Union Pacific Corporation (UNP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right, everyone. We're going to get started with our next panel. Please sit down. So we're going to be talking about another great American company, Union Pacific. It's about 600 million shares outstanding and trading around, I think, 214, $128 billion market cap, about $30 billion of net debt. In addition to being a premier rail franchise in North America, the firm has a strong history of operating results, capital allocation. So since 2006, the firm has reduced outstanding shares by 44%, grown the dividend at a 17% CAGR and essentially doubled returns on invested capital to 15.8% 4Q. Jennifer Hamann is our panelist today. She has served as Chief Financial Officer since being appointed in January of 2020. Jennifer began her career at UP in 1992 as a member of the audit staff so an incredible career in different leadership roles on her way to being the senior finance executive. She received her MBA from the University of Nebraska and is on the boards of the Omaha Performing Art Society Foundation and the College World Series of Omaha. So very excited to talk about Bulk Freight and also hitting home runs for shareholders. So thank you, Jennifer, for joining us.

Thank you, Matt, for that introduction. Thanks, everyone, for being here today.

All right. So coming off the back of comments in the first quarter, solid execution progress despite some volatility and seasonality for being a tougher quarter during the year. Maybe you could just give us a quick summary of your plans for this year, your interim goals from the Investor Day and where you see the company in 5-plus years.

Okay. Well, thanks for that. There's a lot there, so I'll maybe take it in pieces. So let me start with what I consider -- what we consider to be the foundation for us, and that's our strategy because that's what sets us up for everything else that we're going to talk about. And our strategy is safety, which is absolute. It's our primary importance. It's something we have to start every day with, and that's the safety for our employees, certainly, but also safety for our customers and the communities that we operate in. It's providing a good service product to our customers and delivering to them what we sold to them. It's doing it in what we're terming an operationally excellent way. And when you think about our business, railroads extremely asset intensive. So we need to sweat those assets. We need to use those very efficiently. And if we do those 3 things and do them well consistently, then that's going to enable us to grow the business. And that's one of our key drivers of profitability is growth. So you referenced our Investor Day. So we had an Investor Day last September, and we laid out 3-year targets. And what those targets are is that we expect to grow our business, grow our volumes faster than the markets that we serve. We think we can do that because of our service, because of the products we put in the marketplace. We believe we should grow our revenues faster than those markets because pricing is a key part of our story as well. We're delivering something very valuable. We want to price to that. And so you have that as kind of the stage for the algorithm. Pricing, we believe it should be accretive to our margins. It wasn't for a couple of years when inflation really ticked up on us, but we have committed that it will be accretive to our margins for the next 3 years. And if you put that together, along with our commitment to have the best operating ratio, we talk about a little different in the rail industry, instead of margin, we talk operating ratio that it should be the best in the industry. Our ROIC should be the best in the industry. We've committed to that over that 3-year time period. We do that, we believe we should grow our EPS high single digit to low double digit over the next 3 years. You mentioned capital, obviously, very important. So capital returns. Our first dollars go back into our business. So over the next 3 years, we expect to invest somewhere between $3.4 billion and $3.7 billion on an annual basis. We're committed to returning good dividends to our shareholders as well so we have a target of a 45% dividend payout ratio, it's industry-leading. We also have a track record of dividend increases. We've increased our dividend the last 17 years in a row, and we committed at that shareholder meeting or the investor meeting that we will continue to invest and increase that annually. And then returning excess cash through share repurchases. So we have been using our balance sheet. You referenced the debt that we have on our balance sheet, we're solidly A-rated, great investment-grade credit rating, but we do take on debt and use that for share repurchases in addition to the cash flows that we generate. We said over the next 3 years, we'll repurchase between $4 billion and $5 billion annually so continuing strong repurchases. And we think, again, that's a great algorithm for our shareholders. Bringing that down a level to 2025. We really didn't give what I'll call specific guidance for 2025, even in January, a lot of uncertainty in the world other than to reiterate we think the things that we'll accomplish in 2025 will be absolutely consistent with those 3-year targets that we laid out. Very confident that we can improve our margins. I think the growth is the piece that's a little bit more uncertain. We know there's some things with international intermodal, we'll probably get into that in a little bit, but had very strong growth in 2024. That's going to be tough for us to replicate, Mark, tariffs aside in 2025, but very much committed to improving our margins, staying industry-leading in terms of our margins and ROIC, the accretive pricing. And really, you saw us start that in our first quarter. Earnings were flat year-over-year. There were some different challenges mostly from fuel and the leap year that impacted our business. But even setting that aside, had a strong quarter, good start to the year, good start to the 5-year track record.

