caused a slowdown a little bit on some of the rebuilds, but we're still rebuilding and we feel good about that. I would say I don't see significant parking opportunity going forward because I believe with our service levels, we're going to show that we can grow this business over the next several years. So we have the capacity to support that. We do have an aging fleet. So we're watching that very carefully. We are, of course, partnering with CPKC and joint venture to work on hydrogen locomotives, which you've probably seen. So that's a longer-term potential solution that we feel good about. But in the near term, we parked a few given some of the volume, but we'll put more back in service for the grain season and I don't see huge opportunities. What we really need to do is keep the rebuild cycle going for both distributed power and also for emissions reasons, but also just to have locomotives available. I will say it does appear in the industry, there's been a little tight -- been tight on locomotives this summer actually, for various reasons because there's been a lot of locomotives being shared across the network. So that's something to watch for.

Thank you very much. Mark?

Canada seems to have a close cooperation between the railroad and the LTL business. Do you -- with what looks like some more consolidation in the LTL business in America, do you see that as an opportunity to do more LTL business? Are there dynamics in the U.S., which prevent a more vibrant cooperation between rail and LTL?

Yes. Thanks. I don't see that there are any obstacles to us having a better relationship and being better partners. I think, frankly, it goes back to what I keep saying, which is our service levels haven't been good enough for those partners to be able to be more supportive of rail. We have a very good relationship with Schneider. We have good relationship with J.B. Hunt. We have a good relationship with a number of others as well, Hub and others. And our view is as our service levels improve and our fluidity of our network improves, they'll be even more excited about doing work with us. So I've had good conversations with the CEOs of all these companies about how committed we are to that. And I believe that they want to partner with us, too. So I think it's more on our side to make happen, and we've got to be committed to it, and we've got to be better partners. And that's certainly what we're trying to do. By the way, we're learning a lot owning quality carriers two, about at least that part of the trucking business, it's a pretty good sized trucking business, a very good business for us with ISO tank intermodal business, et cetera, that's helping us learn a little bit more about what it's like to be on the other side of this relationship as well.

Any other questions from the audience? Joe, I'm going to leave you with one last one. The rail industry over time really hasn't grown volumes. So how confident are you in the future that the railroads a, can change that; and b, will ESG play any role in our mobile growth?

I'm very confident it can happen. We just -- it's up to the industry. I'd say industry because 40% of what we move of interchanges with others. So that's an important part of it. I think, as I've said, we have to stay committed to providing a better customer service level and consistently repeatedly doing that. We have advantages were lower cost, where definitely the ESG component is a factor and playing more and more of a factor. We take freight and traffic off the roads where the taxpayers pay for that. You know all these stories. So there's a lot of positive things that should be supportive of us. It comes back to us, in my view, delivering more consistent reliable service and being focused on it and committed to it. And I think, I know because I've talked to many of our customers, they want to do more business with us, they need to believe that we're going to be there for them. And through the cycle, and that we're going to prioritize serving them. And so that's up to us, and we're focused really hard on it. But there is growth opportunity, I believe that.

Fantastic. Everyone, please join me in thanking Joe.