Earnings call transcript: Norfolk Southern beats Q4 2024 EPS forecast

Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE:NSC) surpassed earnings expectations for the fourth quarter of 2024, posting an earnings per share (EPS) of $3.04, slightly above the forecast of $3.01. However, the company’s revenue came in at $3.02 billion, falling short of the anticipated $3.04 billion. Despite the revenue miss, the stock reacted positively, with a pre-market price increase of 1.93%, closing at $257.2, although it later dipped slightly by 0.74% to $255.3 in aftermarket trading. According to InvestingPro, the company maintains impressive gross profit margins of 48.93% and has sustained dividend payments for 44 consecutive years, demonstrating long-term financial stability.

Key Takeaways

• Norfolk Southern’s EPS beat forecasts, contributing to a positive market reaction.
• Revenue fell short of expectations, raising concerns about growth momentum.
• Operational improvements were highlighted, with significant cost reductions and efficiency gains.

Company Performance

Norfolk Southern demonstrated robust operational improvements in the fourth quarter of 2024, with revenue excluding fuel increasing by 2% and full-year volume growth reaching 5%. The company’s adjusted operating ratio ended at 65.8, better than its guidance. Cost-cutting measures resulted in nearly $300 million in savings, surpassing the initial target by $50 million. These efficiencies contributed to high single-digit growth in net income and EPS. InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is trading near its Fair Value, with a P/E ratio of 22.12 and a market capitalization of $57.9 billion. Get access to 8 additional ProTips and comprehensive valuation metrics with InvestingPro.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $3.02 billion, a slight miss compared to forecasts.
• Earnings per share: $3.04, exceeding the forecast of $3.01.
• Adjusted operating ratio: 65.8, with a second-half ratio of 64.1.
• Cost savings: Nearly $300 million, $50 million above target.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Norfolk Southern’s EPS of $3.04 exceeded the forecasted $3.01 by approximately 1%, marking a positive surprise for investors. The revenue shortfall, however, was a minor setback, with actual revenue of $3.02 billion falling short of the $3.04 billion forecast.

Market Reaction

The company’s stock saw a pre-market increase of 1.93%, reflecting investor optimism following the earnings beat. However, the stock experienced a slight decline of 0.74% in aftermarket trading, closing at $255.3. This movement places the stock between its 52-week high of $277.6 and low of $206.71, indicating a cautious but generally positive market sentiment.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Norfolk Southern projects a 3% revenue growth for 2025 and anticipates $150 million in cost productivity improvements. The company aims for a 150 basis point improvement in its operating ratio and plans capital expenditures of $2.2 billion. Norfolk Southern also intends to complete balance sheet restoration and resume share repurchases.

Executive Commentary

CEO Mark George emphasized the company’s strategic positioning, stating, "We move the U.S. Economy. We move GDP." He highlighted the adaptability of Norfolk Southern’s network, saying, "Our network is now nimble enough to adjust to wherever the change in the source of supply comes from." Chief Operating Officer John Orr added, "We’re not leaving any stone unturned," underscoring the company’s commitment to operational efficiency.

Risks and Challenges

• Potential impact of tariffs on volume, affecting over 75% of business tied to the domestic economy.
• Coal market weakness could hinder growth in certain segments.
• Macroeconomic uncertainties, including consumer resilience and economic indicators.
• Competitive pressures from peers closing the margin gap.
• Ongoing market volatility and potential regulatory changes.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on Norfolk Southern’s productivity sources, particularly in labor, materials, and fuel efficiency. Discussions also covered the potential impact of tariffs on volume and explored opportunities in the chemicals and intermodal markets. Executives detailed ongoing network optimization strategies, highlighting their efforts to improve service reliability and attract more business.

Full transcript - Norfolk Southern Corporation (NSC) Q4 2024:

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Good morning, everyone. Please note that during today’s call, we will make certain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full disclosure of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section, along with our reconciliation of any non GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non GAAP operating ratio.

Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today’s call are being provided on an adjusted basis. Turning to Slide 3, it’s now my pleasure to introduce Norfolk Southern’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Good morning and thank you everyone for joining today. I’m joined here by John Orr, our Chief Operating Officer Ed Elkins, our Chief Marketing Officer and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our strong Q3 performance, we are very pleased to close out 2024 with another quarter of solid results, which further narrowed the margin gap to peers. Our strong operations enabled us to move 3% more volume in the quarter, yielding a 2% increase in revenue ex fuel. We continue to deliver on our commitments, while building momentum to position Norfolk Southern for sustainable growth.

Our network is running fast, our terminals are efficient, service metrics are as strong as they have ever been. Our customers are noticing and rewarding us with more business, and we continue to exercise strong cost discipline. When you put it all together, we delivered a Q4 that was in line with the guidance we gave, wrapping up a year where we delivered or exceeded on all the commitments we made. We removed nearly $300,000,000 of cost, $50,000,000 more than the $250,000,000 we committed to in the spring. Our adjusted operating ratio ended at a 65.8 surpassing the guide we laid out of improvement between 100 to 150.

And our second half OR was 64.1 at the favorable end of the range we outlined. The organization worked hard to deliver these results. I am proud and grateful to all the employees in Norfolk Southern. It’s not just the financial results that are worth celebrating. Our safety metrics improved dramatically throughout the year.

