To welcome you at the conference, to present operating and financial results of PKP CARGO for nine months of 2022 and the 3rd quarter, 2022. I would like to welcome all those who are present in the room here, as well as those who are following us online. Today's conference will be provided by Dariusz Seliga, the CEO, Commercial Director, management board, Jacek Rutkowski, Operating Manager, Marek Olkiewicz, and CFO, Maciej Jankiewicz, as well as representative of employees, Zenon Kozendra. We will start with a presentation which will last about 40 minutes. After the presentatio n made by management board members, we will proceed to a Q&A session. Now we can get started. Mr. President,
I will stand up. I'm old-fashioned, so I would like to welcome all of you while standing.
Thank you very much for being with us on this very important day. Maybe the weather is not very helpful today and does not encourage you to travel, but we would like to welcome those who came here as well as those who are following us online. Thank you very much. We are very pleased you are with us. I am pleased that we can say good morning today in the same group of management board members, as we said goodbye a few months ago. It's good that the composition of the management board remains unchanged and that we can talk about continuation of our work. At our last meeting, I said that cargo represented our future, and I assure you that nothing has changed here.
It is worth being with cargo, it is worth investing in cargo, and it is worth betting on cargo. I request your support, and we will make our best efforts to ensure that we and our employees are increasingly rich. This is how we also see our role as part of our responsibility for the group. I would also like to welcome all our directors who are with us in the room and will be available to answer any questions you might have in the Q&A session. We will provide you with accurate information about our situation. Let's move on to the results. Ladies and gentlemen, market shares of PKP CARGO managed by our transport amounted to 40.5% after nine months, and in the third quarter, 39.7%.
In the context of a growing market for railway transport, that means a slight decrease by of our share, 1.6% and 2 percentage points compared to the same period last year. The group has maintained its position of a clear leader of goods transport in Poland, increasing both volume and the work done in our transport services. We are the national carrier, let me stress once again, PKP Cargo is the national carrier, the largest in the Polish market, even though we have over 100 competitors on tracks. As a result of the higher volume and higher rates, revenues from contracts with customers increased after 3 quarters by 21% to PLN 3.815 billion.
Of which in the third quarter, the growth was 24% up to PLN 1,363 million, which directly translated into a significant improvement of our financial results. Let me stress this, a significant improvement of the financial result. Operating profit, EBITDA, grew 65% to PLN 649 million after 9 months, and by 67% to PLN 277 million in the third quarter of the year. Net profit had a second consecutive quarter with a positive result. In the third quarter, it amounted to PLN 38 million. After 9 months, the net loss decreased to -PLN 5 million. We are making up for our previous losses.
At the same time, year-to-date, the company has had CapEx at 520 million PLN, which means a 5% decrease as compared with 2021, due mainly to lower expenditures on renovation. Operating costs grew to PLN 3,756 million, and quarterly, they grew by 14%, amounting to PLN 1,285 billion. The increase was recorded mainly in variable costs linked to transportation services, traction fuel, and other services. Key directions of development. Let me remind you our key directions of development that the company has set out for the near future and which we presented already at the conference summing up our first half-year.
First of all, we want to enhance the quality of customer service and seek new volumes of transport with continuous development of our offer and further development of our terminals. Let me assure you once again that we do not want to stay in the market with what we have. We want to gain more market. In the area of operations, here I bow to my Commercial and Operating Directors. Alignment with market requirements, optimization of transport processes, and optimization of the work of traction teams. We want to have balanced CapEx and generate good financial results. We want to generate cash flows and divest assets which do not bring results for the group. We want to enhance our position in Europe as an international logistics group.
We consistently invest in developing human capital. The element of human capital development, which will be discussed by Zenon, is a very important element to us. Every time when I have the opportunity, I thank our employees an d I stress that we see PKP CARGO as people, as a family of our employees, and this element is extremely important to us. We want to thank our employees for their work and their contribution and for their dedication.
PKP CARGO is a service. Most of them are actually uniformed employees. It's a uniform service. In addition to their resistance, they also execute a mission, and I'm pleased that people understand that. Zenon will tell you more about this.
