CSX Corp (CSX) — Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Krista. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. Joining me this afternoon are Joe Hinrichs, President and Chief Executive Officer; Mike Cory, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer; Kevin Boone, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Sean Pelkey, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In the presentation accompanying this call, you will find our forward-looking disclosure on Slide 2, followed by our non-GAAP disclosure on Slide 3. And with that, it is now my pleasure to introduce Mr. Joe Hinrichs.

All right. Thank you, Matthew, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our conference call today. Over this last year, CSX's mission and message have remained clear and consistent. We have seen great progress with our ONE CSX initiatives, which are helping to build a focused, collaborative culture that enables all of our employees to feel engaged, energized and focused on working better together. At the same time, our service levels continue to lead the industry. These successes go hand in hand. And as our customers see that CSX is truly dedicated to providing consistent, reliable service over the long term, they are responding positively. As we look forward to all the opportunities ahead, we are confident that the efforts we are making will drive clear, sustainable, profitable growth. And we took another step forward on this path this quarter. Thanks to the hard work put in by our ONE CSX team, our railroad is running well. Our merchandise business remained steady, and our coal shipments were very strong. Our domestic intermodal volumes are growing well compared to last year. Our international intermodal business, though down year-over-year, has stabilized. Overall, our network continues to perform, and I am pleased with how the team has succeeded in managing the things that we can control. I am very excited about all the potential ahead for CSX. Now, let's turn to Slide 5 to review the highlights for the third quarter. First, we moved over 1.5 million carloads this quarter, which was down just slightly from a year ago, with flat year-over-year performance in merchandise and 9% growth in coal. Our operating ratio ticked up into the low 60% as we faced challenges that we have been talking about all year, with lower fuel recovery, reduced intermodal storage revenue, lower export coal prices, and higher costs of inflation, most notably with our labor contract. As in previous quarters, our margin does include the impact of the Quality Carriers trucking business. Second, we generated $3.6 billion in revenue, which was 8% lower than the previous year. Last year, we benefited from high diesel prices and record export coal benchmarks that were both much lower this quarter. Third, even with the year-over-year changes we faced, operating income still came in at $1.3 billion for the quarter compared to a little under $1.6 billion last year. Our earnings per share were $0.42, down from $0.52. I am proud of what we accomplished this quarter given all the challenges. None of us here are satisfied with these results. We are not sitting back and simply waiting for markets to turn. We are looking throughout the entire network to see where we can operate more efficiently. We continue to work closely with our customers to build our business pipeline and drive more volume onto the railroad. We are emphasizing the importance of cost discipline to every team in every one of our locations. One of the reasons I am so confident about what is ahead for CSX is the great leadership team that we have in place. As you all saw last month, we were very pleased to announce that Mike Cory has joined our railroad as Chief Operating Officer. Mike brings great experience and a thorough understanding of scheduled railroading, and he also shares our deep dedication and appreciation for customer service and the employees who provide that service day in and day out. Mike arrived in Jacksonville a few weeks ago and is now here joining us on this call. And so, I will now turn it over to Mike to say a few words and cover our operational performance over the quarter.