Our employees are embracing safety as a guiding value, protecting one another as well as the communities we serve. Our employees are driving positive change and propelling the company forward. As you evaluate the operating and productivity improvements, remember that we did this while taking on 5% more volume in 2024. I’m excited for John, Ed and Jason to share our results with you. Let’s start with John.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Good morning. Thanks, Mark. I’m excited to update you all on our safety and operating performance. Turning to slide 6. Safety is the value through which all operating decisions are made.

Our entire team is committed and engaged in our pursuit of safety excellence. The improvements to date are a testament to the rigor of our safety protocols and a strong indication of the positive outcomes we can achieve in 2025. Our FRA reportable injury ratio increased from 1.1 to 1.15. And I’m encouraged that our Q4 results improved by 13% compared to the same period last year. In fact, in December, our FRA ratio was 0.61 and was the lowest reportable injury ratio since December of 2020.

Our FRA train accident rate for the full year improved by 27% and in both cases, we are carrying positive momentum into Q1 and building on these strong results. For example, we finished 2024 and started 2025 injury free for over a 1000000 man hours across all operations. At Norfolk Southern, people are at the heart of our strategy. Our Thoroughbred Academy is educating thousands of leaders. Its curriculum offers an integrated approach that combines technical training with skill building in operational readiness, business planning and management engagement.

We are proactively driving safety performance and enterprise excellence. We are building generational railroaders. Turning to Slide 7. Our PSR 2.0 approach is delivering simultaneous efficiency and service improvements. In 2024, our network performance progressively gained traction, anchored by dwell and velocity.

We are dwelling less in yards, moving faster between terminals and rightsizing the fleet. This is generating fluidity and capacity, aligning our active fleets to volume, decreasing fleet maintenance expenses and reducing capital. Year over year, our system speed improved by 10%. Taking it down a level, in the quarter, intermodal train speed gained 3.1% and the true success stories were the remarkable gains in merchandise and unit train speeds up 11% 17%, respectively. As we drove up velocity, we took out assets, grew the business and we did more with less, ultimately growing volumes by 5%.

For example, year over year car miles per car day rose over 13%. We are seeing similar benefits in our locomotive fleet. Velocity allowed us to store more locomotives, decrease our material expenses, increase our fleet reliability and drove overall fleet productivity. Year over year GTMs per available horsepower improved by 19%, but we also delivered record fuel efficiencies both for the quarter and the full year. As we drive operating efficiencies, we are also delivering a quality product for our customers.

After all, we’re a company committed to outstanding service. We finished the year very strong, culminating with a successful intermodal perfect peak season, year over year handling 7% more parcel volume per day with 0 controllable failures. Turning to Slide 8, needs matter. In 2024, we committed to tackle network underperformance and to close our margin gap. As Mark said, through our total team effort, we exceeded.

For example, our car maintenance war room meticulously drilled down to root causes, fine tuned our repair processes and provided near real time feedback for the field. As a result, year over year running repair and repair dwell were down 31% 23%, respectively. Improvements are also coming from our Need for Speed war room, whose mandate includes design speed into the network, overcome historic speed barriers and drive out infrastructure bottlenecks. The need for speed war room has contributed to our year over year 10% AAR (NYSE:AIR) speed increase. They are now turning their attention to challenging every permanent and temporary slow order to actively reduce stops and drive additional fuel efficiencies.

Over the road interruptions decreased by 25%, delivering significant gains in crew productivity and crew availability. For example, year over year, crew overtime and terminal detention costs were both down 19%. When I say this is a team effort, I’m talking about every NS railroader. We are working cross functionally, cross structurally and broadly across the entire enterprise ecosystem to eliminate waste, increase revenues and drive efficiencies. These disciplines have allowed us to restructure our capital requirements, freeing up funds for key projects without compromise.

We are entering 2025 with tremendous momentum and we are unlocking productivity value for our network. The next phase transformation of our operating plan is in development. The new plan will roll out in Q1. It will further reduce handlings, introduce tighter standards for terminal times and connections and will require us to continue stretching for improvement in our operating processes. In 2025, we will focus on fuel and mechanical infrastructure.

These are big rocks for efficiencies and savings. I’m incredibly proud of the results the operating team has achieved in 2024. They rose to every challenge, showing NS grit, tenacity and drive. Coupled with PSR 2.0, their capabilities are driving network value creation and closing the service and productivity gaps with our peers. I will now turn it over to Ed.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. I apologize upfront for my cold and ask that you bear with me here. Let’s start on Slide 10. Overall volume for the Q4 improved 3% year over year. That was led by our intermodal and agriculture groups.

Our total revenue and RPU declined primarily due to lower fuel surcharge revenue along with negative mix within the portfolio and rate pressure within intermodal and coal that we’ve noted for most of the year. Merchandise volume improved slightly from higher soybean and corn shipments driven by new business and some spot opportunities, but these gains were offset by declines in automotive, metals and energy related markets. The quarter saw a 2% increase in RPU less fuel, which marks another quarterly record in that metric with 38 out of 39 consecutive quarters of year over year growth. We also set quarterly RPU less fuel records for both industrial products and for automotive. In intermodal, we realized a 5% year over year volume increase with gains in both domestic and international through sales pipeline wins, increased freight demand and empty container volumes.

Premium continues to face market headwinds. Truck prices remained low causing domestic intermodal rates to be generally in line with last quarter. However, note that RPU less fuel finished up 2% due to a lift from contract recoveries and rate true ups. Let’s turn to coal. Volume decreased 1% with coal prices driving a 9% decline in revenue.