Ladies and gentlemen, following our announcements from the previous conference, we have updated our current strategy by 2030. We have formulated the strategies and priorities in the wake of the pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine. These factors have impacted the PKP CARGO's situation, and early next year we will start developing the new strategy for the oncoming years. We've been doing this before and we continue to do it, but the beginning of the new year is a kind of the watershed because we switched from the previous strategy.
We want to strengthen PKP's position in Europe and the North Sea corridor. We want to increase our competitiveness in the cargo market. We have continued the building of the Słubice-Góra Kalwaria terminal, which will strengthen our transportation capacity in the central part of the country and significantly improve the capacity of the North South corridor. It will be the largest dry port in this region. Like any other construction project, it will take some time to complete, but it will take only months rather than years. We want to complete as soon as possible to start making money on it. As you know, and as we know, what is the impact of war? We see the Polish sea ports, which have provided us with great support and offered cooperation.
The second part of our growth strategy will be to grow PKP CARGO as a big transportation regional logistic, international logistic group in the Three Seas area and also in the Balkans. Our presence in Germany also keeps growing due to the freight forwarding activity of PKP CARGO CONNECT GmbH, and thanks to handling of freight from German ports. As the Management Board and persons responsible for the business, we are very close to our clients and we closely follow what we actually follow what we preach. My colleague member of the board has been visiting German terminals very often. We keep tabs on things and we want to be as close as to the real thing, to the real market as possible.
When it comes to the human resources, human capital, it is Zenon's realm, so I give him the floor, and I also thank him and his team for his achievements to date. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. President, as Dariusz said, PKP CARGO is also about people and maybe people first and foremost. We have many thousands of employees who are at their posts across the country. They have unique competencies and very high level of dedication, commitment. It couldn't have been possibly achievable what we have achieved without our people. The level of competence and involvement we deem to be our competitive advantage. This is why we care so much about human capital.
We care for it in various dimensions, from personal safety at work, as we have been implementing the program of improving the safety culture through making PKP CARGO an attractive employer through various communication activities to our employees, but also to the market and especially to vocational schools across the country to acquire new employees into our group and also to strengthen our image. We have conducted a whole slew of programs in the area of responsible business are dedicated to strengthening our image of an employee-friendly and safe employer. I'd like to emphasize one of the ongoing projects which is execute under the umbrella of the European Employers Union that is about women and PKP CARGO has been participating. We can boast with very good parameters, with good numbers when it comes to the access of ladies to the leading posts.
We are the leader according to the polls that the organization contacted. We also want to provide the right employment structure and competencies wherever an opportunity for work arises. It includes training workshops, various instructions, so as to keep the competencies of our employees and skills at a very high level, because this is what guarantees a high-quality service and timely service to our customers. Let me emphasize that the challenges in front of us in terms of forecast growth and the freight will not be achievable without involvement of our employees. We have therefore conducted a very intensive dialogue with our trade unions. Some of them were turbulent, but we always strive to achieving a compromise and agreement in the interest of the company and interest of the human resources and the employees.
I assure you once again that PKP CARGO is about people, and the task of the Management Board also includes making sure that these people can safely and professionally execute their task and provide transportation services. I'd like to supplement what my colleague from the Board said. We should be aware of the magnitude of challenges. We are talking about 23,000 employees, including our subordinate companies, and our responsibility for 23,000 families and households. We are confronted with a huge magnitude of tasks and problems in relation to that, because when you have that amount of personnel, the problems are huge, and we feel that burden of responsibility rest on our shoulders. It is a magnificent group of people. These are people who are select in a positive sense from a professional point of view.
Most of them are operating personnel who graduated from various schools, universities and also courses and workshops with huge skills and tremendous competencies. Therefore, we have initiated various programs and attract new people, young people, so that the generation change goes seamlessly in our company, and that these people can go ahead and build up a strong position on the market. I think my colleague from the membership management board will take over now.