Well, thank you very much, Joe. I truly appreciate the words. I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to work with such a committed team of people with so much potential to lead this industry with great customer service. Safety, service, efficiency, and engagement with each other, customers and stakeholders, is how we are going to leverage this great franchise to be best in class. I have been here a short time, pretty much less than a month, but I've been really busy. I've visited major yards, coal export facilities, and I've spent time in headquarters meeting with an array of people from different functions of the railroad. In person, I've listened to and I've spoken with employees from all across the company; from people on the ground executing the plan, to people developing the plan, to sales and marketing, finance, field and network ops, IT facilities, and the list goes on. But what really resonates with me is their collective desire to be the best they can be for our ONE CSX team and our customers. We have great talent in all our functions, and our job is to connect the talent and maximize the value of their efforts. We're doing this to ensure our team is the best at providing what our customers need in the safest and most efficient way. We're doing this because decision-making, acting on what they see and know, must be quick and done as close to where the opportunity is taking place. That said, I see opportunities, one of which, and to me, the most important at this stage, is to create and share a robust and visible flow of information that will drive improvement through the continuation of the lean principles that define scheduled railroading. We all need to see the effects of our collective decisions as fast as possible, be more nimble and responsive to our customers' needs. Collectively, we will learn and share best practices throughout the organization from this and other available data as it gives us a platform to learn as it happens. This will create the speed and the trust that we need to move together as one team. Let's go over to the slides and we'll start looking at our safety metrics. Our third quarter injury and accident rates increased as we saw track-caused and human factor incidents trend upward. These are not acceptable outcomes for us. We are taking action to continuously improve the environment our employees operate in, as well as the overall safety culture. Human factor incidents, especially with newly hired employees, is one of the trends this year that have driven the increase. In Q3, the team added additional time for initial training for our new conductors at our REDI Center in Atlanta. We also looked at the length of training when new hires graduate from Atlanta and report back to their home terminals and increased the length of that training as well. Increased training gives us more time to develop skills with our new hires, but we also determined we needed to place resources to spend that time with them. So, we train unionized mentors and now we have them across the property with the new hires. These mentors are available to teach and answer questions, reinforcing the ONE CSX culture by being part of developing and coaching their newly hired peers. Lastly, on safety, we're not taking our focus off life-changing events. We've partnered with DEKRA, a specialty risk management group, to roll out training to help employees self-identify risk in an ever-changing environment. Traditionally, railroads train on operating rules, but we can't write a rule for everything or test our way to a positive safety culture. Both identification of risk and eliminating that risk when possible is one of our major goals moving into Q4 and beyond.

Thank you. Mike and I have been spending a lot of time together, and it is really great to have you on the team. To start, I'm pleased to say that our improving service levels are a key differentiator in the marketplace. I can't thank the entire team enough for all the hard work. These improvements are being recognized by our customers and are leading to new initiatives and discussions around how CSX can partner with our customers for growth. Our ability to grow profitably requires us to be proactive, quickly adapt to changing markets, and think differently. I'm proud of how well we have been able to coordinate with operations to drive both growth and efficiencies. With Mike in his role, we have only seen these efforts accelerate. It's no surprise that overall economic conditions remain uncertain, but it has been encouraging to see gradually improving sequential trends across several of our end markets over this past quarter. We see numerous reasons to be optimistic as we continue to build our business pipeline with an eye toward 2024 and beyond.

Thank you, Kevin, and good afternoon. The third quarter operating income of $1.3 billion was lower by 18%, or $284 million. These results include nearly $350 million of year-over-year impacts from lower intermodal storage revenue, export coal benchmark prices, and fuel recovery, partly offset by $42 million of favorability related to last year's labor agreement adjustment. Suffice it to say this quarter should represent the peak year-over-year impact from these discrete items. Revenue fell by 8% or $323 million despite strong pricing across many merchandise portfolios along with positive volume trends across many merchandise markets and domestic intermodal. The operating team also worked tirelessly to meet customer needs and deliver a 9% increase in coal volume.

All right. Thank you, Sean. Now as shown on Slide 19, we will finish with some updated comments on our outlook as we approach the final quarter of 2023. We continue to expect low single-digit growth in revenue ton-miles for the full year, supported by our consistent performance in merchandise and export coal. Automotive and minerals remain important growth areas. So, obviously, we're watching developments with the automakers and the UAW very closely. As Kevin mentioned, we also look for a substantial rebound in our ag and food business over the fourth quarter. Export coal volumes remain strong as global demand stays high for U.S. met and thermal coal. For domestic coal, we anticipate some slowdown from the third quarter, which benefited from hot summer weather, though so far this quarter we continue to be pleased with our shipment levels. For intermodal, as we mentioned, we expect domestic activity to keep gaining modest momentum through the fourth quarter while, for now, our international business looks largely stable. Overall, our volume growth rate in intermodal will reflect favorable year-over-year comparisons. As we've said all year, the pricing environment remains supportive, and we have been encouraged by the agreements that you've already reached for 2024. Note that with the slowdown in intermodal storage revenue that we have seen over the course of this year, we are now expecting supplemental revenue, excluding trucking, to decline by $325 million for the full year. Our commitment to efficiency and cost control remains in place as we keep our eye on service performance, not just in the near term, but also as we look ahead to improve market conditions and greater demand for rail capacity. Finally, our estimate of $2.3 billion in capital expenditures remains unchanged, along with our strong focus on innovation and growth.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to start by asking Joe or Mike about your perspective on your resources and services in relation to the current volume environment. It seems headcount has increased again. Can you share your thoughts on whether your staffing levels are appropriate and how they align with the volume environment? Are you able to handle more at these current levels, or are we still in a recovery phase?