Utility experienced reduced burn demand due to continued low natural gas prices, while lower seaborne prices impacted our export business. Okay. Moving to Slide 11, let’s talk about full year results. We achieved strong 5% volume growth. Overall, revenue was flat as we faced significant fuel headwinds of $261,000,000 along with lower coal rates.

The intermodal unit led the company in volume growth and an important bright spot in revenue was the merchandise business unit that achieved record revenue, revenue per unit and RPU less fuel for the full year of 2024. Let’s go to slide 12 and look ahead. Our 2025 outlook is for modest volume growth driven by the reliable service product that our customers are enjoying now. For our merchandise markets, we expect lower vehicle production due to weaker than expected sales and some inventory build. We expect improved manufacturing activity supported by lower interest rates and strength in our chemicals markets such as plastics and waste.

However, the potential for new tariffs will introduce some near term uncertainty in the many markets that we serve. Despite these uncertainties, we are confident that we’re well positioned to recapture market share and deliver the value that our customers expect of us. Turning to our intermodal markets. USMEX and ILA reached a tentative agreement, which helps remove a key source of uncertainty. Strong import and export demand has been a growth driver.

However, new tariffs will probably create some headwinds. We expect volume growth driven by new business and continued empty repositioning to partially offset these headwinds. Truck pricing has yet to recover, but excess capacity has finally started to come down. We’re seeing some gradual improvement in some of the key industry metrics such as increasing tender rejections. And we expect falling export prices in coal along with softer demand for utility in our territory due to lower natural gas prices and generally elevated inventory levels.

We’re going to continue to keep a close eye on these factors as the year progresses. 2024 was a transformative year for us and we now have reliable service that’s consistent, resilient and is built to grow in the market that we serve. I just want to end by once again thanking our customers for their partnerships and their trust as we move into 2025. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Jason Zampi to review our financial results.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Thanks, Ed. I’ll start with slide 14, which reconciles our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I’ll speak to today. There are 4 items I’d highlight for you. First, a net benefit of $43,000,000 related to the Eastern Ohio incident. Insurance recoveries exceeded the incremental cost in the quarter.

I’ll recap where we are with these costs here momentarily. We also recognized a $53,000,000 gain related to the finalization of the Virginia Line sale transaction, the first portion of which was recognized last quarter. Additionally, we continue to sunset certain technology projects, resulting in an additional $27,000,000 in restructuring costs. And finally, as we have wound down the proxy campaign and signed the cooperation agreement, you’ll note the final tranche of advisory costs incurred below the line in other income. Adjusting for these items, operating ratio for the quarter was $64,900,000 and EPS came to $3.04 Slide 15 provides a recap of the Eastern Ohio derailment related financial impacts.

You’ll see that to date, we have incurred nearly $2,200,000,000 related to the incident, with incremental costs in the current year related to the class action settlement, further environmental remediation efforts and other community assistance. However, the pace of insurance recoveries accelerated, bringing in $650,000,000 this year alone, and we have now recorded over $750,000,000 in total. Moving to the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year and last quarter on Slide 16. We generated 3.90 basis points of operating ratio improvement in the face of revenue headwinds, driven by strong productivity gains and that drops down to high single digit net income and EPS growth. From a sequential perspective, the operating ratio was up 150 basis points, a little better than we projected due to the approximate $20,000,000 in contract recoveries that we recognized at the end of the quarter, as Ed just discussed.

Drilling into the $153,000,000 of year over year expense decline on Slide 17, you’ll note improvements in all expense line items except depreciation, which was up on our larger asset base. Strong productivity improvements within labor and fuel efficiency drove over half of the expense improvement and helped to offset wage inflation and higher incentive comp accruals. In addition, purchased services was down $40,000,000 year over year in the face of higher volumetric costs, great progress in this cost category. You’ll also note the materials expenses come down as we continue to store locomotives, yet another benefit of our fluid network. Turning to the full year results compared to 2023 on Slide 18, we had guided to a 100 to 150 basis point operating ratio improvement and you’ll see that we exceeded that commitment and delivered 160 basis points of improvement and that’s despite revenue being down slightly.

It really comes down to a productivity story. John and his team over delivered on productivity gains, exceeding our original $250,000,000 target and delivering nearly $300,000,000 of year over year cost savings. So we’re moving into 2025 with a lot of momentum from all fronts, operational, commercial and financial. I’ll turn it over to Mark to wrap up and discuss how we’re thinking about 2025.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, Jason. So you heard about the really strong performance to close out 2024. We have powerful momentum entering 2025. While markets are hard to predict at this point, we will lean into our outstanding service and the resolve of our people to capture share. We made that happen in 2024 and we are confident we will do it again in 2025.

Turning now to guidance on slide 20. We are planning on 3% revenue growth with positive volume and healthy core pricing more than offsetting headwinds from fuel and coal. One thing fully in our control is productivity. We exceeded our 2024 target of $250,000,000 of cost takeout and we are again looking to exceed the original $150,000,000 target for 2025. That equation translates to margin expansion of 150 basis points, which is at the high end of our long term baseline guidance range that called for OR improvements from 100 to 150 basis points per year.

Ultimately, we will continue to close the margin gap with peers whatever the volume environment. CapEx will be in the $2,200,000,000 range. And with strong free cash flow driven by our operating performance, our balance sheet restoration will be complete in 2025 and allow us to resume share repurchases. So with that, let’s get into Q and A.