Three quarters of 2022 have shown that the railway market and the quantity of goods carried and the work involved in that have increased. We make efforts to maintain our market position. This is difficult because the war has resulted in a change of logistical routes, and the lack of the mass which we previously carried in terms of coal and oils from the east forced us to reorient our efforts, and we had to redirect our resources that previously supported our eastern routes and Silesian routes. We previously focused on carrying goods from there to the ports and across the country. We have recorded decreases here at 1.6%. In terms of goods, 0.8%.
I think it is not too bad, given the context.
Jacek, if you allow me, I will sometimes interrupt you. I believe and that it would be good for you to know various points of view that we have within the management board. Sometimes our opinions clash, and that is also about the freedom. What Jacek has very subtly signaled, this is our rearming, our reorientation to support new directions and in order to respond to what happened in broadly understood logistics. In the future, that will be our strength because now we are increasing our flexibility. Marek will probably dwell on this, but we previously focused on those directions that were focused on carrying coal. Now, our main focus is on ports as destinations. I do not see as a problem.
In fact, it increases our flexibility both in our relations with employees and in the relations that with rolling stock. Maybe this slight decrease that we're experiencing right now will become our strength. Now we are gaining experience at the level of this company, and this will be the kind of experience that no other competitor in Poland will have. That is our strength. Yes, our CEO emphasized it very nicely. I just want to say that we do not treat our market share some sort of a fetish. Instead, we focus on ensuring earnings for the group. This is not a reflection of our position in the market in terms of finances. That is this volume of goods and the transport work.
I think it is better to earn than to generate statistics. As for our main markets where we operate and where we earn, we maintain a strong position in the market. Intermodal transport, we maintain the position which we had previously. We were heavily affected by transport along the Silk Route. We are trying to recoup that by providing more services along other directions. The Silk Route has not regained its position from before the war, we continue the decreases. There is an embargo. The embargo is in place, lower output in China, lower orders from China to Europe and to Poland. Consequently, our transport does not increase. It is very difficult for us to make up for that loss, although we are trying to regain our position in other markets.
Construction materials, here we are coping very well. Everything is moving smoothly. The outlook for the upcoming months in this market continues to be good. We will make efforts to still improve the result. We have equally good, although smaller position in the market of metals and ores. In spite of lower requirement of metallurgical industry for ores, we have managed to do quite a significant work. Outlook is somewhat less optimistic for the upcoming months here. I wouldn't expect any growth, but there should not be any decreases either. Liquid fuels, here, there has also been a growth, a slight decrease in chemicals. Slight because we expected a much more significant decrease. Solid fuels, coking coal and lignite.
We are a leader in the market in this category, and our market share here also increased in spite of the transport of coal from Russia that was supplemented with overseas coal, but we have not regained levels from a year ago. Maybe Mr. Olkiewicz can. Mr. Olkiewicz had to grow gray as help his team to make sure that Mr. Rutkiewicz can make those happy announcements. As regard logistics in Poland, we take steps back. I would like to stress that Mr. Olszewski is someone who is probably the most knowledgeable Poland in Poland about what is happening on rails. As his colleague and friend, I think I can afford this kind of commentary.
I think in Poland, we have no other person who is as knowledgeable as he is. He takes care of the best interest of all of us and our employees. Marek, over to you. Thank you, Darek.
I would like to welcome all of you cordially. Let's remember now that we are talking about the third quarter and 9 months to date. The results that we are presenting today cover the period until September and including September. The environment around us is a living organism. The situation changes day to day. Every day, we face new challenges and tasks. I can assure you that the entire organizational work, operational work is moving in the right direction in terms of routes, quality, quantity, all other transport work done.
After three quarters, we are talking about the situations that took place in transport. I can also say that we are moving in a better direction. We have better results for all of the following months. In the context of the entire organizational and transport work, I can say that since the beginning of the year, we have seen a growing transport of coal. As my predecessors have said, in particular, Jacek, now that kind of transport changed in kind, changed completely. Until March, we had some sort of stability. We serviced the routes, the directions that we had previously serviced. Since then, everything has changed. The volumes, directions, the entire organization supporting this has changed.