Hey, Chris, it's Mike. Look, and again, I'm going to preface most of my answers by saying I've been here less than a month, but we still have the training pipeline. We still have people that we need to get into position that I spoke of earlier. But overall, I'm comfortable that we have enough to improve the size of trains, the amount of trains, the velocity with the people we have. However, there are areas where we're probably getting affected somewhat on the flow of goods. And so, it's constant. We're working, not just Kevin and I, but our teams together so they really get the ground floor view of what we can do. And not having been here for that long, I haven't really stretched the opportunities out there yet. To answer your question, we're where we need to be. We have people that are being trained and are going to be positioned. And remember, we have attrition that we're filling. With the people we have, we're in good shape. We have to get in better shape, and a lot of that is going to come from self-help and how we utilize the assets.

Yeah. Chris, just the last thing I'll add is, as Mike mentioned, we're still hiring in a few key locations. That's down to a little more than a handful. And largely, we're in pretty good shape in most other spots. With the natural attrition we have, we're still hiring to replace some of that because our merchandise volume is up this year. So, we're still seeing some growth in volume. But we feel pretty good about our ability to manage that. Mike has really challenged the team to come with a fresh set of eyes to look at how we can do some self-help to free up some of our crews to help us even be more efficient. Thanks.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. And Mike, welcome back to the industry. Congrats. Just wanted to ask more about the service side, maybe for Kevin. You're seeing some conversion that you mentioned of areas that have excess truck capacity. So, is the stuff that you thought you lost before and was going to come back, or has the service been so good for so long that people are actually going to convert and stay there? Just trying to get a sense of the stickiness of that. And then, Sean, if you can just give us some comments on the cost per employee for the fourth quarter? It looks like overtime is coming down quite a bit. There's always a mix of training involved. So, any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.

Yeah. I would say on the truck conversion side, we're really early into this thing. The good news is customers are willing to start to have those conversations that, quite frankly, we just couldn't have a year ago, given where we were. So, we're building momentum. I expect this to build on itself into next year. The great thing is, as an industry, we're starting to become aligned in terms of going after growth, going after some of the opportunities that exist out there collectively, and I think that's very encouraging as well. But it's a mixture. It's a mixture of going after new customers. Clearly, you pointed out that the trucking market is not very supportive right now. But even in this market, we're finding customers that, with ESG and with other things, are wanting to have that discussion. There's still value that we can drive. But I only expect, as that trucking market firms up in the next year and the years ahead, that this will accelerate on itself and see a lot of momentum coming.

Brian, on your follow-up question around cost per employee, we did make a lot of progress on the overtime front in the third quarter. That's an area that Mike has focused on, trying to figure out ways we can restructure the work and eliminate waste in certain locations. So that's going to help. I will say though, sequentially Q3 to Q4, you probably will see an uptick in cost per employee like we normally do. That's driven by some capital work labor that will go over to OE in the fourth quarter. We also have some seasonal vacation and some accruals that will hit in the fourth quarter. So I would say, sequentially Q3 to Q4, you'll probably see comp per employee up a few percent.

Hey, good evening, and thanks for taking my question. And Mike, can I just ask you, the U.S. roads historically just haven't had a great track record of organic growth and we know it seems like coal has been a long-term headwind. But what have you seen in your first month or so that you would like to see at the CSX plan or changes you want to make that will help with this idea that CSX can outgrow the market looking ahead?