Speaker 4: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Your first question comes from Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Your line is now open.

Analyst, Wells Fargo: Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. If we could pick up on the productivity, Mark. Obviously, the $150,000,000 is the target for 2025. Maybe we could kind of break that down into buckets, so we can understand where we can kind of source that.

And then if you sort of zoom out a little bit and think bigger picture over the next maybe couple of years, what you think the potential on OR is? You guys have made significant strides from where you were a year ago. I guess, as you think about sort of the next couple of years, what do you see as the opportunity?

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Hey, thanks, Chris. Appreciate the question. I’ll have John kind of talk to you a little bit about where we’re seeing the runway on productivity, but we’re really excited and confident because we laid out the 250 target for 2024, we exceeded that. We think we can exceed, we know we can exceed the 2025 target that we laid out at 150. So we’re going for more.

We’re really optimistic now going forward. And with regard to the long term OR, I think we definitely have the self help opportunities here to continue to improve OR. We put out the 100 to 150 basis point improvement guideline on the long term basis on kind of a regular where we are volume environment. And once we get the kind of the surge, the economic recovery that we’re expecting, that’s kind of the turbo boost where I think we’ve got a path that 60 range. So John, do you want to talk about the buckets for that?

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Chris. It’s a really, really good question and one that we’re really pushing ourselves hard to answer for everyone. And I think it starts and stops with our standards that we’re increasing. We’re coming off a great platform and bedrock of solid service and good productivity in ’twenty four.

We’re building a new operating standard to increase the availability and reliability of important assets and the framework for continuous improvement in our tighter and more deliberate operating model. And it’s going to be step functions across certain assets, utilization for cars, locomotives, even the rubber tired vehicle fleet, working hard across all segments of the business with IT and network infrastructure and really rightsizing that network to the capabilities, increasing the skills and output of people through safety and the Thoroughbred Academy of Education and really trying to align the headcount to the GTMs and really have a deliberate structure on how we onboard resources and deliver capability.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: So Chris, I think as you look at the P and L, you’re going to see it show up a little bit everywhere. Comp (WA:CMP) and then will be an area again where we can continue to be more efficient. We’ve taken out a ton of overtime and excess costs this year. There’s more that John has identified by just running more efficient and cleaner connections in that line item. You remember we had a pretty meaningful headcount reduction in 2024.

We’ll get the full year effect of that as well in 2025. But also I think we’ll see reductions in materials as John just touched upon. We’ll see reductions in fuel from efficiency improvements and we’ll even see improvements in purchase services, rents, car hire, equipment rents, so pretty much across the board. Thanks a lot, Chris.

Analyst, Wells Fargo: Got it. Thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. Just on the 3% revenue growth for the year, any color on how to think about the mix of volume versus yield? And then maybe just want to follow-up on the labor productivity side, really good in Q4 with volume up 3, headcount down 5. How do you feel about labor incremental labor productivity opportunity in ’twenty five?

Hey, Scott, it’s Ed. I’ll take on

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: the first part of your question there, which I think was how do we think about the sort of mid single digit 3% revenue growth next year. We expect growth in most of our markets. Coal is really the only place where we see a lot of overt weakness. But we still got a fuel headwind out there. We know going into this year and coal price will be another headwind.

So we expect volume growth and our price plan to deliver a 3% against both of those headwinds. I’ll turn it over to Jason.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Yes. I think on the labor productivity front as you called out, appreciate the call out there on the great labor productivity we’ve had in the Q4, probably more focused on the T and E side. And I think as we move into 2025, we’ll not only have continued benefits there, but we’ve got some runway in labor productivity across all the operating ranks.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. I couldn’t agree more, Jason. And you think about our Q4 ’twenty four versus ’twenty three where we had an 18.5% reduction in overtime and full year of almost 15%. And getting back to the basics, creating a lot more discipline within our terminals, empowering and developing local supervisors to really drive that performance and creating that discretionary effort and things as basic as getting ahead of the labor and things as basic as getting ahead of labor negotiations and really distilling purpose and intent on how we engage with our Craft employees. And it’s all coming together and leading ourselves to some very, very solid productivity initiatives.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Analyst, Wells Fargo: Hey, great. Good morning. Just if I can clarify on that on the volume commentary, I guess, the revenue. Was that all volumes then? You see yields fairly balanced and so it’s all a volume commentary in terms of how you’re looking at growth?

And then thoughts on the buyback cadence into 2025? And lastly, John, I want to join the Need for Speed War room when you get a chance.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Hey, Ken. We’ve always got a seat for you. Just bring your seat belt because they move fast in

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: there. Hey, Ken. This is Ed. When I think about how we’re going to deliver growth next year, it’s really a combination. Yes, it’s going to be led by volume across most of our markets.

And then we got a price plan that’s going to beat inflation again this year just as it has in the past.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Yes. And Ken, your second question on share repurchases, we’ve really done a good job this year rebuilding our balance sheet and that’s through really three fronts, improved profitability, the insurance recoveries that we’ve been able to achieve here and the line sales. And our philosophy on those capital distributions hasn’t changed. So we always invest in the business first, then pay dividends and then have share buybacks. Obviously, that was interrupted this year in 2023 2024, but we’ve got a path to delever the balance sheet throughout the year and we’re going to be able to start resuming share repurchases at a measured pace.