In order to meet those challenges, PKP Cargo, and especially its maintenance units, had to make efforts to have more rolling stock, more carriages, more engines. We have more than 70 of new ones. We reduced CapEx on that. You are well aware of the financial situation, through better organization, more efficient approaches, change of work organization of our system, we were able to. In other words, the same carriage transports more goods. Yes, we have simply more rolling stock. The tasks we have been given, let's be honest, this is very. It was of great importance to transport coal.
We have to bear in mind that previously we carried coal from mines towards ports, and now it's the other way around. The entire organization to meet those challenges per se generates difficulties. I can assure you that we will not leave our contractors.
We are not going to leave anybody on the track, so to speak, that we're not going to meet our obligations arising from certain contracts. The type of coal, including coke, resulted or brought us high increase in turnovers. I'd like to assure you that PKP CARGO is absolutely capable of fulfilling its obligations, contractual obligations in particular, and also of a public responsibility obligations. This is what we are committed to doing. We do that. It happens that certain contracts are executed as priority number two and, or number three even. At The Clients Forum that PKP CARGO had organized, we heard from our clients that we are doing a good job despite the difficulties, and we are successfully transporting what we had planned for and what Jacek signed for us in terms of agreement.
That is true that the overall situation is not pleasant. We want to assure you, and we declare solemnly that we want to absolutely achieve what we have chalked out as our tasks. There are also many challenges to the operational and transportation work. The weather has just shifted, played a nasty trick on us because we are immediately confronted with frozen cargo in the cars, in the boxcars, which makes the transportation operations more difficult. Also, we use the national assets, namely the infrastructure. The national assets have been conducting the repairs on the tracks, on the lines. This impacts our operating activities and results of it.
Ladies and gentlemen, given the conditions, given the overall situation and environment, our quality, which is basically reflecting punctual operation of trains, is good, and it is developing in a better direction, which makes us a credible partner. Eventually, PKP Cargo has become a company which actually lives up to the contractual obligations. When the agreement is signed, as well, we absolutely fulfill to the letter. This is in a nutshell my reflection of what has happened on our tracks for the past three quarters. Should you have any questions, I'll be more than happy to take them. All right. President, I'd like to supplement what you said by adding that PKP Cargo has always been a credible partner, and we have improved that credibility up a couple of notches, I would say. There have always been problems, and we are going to be frank.
These problems are not new problems. There are challenges for the cargo people, for our personnel, like weather impact. Our role is also to ask the people to carry on and to execute their tasks. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to tell you the key performance indicators and financials before I hand over to Mr. Maciej, who will give you a financial overview.
I wanted to add that including the revenues from the line contracts resulted in the per unit increase in the revenues, resulting from the increase by 1% of the cargo mass and 5% in transportation segments that we covered. We have stepped up our activities in all areas, including intermodal transfers, servicing the side tracks, and so on, up to the amount of PLN 68 million, which is the operating profit.
When it comes to the operating cost increase, well, these include the increase in the variable costs, such as traction fuel and electricity, coupled with the worldwide growth in prices of fuels and coupled with the increase in the transportation services. We have also increased the benefits for the employees. That was a result of the pay rises that we have implemented. We have also increased in the other services item, such as fees for users of the rolling stock and the property. Other costs include the cost of materials sold and in non-traction electricity and fuels, as well as increasing the rates for our costs. That includes also the increase in the EBITDA.
The net result after nine months is higher by PLN 147 million higher year-on-year, despite increased financial costs. The interest rate costs have went up by PLN 41 million and the financial costs in total by PLN 57 million. According to our announcements, and I'm very pleased to do so, in the first half of the year, we tried to break even zero plus, virtually zero plus.
Maciej will take over from here, but we have the ambition to actually make it possible to maintain this result till the end of the year. Could you please add something about the fuels and the traction fuel and electricity? Because you have been the person who was monitoring this. This is the cost type affecting your department in the most part. There are two factors or actually three factors.