So I mean, listening the call last week, I know we're -- it's obviously very fluid with the trade impacts, the tariffs, et cetera. And you gave a nice synopsis of what the uncertainty is and so on. Maybe if you could just -- if we've progressed at all in understanding a little bit more what's going on and maybe against the headlines we're hearing about some of the port, the West Coast, seeing a precipitous drop potentially in the next couple of weeks. Maybe you could just comment or bring us up to speed on some of the tariff items and whether -- what's essentially happened over even the week since you just reported?

Yes, we did just report last Thursday. So our volumes have stayed strong in April. Our first quarter volumes were up 7% year-over-year. Our April volumes were basically up 7% year-over-year. So we have not yet seen that. And within that, our international intermodal volumes, so those are the steamship volumes that are coming in through the West Coast ports, they're up over 30%. Some of that likely is some pre-shipping ahead of the tariffs. We're seeing and hearing some of the same things from our customers. We're expecting probably in the next couple of weeks to see that drop pretty substantially. It's not going to go to 0 because when you think about the West Coast ports, certainly, China is a big part of that, but then you also have Southeast Asia, and we're actually seeing some increases in terms of business that's coming from the Southeast Asia part. So net-net, we still think it will be down. We'll see how long that lasts. Is this something that's going to go down and stay down? Is this something that's going to be a temporary interruption, and we'll see things come back as the summer progresses? Obviously, a lot to be determined there. But it's one part of our business. That's really where we like our franchise position and that we're very diversified against the 23 states that we operate in. When one part of the business is down, you usually see other parts that are up. And so that helps us offset some of these uncertainties that are out there.

Okay. And as an admirer of your business, I'm fascinated by all the stuff that you guys carry on your rails. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the mix today. What are some of the puts and takes around the current dynamics and shifts from the ports, et cetera. And then we've seen some initiatives by the executive Ranch, coal initiative so on, and that's a big piece of freight. So maybe you could just provide a little more color about the current mix, some fluctuations that's happening today. And then as we think about the optimal mix for the future, how do you see that sort of the best mix in terms of diversification with customers, et cetera? So just a lot more about the freight.

A lot more about mix and freight.

Many questions there, but we're all interested in the coal products.