And it’s critical to us. That’s a key component of our value creation framework that we laid out a couple of years ago.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thanks, Ken. Just to add a little bit more on the revenue, because I think maybe others probably also trying to hone in here on the volume. We do expect some volume growth, I think as Ken is saying. Probably a couple of few points of volume growth. We’re going to get good really solid core pricing again in particular merchandise.

We probably don’t have the headwinds in intermodal pricing like we’ve had to face. So and we’re hoping that we’ll start to see that maybe come up with a stronger truck market. And then we do have headwinds still with regard to fuel and in particular coal pricing, but also coal volume. So you put it all in the mix master and that’s how you end up with the 3% revenue growth that we’re guiding to. So thanks a lot.

Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thanks. Can I just clarify one thing there? Does that include the tariff thoughts or is that before any of that?

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. I mean correct. That includes our outlook today.

Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thanks for your time. Thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Analyst, JPMorgan: I just wanted to ask a little bit more about pricing to the value of the service as it improves here and remains more consistent. So in the past, you’ve talked about maybe losing some market share based on some of the service challenges and disruptions that you had. So when that improves, do you see more of that as market share gain and recapture? Or do you see a little bit of upside of yield? Or is it perhaps a

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: little bit of both? So, I

Analyst, JPMorgan: think you got some momentum. Interested to hear how that’s progressing this year? Thank you.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: This is Ed. Thanks for the question.

Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: It’s a good one.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: It is. And we actually toss this around a lot internally. I think the way that I think about it and the way I would put forward the way that everyone else should think about it is, we are very interested in how much wallet share we have with our customers. And whether that’s share reclaim that’s coming from somewhere else where it used to move on us or whether it’s share that has never moved by rail, but now it has the opportunity to because of the value of the service that we’re delivering. We’re very interested in how we can expand our wallet share with our customers, both our existing customers and adjacent customers in the supply chain.

So we’re working really hard on that. In terms of pricing to the value of the service, we’ve been very successful, particularly in our merchandise markets where we offer exceptional value when we can deliver a good service product. We’ve been very diligent about being able to recognize that value through price and we fully expect to continue to do that again this year. The value of our service continues to improve as we deliver a reliable, resilient service that customers can count on every day.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: So in short, Brian, both. Yes. We think that the value of really good service gives us leverage on both sides, pricing and volume, share recapture, I should say.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Your line is now open.

Analyst, UBS: Hi, yes, good morning and nice to see the continued strong momentum in what you’re doing with the network and results as well. Wanted to see, I think, kind of following on Brian’s question, how do you think about like you have optimism on chemicals being stronger, is that just kind of customers doing well or is that gaining some share? And I think also at the beginning, Mark, you said customers are noticing. Are there specific examples where you say, okay, part of that chemicals is, hey, we’ve got some new wins that are a component of that? Are the new wins more likely to come in other segments?

I guess just more around kind of where some of the growth comes from and do you already have some of that set up in terms of new business?

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes, that’s a very good question. For us, when we look across our markets, particularly at our merchandise markets, we know that we have our customers have suffered because of our service over time in a few very specific areas and one of those is chemicals. And so we’re putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that we can deliver value in that particular segment. When I think about our local service product and how we deliver for our customers, John and I spent a lot of time, we were on the call this morning actually, talking about specific customers and how we can deliver more value for them on a much more ratable basis. And that’s really fundamentally where we want to go and that would be very specific and targeted for wallet share with our customers.

The second piece of this is, as we deliver a better service and higher velocity, it actually gives us more agility inside the network to respond going on in the marketplace. And I look at our success in our ag markets over the past two quarters where we were able to actually be very agile and take advantage of what the market was offering in a way that we couldn’t have previously as a good example of that. In terms of other markets where we see growth, I think Intermodal is going to lead growth this year. They did last year. They will again this year.

We have a very bullish consumer still and it appears we have a very resilient economy. So I think both of those things are going to manifest themselves and more opportunity for us with a better service product.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. I mean, we’ve had a really good intermodal service product for a couple of years now, but it is at extraordinarily high levels.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Okay. But I guess to

Analyst, UBS: be clear on the chemicals comment though, you are you have visibility to some business coming back. That’s not just a chemicals market looks good. That’s like getting business back as well as maybe some growth in market?

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: That’s correct. Yes, we’re we have line of sight to specific wallet share opportunities

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: that we’re on top of.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Great. Thank you.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, Tom.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Brendan Oglenski with Barclays (LON:BARC). Your line is now open.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Hey, good morning everyone and thank you for taking the question. John, I was wondering if you could elaborate on the changes you’re making to the op plan this year. I think you called it refreshment in slides, but maybe like a newer operating plan in your comments. So can you maybe elaborate more there? Yes, absolutely.

The refreshment or the new operating plan, as you call it, is really the next iteration of continuous improvement. We’ve been turning out improvements in our terminals. That was our starting point on time performance and over the road speed. And as we’ve moved through the progression of improvement on our network health, our asset efficiencies and our customer facing metrics, the next evolution is tightening down standards. So connection standards in terminals, creating better yield for our train lengths, for our train weights, for our customization of the service that Ed needs in order to be competitive and to grow the business.

We’re looking then over the road and how do we make our end to end a lot more competitive. And once we do that and we leverage up on the speed increases that we’ve got, sizing our service plan to meet that speed. And that gives us a lot of flexibility to use our collective agreement articles on employee availability and accessibility to do more at the front end of their trip or the back end of their trip and start to really yield out on productivity. It will help us right size our fleet, right size our cars and really be more disciplined in how we operate. To reduce handling, it’s too early.