Two of them are those that impact the cost of the transportation services. There's electricity and fuels. If you have higher volumes, more transportation, then your fees for accessing the tracks will also go up. Until Q2, we maintained the electricity price because our electricity contracts expires only at the end of the year. We were now negotiating with PKP Energetyka another new contract for electricity procurement, and we were perfectly able to keep all the electricity costs under control. However, when it comes to fuels, since you are basically involved in the operations and you use that fuel, this becomes a very important cost factor.
We have no control over the fuel costs, fuel prices, and we consume a lot of fuel because the so-called last mile. Those miles have not been electrified, and we use heavy locomotives for marshaling especially. When we summed up our costs, we came up with what, 55% was in increase year-on-year. It is quite understandable, quite clear that if we look at the increase in those costs, we had to implement within cargo programs aimed at minimizing those costs, especially related to non-traction electricity and non-traction fuel.
We introduced contracts aimed at reduction or minimization of the quantity of fuel. We give up some locomotives, we phase them out, or we use them more efficiently. As for traction training and making sure that people who are responsible for the operational side of that are trained and their skills are improved. We have various types of locomotives, and the newer ones are more energy efficient or consume less fuel compared with those older models. Nevertheless, the entire operational process still needs the use of those older types of locomotives. As much as possible, we modernize them, but also we train train drivers to be aware of how fuel consumption can be optimized. As a result, we see changes on costs.
Prices keep growing, we won't pretend that we are able to stop that. Nevertheless, by the quality of work of people carrying out the process, we are able to generate less consumption. That is, we are able to consume less and generate less cost. That is why we take those steps. We also participate in a number of programs that are focused on alternative energy sources. We have joined those schemes, we are holding talks on that, we do our best to cooperate in this field. Some projects are more advanced, others less so. We would like to assure you that we are in favor of reduction of fuel or energy consumption. We are in favor of rational use of fuels.
Technological development, the development infrastructure for better actions that we can introduce to make energy consumption more efficient, for sure, is likely to bring good effects. As you have heard, in spite of modern equipment, humans remain at the heart of it. Just the awareness of our employees of the importance of the work is important. Those minor actions conducted throughout the group add up to this overall positive effect. Zenon, could you say a few words about headcount so that our audience knows what we are focusing on and what we want to achieve?
Thank you very much. As you can see, despite the maintained pace of our transport work, headcount in 9 months from the beginning of January till the end of September dropped.
The effects, vary. Mainly, that was driven by retirement, regular old-age retirement, or, early retirement. The fact that in spite of this lower headcount, we managed to increase our transport proves, that we have learned how to use our resources more efficiently, and that includes more efficient, utilization of human resources. At the same time, we take care, to replenish those resources, insomuch we need that for, improvement of the, smooth transport process. Also, the investment in, human capital consists in enhancing, processes and human labor so as to use our, resources, better. Both the resources, that, qualify in my area of responsibility and those that Marek manages.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will now ask Andrzej to sum up, this, presentation. Mr. Olkiewicz and
Mr. Rutkow ski also have my thanks. Maciej also, Director Sikora, Director Roszak, because their work is not so high profile, but the work is extremely important for our company. Thanks to the work of their teams, we have eyes and ears. We know which directions are good for us, which are bad. In the current reality, this work cannot be overestimated. For us, for the whole group, all employee teams are highly relevant. They are invaluable. I would like to extend my thanks to all employees, reiterating and emphasizing that they are the key element of our company. Their work translates into the effects that we have for shareholders, and that translates into what you expect of us.
Yes, it is the work of those people that will produce the results. I said cargo is the future, it's worth having our shares, it's worth betting on us. I think Maciej can recapitulate that providing some numbers.
Ladies and gentlemen, what matters is positive difference between the dynamics of revenues and dynamics of costs. Please also note that the results which we present for the third quarter, net result at PLN 38 million, is significantly better than what we had in the second quarter when we had a loss of PLN 41 million and the first quarter, which we had with a loss of PLN 42.6 million. As the President has mentioned, we are trying to find the right balance between CapEx and revenues.