Okay. Well, and so the mix -- when we talk about mix in our business, we're talking about it more from a standpoint of what's the average revenue per car that we bring in for all the different types of freight that we move. And when you hear us talk about something that's lower mix, we're referring to something that has an average revenue per car that's below the system average. And so international intermodal, and we've talked very publicly about this, it is our lowest average revenue per car business. And it's actually 40% to 45% below kind of the system average. So that gives you some perspective. That doesn't mean it's not profitable business because all of our business is profitable, and that's something that we insist upon that we're not going to move some commodity to subsidize another commodity. So we're very conscious about that. When you look at our mix in the first quarter, which was a bit of a headwind to our earnings, it was because, in part, international intermodal was up so much. The other thing that was up, you mentioned coal. So our coal volumes were up, I think, about 5% in the first quarter. Coal is actually a little bit below our system average as well when you look at that on an average revenue per car basis. The other thing that we saw in the quarter is that some of our higher average revenue per car businesses, which tend to move in what we call our industrial sector. So think about construction products, think about steel, plastics, lumber, all of those different commodities. Those are commodities that require more handling, more specialized cars. And so those tend to move at more of a premium or a higher average revenue per car. Many of those segments were down year-over-year in the first quarter that further contributed to some of that negative mix. In fact, our Industrial segment as a whole was down 1% against our bulk segment, which is where coal is at, which was up, I think, 2% or 3%. And then the last part of our business, which is the premium business, that's where international intermodal falls. That was up, I believe, 13%. But within that, again, strong international intermodal, so low average revenue per car. Finished vehicles were actually down year-over-year, and that tends to be a higher average revenue per car. So the neat thing about it is we do touch virtually everything that you use in your daily life. The coal that's firing, the electricity that move by rail. Probably shares came by rail. The cars that you drove to be here today probably moved in a railcar at some point. So that's what we like about our franchise. We like that mix of business because it is a natural economic hedge, as I mentioned. And so while you may have pressures in one quarter, other quarters, if you get greater growth on, say, the grain side or some of that industrial commodity, those can help support it. But we are a network business. And so I'm not going to say I just want to move coal or I just want to move finished vehicles because if I've got an intermodal train that's moving from L.A. to Dallas and maybe those locomotives are pulling an intermodal train, but then it's going to head back to Denver pulling plastics that are coming out of the Texas Gulf Coast. So it's all very much interrelated. And so our key thing is to, again, price every piece of business we can as competitively we can to the market and taking into account the service we're providing and then move it in a very, very efficient manner. When we do that and we leverage volume across that asset base, it can be a very powerful algorithm for us. So we like the coal, we like the intermodal. We like the unit train business. We think our manifest business does set us apart from others in terms of that touch point -- extra touch point into the industrial economy, particularly that Texas Gulf Coast. So it's a great, I'll say, problem to have in that we have that diversity. It does mean we have to -- we're a lot of different halves for our customers and be able to meet them where their needs are at. But it's hard for me to say this is an optimal mix because everything supports one another. And our overall objective is to grow with our customers and to find where their service needs are at so that we can drive that growth. Growth again across the fixed network is very powerful.

I'll ask one more before we go to the audience. Obviously, we're going to be debating the trade tariff dynamics going forward. But I think there does seem to be some consensus on nearshoring and -- certainly onshoring, but nearshoring, you have a wonderful business down in Mexico, and we heard from the previous panelists about the importance of a comparative advantage. And so to the extent that we do move to a more focused area like using Mexico, the trade and bolstering that and with your investment there. Maybe you could just talk a little bit about the investments you have today in Mexico that puts you in kind of a unique leadership position, the potential to ramp that up. How flexible are you in terms of being able to move your capital allocation if we get more clear dynamics from the executive branch in terms of where this all sort of shakes out in the next couple of months. And the returns from Mexico in the past, have they sort of matched invested capital that you've achieved today?

Yes. So to start off with, so we own 26% of one of the Mexican railroads. There's 2 railroads in Mexico. We own 26% of the FXE railroad. We actually are the only railroad in North America that interchanges at all 6 border crossings. So we do interchange with the other Mexican railroad. We just have the ownership interest in the FXE. The FXE runs a very good network. We've owned that interest since the industry was privatized, they auctioned the concessions. And so we've had that ownership relationship for just over 25 years. And it has been a great investment for us and certainly has paid dividends to us quite literally in terms of how that business has grown. And it fits very well within our portfolio. When you think about the business that moves north-south, you've seen tremendous growth over the last several years in the automotive space, automotive manufacturing, automotive parts, intermodal when you think about some of the McChledoro manufacturing that is set up more closer to the northern part of the border, which is where certainly you could see some expansion if you see more nearshoring, and that's where you're seeing some of that manufacturing base grow. And then you have the -- so that supports the intermodal piece. And then you have things like food and beverages as well. In fact, fun fact that I'll share with this group. So we move a lot, and I do mean a lot of beer out of Mexico. And in fact, in one box car, you can ship, I think it's close to 110,000 bottles or cans of beer. So that would be enough to supply everyone in Memorial Stadium for a Husker Game Day or for those of you I know who aren't from Omaha, maybe East Coast, West Coast, you could have Dodger Stadium filled and Yankee Stadium filled and give everybody a beer. So just something to kind of lock into your brain there that it's a great business for us. And we like the partnership. In terms of investment, obviously, the FXE, they make their capital allocation within Mexico. We support and can support it with things that we invest on north of the border here in the U.S. And we've got tremendous flexibility really with our capital spend. As I mentioned, we're going to spend annually $3.4 billion to $3.7 billion. If you break that down, call it, $2 billion of that is basically to invest and reinvest in our existing infrastructure for safety, for maintenance to keep things running well. The other portion is for growth. And so that's where we're looking for opportunities to invest with customers, to invest in facilities to support the growth, and we can be very targeted with that. Sometimes those investments are in our track structure so they can support all the different businesses. Sometimes it's maybe just in an intermodal ramp, and so it's going to be something specific for the intermodal business.