Absolutely. And again, back to that philosophy of extending the length of the trains as long as possible that will allow us to leave our locomotives in active service longer. That will reduce the dwell time of locomotives, the demand of locomotives, the fuel consumption, all of those things. So it took a while. It took the last 9 months of heavy lifting to get us in position to take this next step, and it’ll be one of many iterations as we continue to improve, but very confident in the capability of the team to deliver.

Thanks, John.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Brandon, thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Walter Spracklin with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Yes. Thanks very much, operator. Good morning, everyone. So this question is for John. John, I know you’ve been targeting 100 to 150 basis point OR improvement and it’s still a bit of a gap relative to peers.

So my question is, what’s kind of holding it back from a faster clip? And I know when you saw Hunter go over somewhere, you’d just be fast and furious and kind of take a attach it to that OR. Are you protecting customer service? Is there constraints in labor agreements? Just curious as to what where we could see upside to that speed like we did in 2024 and what might be holding it back, if anything?

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Well, I’ll tell you, we’re not leaving any stone unturned. Let’s just be clear about that. And we have to set a flag in our budget. Jason’s got me challenged on a number of things, including how do we increase our car miles per day, our fuel efficiencies, our re crews. I mean, he’s right down to the taxis on me.

But what I think is that we’re going to leverage up on our locomotive productivity. We’ve got big rocks to gain on our fuel and our purchases and services. And so while we finished the year slightly ahead of our guidance and really, really proud of the team for the $292,000,000 or $293,000,000 in cost takeout, We’re attacking everything. And I’ll go back to the last question is that restructuring the operating plan to leverage up on the disciplined approach to improvement is putting more pressure on me and the team to deliver to a higher standard. I love our war room mentality where we triage problems, we pull it out of the triage in the day to day and take elevated up to continuous improvement philosophies and educate people, drive out anomalies from the system or give us a better competitive edge.

And so these are things that Hunter didn’t really do and we’re doing. And it’s Mark’s leadership, it’s the partnership I’ve got with Ed and Jason that are giving us a holistic approach to this. So there’s no stone unturned. We’re not holding back. There’s nothing structural that’s holding me back.

We’re locked in on the continuous improvement agenda. And our customers are why we’re here. And I will not foreclose on our customer capability for a few cents of advancement. I know that’s going to come and we’re going to do it in a disciplined way.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Walter, obviously there’s a lot of history that you probably have studied about the pace of change that happened in some of the other roads. I would just say I’m super proud of John’s cerebral approach to what he’s doing here. It’s a very cerebral approach based on all the lessons that he learned being

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: part of

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: it in the past, which is why he calls it and brands it 2.0, PSR 2.0. So the evidence is here that we’re doing this while we’re taking on more volume and not compromising customer service. So I think this is a it’s a great story and I think we should all be proud of John for what he’s doing here.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: I’m proud of the whole team. It’s a team effort. It takes everybody here.

Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Yes. You’re definitely delivering and just keep it up. I appreciate it. Thanks everyone.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, Walter.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Jason Seidl with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Analyst, Jefferies: Hey, thank you, operator. Mark and team, congrats on the good quarter and I hope you feel better, sir. I wanted to focus a little bit on the intermodal performance and the merchandise trip plan compliance. Clearly much better than last year when you look at that. But there was what I think is probably more

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: of a seasonal dip in 4Q. Can you talk to us about 2 things? One, what’s the normal seasonal progression from Q3 to Q4 for both those measures?

Analyst, Jefferies: And what should we expect going forward in ’twenty five?

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Well, why don’t I start, Ed, because you hold me accountable for delivering trip plans. And we’ve got really good trip plans, especially in the quarter. But we’re hard on ourselves. I mean, we came through the Q4, despite getting hit by a number of hurricanes and port strikes and started this year into the polar vortex. But we my philosophy is drive hard, go as deep into the environmental conditions as you possibly can without being impacted and work like the devil to get out of it as fast as you can.

And we saw that. We saw some V shaped impacts to these things. But overall, when we came back strong, we were able to recover it fairly quickly. And I think we over communicated with our customers and prepared for the worst and delivered pretty solid results.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. Here’s what I would say about the 3rd quarter, 4th quarter progression. We had a lot of things going on this year. And I say we as a royal way, the whole industry did, whether it was a couple of hurricanes, one port stoppage and one threat of another one, which really distorted volumes and volume flows. And I’m very proud of the way that we responded to both of those challenges with regard to snapping back.

That’s really the definition of resilience. Something changes, you get hit with something you didn’t expect and how fast you snap back to the norm. And I think we did a really good job.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. And I think they were underpinned by a percent or 3.1 percent improvement in overall velocity that allowed us to get end to end on intermodal. And what I really love is merchandise and unit trains were up 11% 17% respectively in the same period. So all of our trains rose with that tide of continuous improvement.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: And guys just thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Analyst, Jefferies: Hi, good morning. This is Joe Halfling on for Stephanie Moore. Congrats on the good results. Maybe piggybacking on a question we had heard earlier, John, on sort of the next phase of optimization, you specifically called out mechanical infrastructure and some fuel efficiency gains. I guess, could you help me understand maybe more specifically what are some of the items that you’re looking to tackle and kind of what the magnitude of those savings could look like?