Revenues fortunately grow, yet, we have behind us the years of COVID pandemic, where we have to overcome this backlog of post-pandemic and pandemic losses. This requires concerted effort of our team. We wouldn't be able to achieve those results without achievement of revenue targets, indexation and cost optimization. You can see that in this graph showing revenue growth versus cost growth and total results.
Maciej, if I may interrupt you for a moment. This optimization is not at the expense of employees. I want to make it very clear, we want our employees to earn well, and that is why we offer them a pay rise. I really want to stress this. Optimization is not done at the expense of our employees.
We have a significant growth per employee, 74.4%. That is the consequence of the headcount reduction that Mr. Kozendra mentioned, and increased revenues generated by operating and commercial divisions. In a salary increase and more work resulted in PLN remuneration increase. Per kilometer shows a decrease. We want to sort track this parameter in order to check how efficient we are. As for access to infrastructure, we have a major change in our structure because conventional transport grew, intermodal dropped. We know that intermodal has some significant discounts, access to infrastructure is also growing.
That's what we put on the slide, so that's 7.5. Please also note that of the tracks repaired by the Polish railroads, have now higher fees and also the non-usage fees went up. This requires from us and from our employees a more accurate planning and verification of routes in order to avoid excessive unnecessary costs. As far as the operating cost structure is concerned, they went up by merely 12.8%, which is smaller than the EBITDA growth that contributes to the through Q3 revenues. When it comes to cash flows, we have repaid capital in the amount of PLN 244,601.9.
We have in the post-COVID environment, we have our obligations during coal transport, and we had to use a short-term debt of the amount of PLN 2 million-PLN 9 million. We have the same. We retained the partner structure with all the PN, PKP S.A. as the bank. We see also the increase in the KPIs. This is not the level yet which would make us happy, but please look at the tendency of the trend, which is a very solid improvement and is the perspective that we look at the processes in the company and in the group. We've been really making sure the collaboration with operating divisions is good. This is what contribute to the propensity for operations for making deals with operations, because there's always a kind of tension between the finance and the operations.
The finance want to do their best to maintain good standing, and the operations would love to have steadily new equipment, especially the more energy efficient equipment rolling stock, which on the other hand impacts our prices or increases our prices for the clients. Thanks to that good cooperation, we have actually reduced investment outlays on our rolling stock. 90% of our CapEx are the outlays for the rolling stock. We have increased versus budget, the outlays for the IT, and we reduced that to the absolutely necessary investments. Despite the increase in EBITDA, we have reduced the CapEx. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to emphasize the role and express my thanks to all the partners who accompanied us on the road, who are very close to us.
I'd like to refer to the Supervisory Board, which is very down to earth. It is composed of very experienced people from various fields of business, and they offer a tremendous support to us. We have also representatives of trade unions on the Supervisory Board because they are very close to the real thing and can pass the messages up the line immediately. Thus, the Supervisory Board offers a tremendous support to us. Now, in line with the amendments of the company's legislations or business legislations, they are now closer to the Management Board. We are the biggest logistic link in the chain when it comes to coal distribution. We need to distribute the coal on time and wherever it is needed.
The partnership at the ministerial level, despite us being a listed company and the need to do everything by the book of this collaboration with our state organs needs to be retained. We have it in very high regard. Our partners such as PSA and PLK with whom we discuss various things sometimes from different positions, we appreciate them very much. If you find some important partners missing, please step forward and quote them because they are all very important. There are many anonymous people inside ours and their organizations who support us in our aspirations to advertise our results as good as possible. This is a great opportunity for us to express our thanks to all our partners. This is a very important issue for us.
We have open doors on the third floor where the management sits. We are more than happy to get engaged in discussions. Also, we are not only the ones on the receiving end, we try to help the others resolve their problems. We have a win-win situation resulting from our relations. We have a full-fledged partnership. Let me emphasize it again. This is a great partnership that we enjoy every day, especially in the light of the responsibility that we bear for the listed companies we manage. I'd like to once again express my thanks from the bottom of my heart. I think this is the final words from me. Can we revert to slide number 11 because I wanted to show you something there. There is something that you can boast with, President.