Thank you, Brandon. As I mentioned earlier, the visibility of information fosters a connection where our team can see the various functions we manage, from terminal operations to road dispatch and crew management. We handle each of these aspects independently, but when we integrate them, it enhances our understanding of capacity and service capabilities, which is vital. The opportunity here is significant; in my previous railway experience, business was spread over long distances, but here it's abundant and competitive. While we naturally aim to grow alongside the market, the real potential lies in how we connect our teams, as we already service about two-thirds of the U.S. market, which in itself is a tremendous opportunity.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Mike, I kind of want to build on that and you kind of brought up your former role as well. You transitioned there from a PSR railroad to a growth railroad, and maybe that didn't go as smoothly as you would have hoped. So, you're not joining a fixer-upper here. CSX's service metrics have improved vastly over the last year or two, and now you're pivoting to growth. So, what are some of the lessons that you've learned from that transition at the last role on some of the dangers to avoid? And how do you manage capacity as you're trying to fill the network without clogging it up and causing service issues?

Thanks, Jonathan. One of the wounds just opened up. Look, it's no different. We have to be really aligned. First of all, we have to understand what our assets and our people can do for us and expand on that, obviously. I don't see the market, the commodities we move being the same as the growth in where I came from. But I just don't see the market and the commodities we move being the same as the growth over where I came from. The principles are the same. We sell a service, we deliver a service. How fast we recover from service disruptions is key to keeping the customer knowing that our goal is to be the reliable provider for them. I don't see any difference, and you can look back and take a look at the history, but I'm looking forward. I don't think anything changes in my view on how we approach this. We know what we can do, and we continue to stay close. The teams being together from the ground floor up, there shouldn't be surprises. If there are, we're going to build our resiliency so that we can attack it and be reliable for the customer. I don't see a big difference in terms of the model that we have here.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. Maybe Kevin, just any color on how much of an uptick in the coal yield we should expect in Q4 and into Q1? And then maybe just Sean, just help us think about some of the puts and takes for Q4. It just sounds like better volume, less of a fuel headwind, maybe some met uplift, but maybe some continued cost pressure. So, you put it altogether, do you think operating ratio gets better or worse from Q3? Any directional color you want to give us?

Yeah. Scott, there can be a lot of mix issues within our coal business. When you think about Southern utilities, longer length of haul, higher RPU versus Northern utilities. Given some of the benchmark strength that we've seen, I would look for something in the low single digits, maybe mid-single digits depending on mix.

Yeah. Scott, on your question around Q4, I think you did a good job summarizing the factors. We're off to a good start in terms of the volume, and that's one of the most important factors in terms of not only seeing OR stay stable to improve, but also more importantly growing our earnings. As you mentioned, fuel should be a little bit less of a negative here in Q4 than it was in Q3. We'll see what the direction of fuel prices is, but we have a $30 million lag in the third quarter that we don't expect to repeat. In terms of costs, seasonally, we typically see higher costs in Q4 than Q3. Each of the last five years, the OR has been worse in Q4 than Q3, aside from the 2020 COVID year. We're off to a good start like I said, and we've got our eyes fixed on places that we can eliminate waste and control costs. We may have a good shot at bucking that seasonal trend and doing a little bit better than that.

Thanks, and good afternoon. Kevin, it sounds like you've recently had some early success with market share gains both truck and rail. But could you expand a little bit more on the commodity groups where you're seeing the most meaningful tailwinds on that front? And as we move into 2024, where do you see the most opportunity to keep that momentum going?

I think it's really within our merchandise portfolio and it's broad-based. There are different initiatives across the board from our metals side of the business which I highlighted. Automotive has been a good strength for us. It's all on the back of service that's differentiated in the market, and we've really been able to capitalize on that with the customer. Customers are looking for reliable service, and I think we've been a standout in the market here year-to-date. There is a lot of momentum there. We are going to start to see some benefits of industrial development in late '24 and into '25 and '26, but it goes back to the service product we have delivered and getting the confidence of industries building new plants that are locating on our railroad. A lot of opportunities exist because we service the East Coast heavily, and that's where we operate.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Sean, I wanted to follow up on that question about the transition from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, but I’d like to frame it in the context of 2024. Clearly, we are shifting from a highly inflationary environment to one that is less so. There is also a projected increase in labor costs in the middle of next year. Additionally, I see that several years ago, PS&O accounted for around 14% or 15% of our revenue. There may be opportunities to improve our cost structure, particularly concerning the significant PS&O item. Can you provide some insight into what the cost structure might look like in 2024? We are currently in an inflationary period, yet there are notable opportunities to leverage various aspects of the cost structure.

