CSX Earnings Call INSIGHTS: Price the Key Driver, Lag Benefit From Fuel Surcharges

On Wednesday, CSX Corp (NYSE:CSX) reported its second quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call. Take a look.

Price the Key Driver 

William Greene – Morgan Stanley: You’ve talked about this line of sight to 65% and when we think about the drivers there between volume, price, and productivity. Can you give us some sense for what’s most important there? I think most of us would say volume probably not likely to grow all that much given the uncertainty, although 2015 is still far away, so who knows. But it really feels like you’re really kind of knocking the cover off the ball on productivity. How do you think about those three? Is it sort of a third-third-third or is one more than the other?

A Closer Look: CSX Earnings Cheat Sheet>>

Fredrik Eliasson – EVP and CFO: I don’t think we have – we know that in the last couple years, obviously price has been the key driver. I think as we move forward, I think you’re going to see more balance between the three levers. So, if you look at price and productivity, which were the two things we can control the most, what we have said is inflation plus pricing is critical and continued productivity at the minimum of $130 million is also critical. If you look at volume, I talked in my prepared remarks about export coal continued to be up in that 40 million ton range at least, and then utility coal stabilizing. When you look at that overall industrial output, we’ve seen a couple of years here of 3% to 4% and I think we would like to see that continuing over this time period. So, I think you will see more balance between the three levers as we move forward versus what you’ve seen over the last seven or eight years.

William Greene – Morgan Stanley: Just two quick detail questions. Clarence, can you give us same-store sales pricing and on CapEx when do you revisit CapEx given the coal decline?

Fredrik Eliasson – EVP and CFO: Let me answer the first one on CapEx. We’re staying at the same place as we’ve been before with 2.25 for CapEx for this year and we provided the long-term guidance of 16% to 17%. So if utility coal changes, that will be reflected in our spending going forward.

Clarence W. Gooden – EVP, Sales and Marketing and CCO: Now our overall coal pricing gains in the second quarter were in the range of 3% to 4% and that’s excluding the decline obviously that we had in export coal, and our estimate for full year inflation, to give you a comparison there, is 2.4%.

Lag Benefit From Fuel Surcharges

Kevin Crissey – UBS: Can you talk about the lag benefit that you saw in Q2 from fuel surcharges and maybe as we look forward what your thoughts are?

Fredrik Eliasson – EVP and CFO: We saw about $17 million in this quarter of lag benefits and obviously looking at a third quarter, depends where fuel ultimately ends up, but right now, there should be some sort of favorability in the third quarter as well based on what we’re seeing the future curve doing.

Kevin Crissey – UBS: Can you just remind me, does the 65 OR target, does that exclude the SunRail?

Fredrik Eliasson – EVP and CFO: The 65 target?

Kevin Crissey – UBS: Yeah, the OR target?

Fredrik Eliasson – EVP and CFO: Yes, it does because we won’t have a gain at that point from that transaction.