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: For sure. And I’ll just start with fuel. It’s a number of things, including we finished 2024 at a 1.08 fuel efficiencies. And we had a bit of a headwind coming in Q1 of 2024, we were at a 1.22 and we really worked hard to get it down to where we were. That ended up at a fairly solid number and a record in the quarter and a record in the year.

So that was founded by having a really strong balance on HPT and disciplined use of distributed power, right sized locomotives for the right sized trains, stopping less. So the number of disruptions over the road decreased significantly because of our mechanical war room and then the intelligence we could gather there. So we’re building better trains, more capable trains across the road. And when you’re not idling cars and idling locomotives, you’re not wasting fuel. So our fuel productivity was increased because of our over the road capability and the discipline of pulling out additional resources, storing them and having more constrained asset utilization.

So our locomotives dwelled less in between work events. We’re also looking at a deliberate impact on how we distribute fuel. So our vendors, the vendor structures, the distribution systems and all of those things that the categories that drive ownership reduction and new discipline, arbitrage opportunities and balancing out how we self supply our locomotive fleet with fuel. So those things are in flight. We started to really get traction towards the latter part of the year.

We’re doing it in a quasi manual basis right now and we expect as the year progresses, we’ll have further and further automation towards that. And I would say, we’re also pretty blessed with our energy management systems that we’ve put in place towards the latter part of the year that have delivered significant results. From a mechanical process, we’re looking at all of the assets and how we cycle our car fleet and locomotive fleet for repair. So the physical assets, the production that we’ve done and even the AAR visibility and how we bill and how we get value from our locomotive or sorry, our mechanical efforts on car. So all of these things are in flight and we’ll really start to see strong performance on those things as we get through the year.

I don’t know Jason if you have any further color on that.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: No, I think those as you mentioned John, I think those are going to be the key some of the key areas as we think about our productivity moving into 2025 and really accelerating on that total commitment there of $150,000,000 plus. So it’s great work. That’s really helpful, guys. Thank you.

Analyst, Jefferies: Thanks so much. Congrats again.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Your line is now open.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Mark, you’ve been in the CEO seat almost 5 months now. You’ve gone through your first annual planning process as CEO, a couple of Board meetings. Can you talk a little bit about the Board dynamics, where everyone is clearly aligned and what the Board’s number one priority for you and senior management is over the next 12 to 18 months? Thank you. Hey, thanks, Bascome.

Look, our Board has been really remarkably unified. They came from different avenues. We’ve got a lot of new Board members. The majority of them are within the past 18 months. Yet they’ve all congealed in a beautiful way in the Board room.

And I’m really pleased to see the engagement from all quarters and the mutual respect that’s being shown given everybody’s unique background. So I would say that their principal objective and we had a Board meeting yesterday actually. And the questions are what can we do to help support management on its journey because they know they believe in the strategy, they believe that it’s yielding results, They believe in the team that we’ve assembled, which I’m super proud of. And they really just want to be as supportive as they can, but also coach and guide where they see opportunities. So right now, I’m thrilled with the dynamic and I think our management team feels fully supported by the Board as well.

Thanks, Bhaskar.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). Your line is now open.

Analyst, Jefferies: Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just a clarification here. You mentioned tariff headwinds to volumes through the course of the year.

But do you expect to see tariff tailwinds before that? What are you hearing on potentially shippers restocking and that spillover into the rail side potentially being a tailwind before we see the headwinds?

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Ravi, I think what we said is uncertainty around tariffs. And I think reasonable people can have differing opinions on how tariffs may impact their business. But certainly in the rail transportation space, I have a different view that maybe even Ed may mildly disagree with. But these things take a while to play out. We don’t know how they’re going to play out.

And from a producer’s perspective, a manufacturer’s perspective, if suddenly they’re subjected to tariffs, how they respond may vary. Where are the alternative sources? At the end of the day, things will play out over time, but we move the U. S. Economy.

We move GDP. And whether that GDP is coming across the border as an import or whether it’s now being produced domestically due to some on shoring, we’re going to be there to move it. So I kind of think it’s going to be a net wash in terms of volume. But it could play out a little bit different. And the beauty is that our network now is nimble enough to adjust to wherever the change in the source of supply comes from.

So I wouldn’t say that we’re baking in and I think Ken tried to ask that question, but I don’t think we’re baking in a particular headwind per se. It’s just we’re nimble enough. We don’t know exactly how it’s all going to manifest, but we’ll be ready to move it, whether it’s domestic, whether it’s crossing the border as an international move. Ed, why don’t you clean that up a little?

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Well, I don’t disagree at all. I think our customers would tell you that they all have different opinions on how it’s going to manifest itself or not. But look, let’s talk about some facts. Over 3 quarters of our business is tied to our domestic economy. That leaves less than 25% that’s tied to international trade.

And I think you’re exactly right, Mark, and I’m not saying that because you’re my boss, but I think you’re exactly right. We have enough operational nimbleness now. And frankly, with the capability that we’re developing in our sales force that we’re going to be able to respond to whatever the economy delivers or whatever trade policy delivers. We’re going to be there to make the most of those opportunities, whether they’re domestic or international.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Understood. Thank you.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, Robbie.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Daniel Imbro with Stephens. Your line is now

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: open. Maybe one just on

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern0: the call outlook. You mentioned a few times expecting more bearish outlook versus your prior expectations and that’s in the slide deck. I guess, can you talk about what’s driving that softer outlook given the stronger back half of 2024 results there? And then any update on the contract you’re bringing online this year? I think it was about 5,000,000 tons annually when you announced it.