Yeah. Amit, obviously, we're still in the planning phases for 2024, so I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. But you know the story on labor and just to make sure everybody understands and level set, we're going to have a 4.5% wage increase mid-year next year, that's the last year of the contract with union employees. In terms of PS&O, at least on the inflationary side, it's early, but I think it's fair to say that we'll start to see some normalization of the inflationary pressures from this year. Mid-single digit inflation this year will probably be a little less than that but certainly higher than the five-year average. So, suffice it to say, we have fewer headwinds overall going into next year than we did going into this year. That sets us up well. We've got cost and efficiency opportunities, but Kevin and the team are building a really nice pipeline of growth that stems from the way we've been serving the customer over the last year, and that sustained service level will drive growth as we get into next year and beyond.

Yeah, good afternoon. Wanted to see, I guess, in the same topic, Sean, if you think about 2024 and volume sensitivity in terms of how the OR performs. Do you think there's a chance that you could see improvement in the OR if you don't see volume growth? And perhaps related to that, from a pricing perspective, there might be a time delay on some of the pricing with multi-year contracts and there might be catch-up on pricing related to inflation.

Our plan is going to be to grow volume ahead of the economy; that's what we're going to shoot for, that's what we're going to plan for. If we were to have no growth next year, I think it would be tough to improve the OR with the continued inflationary pressures that we're seeing. You're cycling; we had that insurance settlement earlier in the year. There are a few things there. Depreciation will continue to go up. So, we need growth. That's what the model requires, and that's what we're building into the plan.

Hi, thanks for taking the question. I want to go back to the domestic intermodal side. You're starting to see some conversion from truck here. When you're talking to customers, what's holding them back from converting at this point? Is there something in the service product that you have to evolve, or is it just simply building that trust with the reliability that you guys have had over the past few months? Just any thoughts there?

To reflect on the pandemic, domestic intermodal and our intermodal franchise performed very well. It outshined the industry in many ways. What minimized our growth opportunity was really the chassis and some of the equipment limitations that existed. We are in a very different world today, so those limitations don't exist year-over-year. We are really seeing the team able to capitalize on that. The strength of our service product is really coming through. With what we talked about previously, we believe service leading in the East allows our customers to grow with us.

Good afternoon, Mike. It's nice to have you back in the sector. Joe or Mike, it seems like operations are performing quite well, and there's still room for improvement. Mike, although you've only been here for a month, could you share your thoughts on any immediate opportunities or low-hanging fruit in operations? Sean and Kevin mentioned needing the volumes for better operating leverage, but do you see any cost-side actions that could support achieving that leverage?

Yeah, I can. Thanks. Look, visibility of waste and getting it and collating that information is important. I want everyone to feel they can come forward with an idea. Moving forward, I want to share my experience and help incorporate that into what they do today. We'll see improvements in all our metrics. We'll focus on velocity, both of trains and cars, but fluidity too. We run a pretty condensed network, and we don't have, in many cases, a lot of time to recover. The plan we put into effect and the discipline about executing that will be crucial. So, I see great opportunity in that. They're motivated and it's up to me to teach them how to get there.

I think the timing of Mike joining us is perfect because we've had a year of taking advantage of our operating model to engage with employees and address our ONE CSX initiative. We have made tremendous progress, especially on service metrics. Now we have Mike coming in with his experience and opportunities, allowing us to step back and say we have come this far. Our team is excited and motivated. You've seen now, as Kevin has highlighted many times, the customers acknowledge the reliable and sustained service levels over the past 12 months. Now we have the opportunity to get more efficient. Mike has come in with excitement about how we can elevate our service metrics and teach our relatively young team what it takes to advance to the next step. I am excited about the potential our team brings.

Thank you. To follow up on that earlier question, can you elaborate a little further, not just on the service side, but Mike, your role in the mandate you've been given to focus on culture, sales, and the integration of Kevin's department with yours? What should we expect to see different from CSX over the next three to five years compared to what we've seen over the last three to five?