So we'd like to know the audience with questions. So there's one in the back there. Again, if you could just say your name and a quick question, please.

My name is Shweta. Just continuing with what we are discussing just before you open it up for Q&A. I was sort of curious as to what Union Pacific is thinking in terms of any mergers, like not asking specifically, but like broadly, what are the key pieces of investments or pieces that you would want to sort of own similar to FXE. And yes, that was my question.

Okay. So in terms of capital allocation, as I mentioned, we are buying shares back. we consider that part of our investment to be flexible. So we're always looking, is there something that we can invest in that can bring more carloads to Union Pacific. That's the growth engine. That's the moneymaker. How do we bring more business to that profitable railroad franchise. And so that's an evaluation that we're making all the time. Certainly, when we made the 26% investment in the FXE, again, 25 years ago, I think that investment, I think -- I know that investment certainly paid dividends. You mentioned mergers. We are regulated in our industry by the Surface Transportation Board. And so they have a set of rules that are out there that govern whether you can and can't merge in different thresholds that you have to meet. The merger that was done between the Canadian Pacific and the Kansas City Southern a couple of years ago was done under a different set of merger rules. Prior to that, they had actually changed it. And so you can't just put together a merger that is going to maintain the competitive level. They've actually upped the ante on that, if you will, to say you have to actually enhance competition if you do a merger. So that's a pretty high bar. When I think about the freight industry and I think about the fact that we're interchanging business with our partners to the East, we interchange partners to the North and South. We actually interchange traffic with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, who's our closest Western competitor, to the extent that we can do things that help improve those interchanges that we can make that more seamless for our customers, that really gets back to that growth piece. It all kind of goes back to that growth. How can we operate better that can help us support our customers' growth. If we're going to have more near-shoring into the United States, that's, I think, great for the rail industry. Generally speaking, if you have a manufacturing plant on your lines, you get the loads into the plant, maybe you're taking scrap into a steel mill and then you're taking the finished goods out. There's a new soybean crush plant that just opened in Norfolk, Nebraska. So we're taking soybeans into the plant. We're taking oils out. Those are great pieces of business for us. And so we're going to look to make investments to support that, support our customers. But there's -- from a regulatory standpoint, there's a lot of considerations.

My name is Tyler Crow. Just a quick question. Past 15, 20 years, margin expansion or operation ratio reduction in rail has been pretty spectacular. Just going forward from here, do you foresee similar reductions? Or are we starting to hit like an upper bound in terms of margin expansion?

Yes. No, thank you for that question. So when we think about margin expansion, the levers that we have used to improve our margin are pretty basic. It's probably the same for every business. It's your pricing, which we've talked about. It's your ability to be productive, use those assets very efficiently. And then it's your volume. How much more volume and density can you put across that. If you look over the past many years, the way that we have improved our margins have been primarily through the price piece and the productivity piece. We have not seen substantial growth in our industry. In fact, things have been flat. There's a number of reasons. Coal going down and being in secular decline is one of those, getting maybe a little reprieve right now. But long term, it still seems to be declining. That's why we're very anxious to improve our service product and attract new business, more intermodal business to our network. So we do continue to see opportunities to improve. As I mentioned, our guidance that's out there is that we're going to be industry-leading in terms of our operating ratios. We think we can do that with the knowledge that all of our other competitors are working to improve their margins. When you have better margins that makes you more competitive, it opens more markets to you that can further facilitate that growth. So is it going to be at the same level? It does get harder every time you take that step down. But we don't know that there's an absolute floor out there. We're continuing to work to improve, and that's our commitment over the next many years.