But is that still the right way to think about contribution? And when should that sort of flow into numbers? Thanks.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: I think you’re referring to coal, is that right, Daniel? I couldn’t hear you at the beginning there.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. Sorry.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern0: Yes, I’ll turn the coal side.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. When we look at the forward curves, that’s the first thing that we look at when we think about what’s going on with the international markets. And coal price has been under pressure now for a couple of quarters, and we see that continuing. I think there’s probably downside risk for the market in that particular dimension. On the volume side, we’ll have to wait and see.

I think that there’s clearly some downdraft in terms of demand currently on the seaborne side. And then on the domestic side, we’ve had a couple of nice winter weeks here, which probably has helped burn rates, but there’s still plenty of stockpile out there on the utility side. We’re watching gas prices, nat gas prices very closely, which I think will help determine the trajectory going forward for that domestic demand on the utility side.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: I think that’s an important variable. If nat gas there’s upside if nat gas prices go up. And they’ve moved up a little bit in recent weeks. But right now that’s not the way the curves are indicating.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: And your second question was about our new customer. Yes, we expect to see volumes from that coming on in the second quarter and going forward.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from David Vernon with Bernstein.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: So Ed, can you help us understand kind of how we should be modeling sort of the average RPU in coal kind of moving forward here sequentially? And then secondary question for the broader team, when you’re thinking about the 150 bps of OR improvement kind of year over year, is there anything that we should note around seasonality or when those gains should be showing up in terms of the margin performance? Got a lot of questions around whether 1Q is going to be getting hit from export coal falling or remarking some of those contracts. I’m just trying to kind of blend that all together if you could help shape out what the when that headwind starts to hit for 2025? Thanks.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Well, I think the headwind is kind of there now and probably continues going forward. As we get later in the year Coal, can you just ask about coal?

Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. RPU. Yes.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: That’s exactly what I’m talking about is we see that seaborne price is down now. It’s going to continue to be down we think certainly in the near to medium term. Longer term as the year manifests itself, we’re just going to keep adjusting our models. But we

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: think

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: there’s probably still some downside that we’ve baked into our models and I think that everyone else should too.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Yes. And David on your question on the OR, we’ve got a lot of momentum from our strong service product and operational progress. And that’s really what makes us confident to guide at that top end of our original range, so that 150 basis points of annual improvement. I’d point out that that improvement is in the face of nearly 200 basis points of pressure on the OR from inflation, fuel price and depreciation headwinds. If you think about it in the quarters, I would just say there’s puts and takes in the individual quarters.

For example, you’ve got the timing of incentive comp in the Q1, things like seasonality of volumes and the timing of wage increases, you know all those. But so when you average it all out, we’re again confident in that ability to deliver the 150 basis points of annual improvement despite those headwinds.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: Does the momentum comment push some of that more in the first half of the year? Or is that offset by some

Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: of those seasonal factors you mentioned?

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: I think the momentum I’m referring to is just operational momentum, and we’re really pleased with how that’s going, I think, on all fronts. Thanks.

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: All right. Thanks guys and congrats on your first quarter here. Thanks.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern: Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Ari Rosa with Citigroup (NYSE:C). Your line is now open.

Moderator/Earnings Call Operator, Norfolk Southern: Hi, good morning. So you mentioned some of the port stoppages distorting volume flows. I just wanted to get your perspective on to what extent we might have seen pull forward of volume in Q4 given some of the strong intermodal results that we saw there? And then to what extent did you kind of have to add costs or add resources to manage through some of those some of the variability in the kind of port stoppages or variability in volume? Thanks.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Sure. This is Ed. I think we did see certainly during the 3rd and 4th quarters more volume turned back to the West Coast for East Coast, some East Coast destinations. And we were able to handle that really and truly. I think I’ll defer to John, but without much of a hiccup in terms of additional resources or train starts, it was really incremental volume on existing trains with a very good service product, which kept fluidity rolling.

Probably the biggest challenge for us was attempting to make sure that we were servicing our customers on the East Coast as long as we could up until the anticipated work stoppage. And thankfully, that didn’t happen. John, you’ve got any other commentary on that?

John Orr, Chief Operating Officer, Norfolk Southern: I absolutely agree with your assessment. We’re able to handle it very well. I think we communicated pretty effectively and knew what we’re up against. There was a little bit of sloshiness in the car supply That was a sector issue, but we’re able to smooth that out really quickly and get back on track as soon as the market gave us a chance to.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: Yes. Thanks for the question.

Speaker 4: Your next question comes from Jordan Alexander with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Mark George, President and Chief Executive Officer, Norfolk Southern1: Yes. Hi. Good morning. So I think a week or so ago, you put out a release talking about industrial development across your network, adding about 150,000 of incremental carloads sort of tailwind on that active pipeline. I’m just curious sort of the timing of this and is some of that even factored into 2025?

And what’s the potential for that to upsize over time? Thanks.

Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, Norfolk Southern: We have a nice, very robust pipeline and pipeline process for our industrial development team. In the Q4, we had 8 new locations and 4 facility expansions that came online. And our 2025 pipeline continues to be very strong. Those numbers we put out really are going to manifest themselves throughout the year and represents full production for those facilities. And the great thing about it is these are projects that are not just for this year, but therefore hopefully many years to come.

And I think that’s just a powerful testament to the value we can offer customers with the service that we offer. Thanks for the question.

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