That's a tough one, Bascome. I want to learn and share my experience to help develop our team. What I want to promote is the idea that every role plays a part in servicing the customer. I'll be spending time getting everyone to collaborate. When they see their actions impact customer service, they become better advocates. Moving forward, we want our focus on all operations. This isn't just about operations and marketing; it's CSX as a whole. All teams must pull together to build the business and provide excellent service for customers. That's the direction I'm seeking for the next three to five years.

You can't see it, but Mike has the shirt on saying ONE CSX. That’s what we're talking about here. The vision is for our teams to work seamlessly so that customers perceive CSX as one entity rather than a collection of functions. Our focus remains on safety for employees and the communities we serve, leading to service growth. Everyone understands the margins from growth in this business. We’ll realize our potential through operations and marketing functions being one team that seeks all opportunities to serve customers effectively while ensuring profitability and future sustainability. That's the essence of ONE CSX.

Thank you, operator. Joe and team, good afternoon. Mike, welcome back. It must be exciting to hit the ground running and see the railroad showing improved service metrics. My question is for Kevin. You mentioned numerous reasons to be optimistic. You touched on domestic plastics improving. Can you elaborate on that and provide numbers on current industrial project levels and how they compare to previous years?

We're exposed to many cyclical businesses, and many have been in recession over the past year. So the demand fluctuations make comparisons easier moving into 2024. We're seeing significant de-stocking headwinds recently, but with stable demand, we should grow into next year. The industrial development side is very much alive and growing, and we haven’t seen any slowdowns. We need to ensure we have the infrastructure ready to support this growth. We will provide numbers on these projects as we continue developing. But our momentum in this area is very strong.

Yeah, hi. I was wondering if you could maybe give some color or thoughts around the auto sector. It's been an area of strength, but with strikes and work stoppages ongoing, how much cushion do you have relative to inventory out there versus how long these disruptions will impact carloads?

We want a quick resolution; the quicker, the better. The industry as a whole has been short on car supplies, which is likely helping us. We're seeing strong demand in other areas, so we can supply more cars to those customers while managing through disruptions. Ultimately, we believe this is deferred revenue, and we expect to capture all the demand going into next year.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. So, Kevin, I wanted to ask you about the drivers of that domestic intermodal growth from a channel perspective. The numbers turned around in week 17 and have kept improving. Is this coming through traditional IMCs, a parcel company, or a retailer? Is there a single driver behind the big divergence from industry intermodal performance?

There's not one single driver. It's the teams working together on operating and sales and marketing. They're identifying profitable opportunities across the board. We remain competitive even with a weaker trucking market, and operational creativity is driving our success. Ultimately, we’re proud of the work being done and the strong momentum we have.

Hey, this is James McGarragle. I'm on for Walter today. Thanks for having me on. I wanted to ask a question on U.S. port share shifting toward the East Coast over the past several years. Given the agreements with unions on the West Coast, do you expect this shift to continue? What insights can you share from conversations with shipping lines and your long-term strategy to capitalize on this trend?

There have been significant investments in the East Coast ports, which will benefit us as the West Coast faces challenges in adding capacity. We expect this trend to persist. We are also seeing a migration out of China and other markets, which will contribute to imports coming to the East Coast. This provides us with good momentum, and we are making investments to prepare for continued growth.

Thanks. I just wanted to follow up. I was surprised to see accessorials headwind worsen. Can you unpack this for us, and is that now a final number? And Joe, bigger picture, are you exploring inorganic growth opportunities such as short lanes or trucking?

The accessorials have been trending down all year. We took our last sequential step down from Q2 to Q3, which was a bit more than expected, but not just intermodal storage; there were other components of revenue that were affected. This gives a solid picture of where we stand going forward. The level we’re at seems to be the bottom now, and it is influenced by volume. When intermodal volumes recover, the revenue will also improve.

At the highest level, I don't think trucking is where we would see growth. We are proud of the Quality Carriers acquisition serving our chemical customers. But we are also invested in the New England region, creating opportunities as we look at new interchange points and the potential to partner with other Class Is in different capacities. Our intermodal product continues to improve, and we will be able to capitalize on the increasing service reliability and margin opportunities as the truck market rebounds in the future. Overall, we see great potential for growth.