And I think I'm going to jump in on just -- I think one of the -- we've seen historically leaps in efficiency through different cycles of the technology and management for the rails. And you've been working on adaptive planning. And I would like to just quickly dig into that, what you're doing there, what's unique about it? And what are the constraints in terms of being able to ramp that up for efficiency, whether it's compute infrastructure at the micro rail level, et cetera. Sort of curious as to how that is progressing as well.

Yes. No, thank you for that question. So technology really is going to be, in my view, the big unlock as we go forward in terms of making more of the changes and improvements in our margins. Adaptive planning for us is still in its very early stages. And probably the easiest way and actually, our Chief Operating Officer, Eric Gehringer, used this example a month or so ago with investors, and it resonated is think about it like ways for the railroad or your Google Maps where it tells you where you maybe have an outage or a traffic jam and it suggests rerouting for you. That's our goal for adaptive planning is to be able to be that real time that it's prompting our dispatchers, prompting our terminal managers of how to change their operations to minimize the disruption to the network. It's in earlier stages today. Today, we're using it not quite real time, but it's still helping us look at our transportation plan, change our transportation plan more frequently as our volumes are changing, helping us identify where I can build trains, where I can maybe reroute cars to minimize touches because every time we touch a car, there's a safety impact, there's an expense impact and there's a service impact potentially. And so we're using adaptive planning to help improve that process, streamline that process and be more consistent in that decision-making as well. I'll mention another product called Customer vision. We also know everyone in this room is used to the Amazon experience and used to be able to knowing where your package is at any point in time. That expectation is coming to the railroad industry as well from the traffic managers. And so can we give customers the visibility to their product as it's moving across our rail lines and whether it's on our rail line or maybe on another partner's rail lines, how to give them better visibility and management of their packages. So a lot to come there. One place where I would say UP is uniquely situated to be able to drive things like adaptive planning, like customer vision is we are the only Class 1 rail who has a fully updated platform of what we view as the 3 key technologies. So it's positive train control, it's our dispatching platform as well as our transportation control system.

Okay. And we have about 2 minutes left of our discussion. So on the subject of technology, EV trucking, I know it's still off. Maybe you could talk about how management is thinking about that change in technology. And the question I have is it would be the worry about transportation costs or the autonomous ability to be more bespoke with the delivery. So curious as to how you see that playing out, what you're doing to sort of be prepared for that evolution? And what are the different aspects that could be competitive to your own system?

Yes. Well, so first of all, I obviously have to put a plug in for my industry. If you're comfortable having an 18-wheeler on the interstate highway beside you going 80 miles an hour, you should be comfortable with a train on a fixed set of tracks without somebody in the cab of the locomotive. And so that's -- if you think about autonomous trucks, then you also need to think and be open to autonomous trains. We think we can do that and be much, much safer with that. The EV aspect is interesting because the batteries today take up tremendous weight. And with that weight, it takes lighting out of the trucks and makes that less competitive just from a per unit haulage. You also have the issue with how far can they go on the EV charge, what's the time then to charge, just the productivity aspect of that. I don't say that's diminished because we know that technology is evolving. We know that people are working on that. But it feels like that's really getting elongated. I mean I can kind of think back probably 10 to -- well, probably 10 years or so ago, I think 2025 was supposed to be one of the breakout years for EV and autonomous. And obviously, we're not quite there yet. But that's where things like adaptive planning, continuing to refine our positive train control technologies, those are all the things that we need to do as an industry to continue to prove our safety, improve the product for our customers and position ourselves for a potential competitive threat like that.

Great. Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to have you.

Thanks so much.