Absolutely.
This is the effort of our organizational structure to see what we have done in order to improve the results. You can see here the black bars in the first quarter, 12 million tons of freight mass, and then the decline in the second, the following quarter. We had to shift the transport from the current routes onto the new ones at a tremendous effort, cost of effort of our operations people, which resulted in Q3 being much better. We are catching up with the figures of the Q1. The wide load has increased because those routes are longer than the previous ones. This is where the strength and capabilities of our employees shone because we were able to outperform quarter two, and I'd like to reassure you that these bars will go up or keep growing up.
This was our Commercial Director Jacek Rutkowski.
Please actually hold him accountable for what he has just promised. As people, as the old adage goes, nobody can promise you as much as President Gutkowski, which the other president should transport. With his expertise, I'm absolutely convinced that that will be successful. I think we are monitored not only by the media from our industry, but also the general media. Let me emphasize, we have 24,000 coal transport boxcars, and they're ready. This is actually what the president has told the media. I think it is very good that he came to like the media. On those happy notes, I declare the floor open for questions. I'm very thankful that you came, that you're with us. We're in touch with you, and that cooperation has been ongoing, has been very good.
That is also that you do, and we appreciate that extremely. It is also something that gives us a fresh perspective because if we are inside, we see things differently. You being outside can provide us with fresh viewpoints. That is why we would like to thank you very much for you asking those questions, being with us. I see that as a form of support for us, even if you ask difficult questions. Those questions diversify our approach. We are a listed company. We are fully responsible for what we are working on. We work only on those conditions that are imposed by the stock exchange and the business. We do not have any additional source of funding at this stage, and nothing indicates it's going to change.
The current Commercial Companies Code is complied with, and we operate in accordance with market rules. That also is linked to our positive achievements and our intention to continue in this role of the national carrier even though we have about 100 competitors on Polish tracks. We want to continue to be the national railway carrier and we want to do that. We will do that.
Thank you very much, Mr. President. That brings us to the end of the presentation, and I open the Q&A session now. It will last about 40 minutes. Please ask just one question on one occasion, and I will read out the questions that were asked by our online audience. Let's start with the first question that you have and that will give time others.
How does the company assess the impact of transporting coal from ports on its results? Do those extraordinary gains offset the losses? How much of 4.5 million tons of coal have you managed to carry, and do you see any delays? Let's start from the end, Marek.
I do not know whether we are at all familiar with the problem of any delays. Definitely not ones for which we are to blame. Those orders that we get from companies which want us to carry coal from ports are completed in 100%. We are not responsible for the topic of coal. We have signed contracts. Just to make it clear, we get certain slots and this is our task.
As regard the entire organization of coal transport, you must know this because that is public knowledge. You must know that we are at such a stage where we get an order from companies which import coal, whose task is to buy coal and secure it for our population. We are in this middle stage, logistical stage, responsible for transport. You know perfectly well that PKP CARGO is not the only carrier. We do not transport everything. What we are ordered by companies that are responsible is done as much as we have such possibility, that is, those slots granted to us and the right documentation. The slots and documentation allow us to fulfill those orders as of now. It also follows from the existing contracts.
We are one of the market players, and we have about 100 competitors. We are just one market player. We do not have any special privilege. Well, maybe the only our privilege is our strength and the strength of cargo community. That is our only privilege. Definitely we are a player that relies on market rules.
Coal carried to Poland is transported by many carriers. We have to compete in this market. We get market price that is forced by the actions of various competitors in the market. These are profitable activities. We cannot say that we have to add anything extra to that. We do make a profit on this. However, the governmental data show that three ships came to Polish ports till September.
Year to date, 33 vessels with various varying capacity came to Polish ports. Marek probably would be able to give you exact numbers to show the volumes of coal that we carry monthly from ports inland.
Those results are not the effect of coal transport on its own. That is the cumulative effect of all previous activities. We improved our results as a result of various initiatives. Coal will only show the full development in the future. You would like to say something?
What has been ordered is carried from ports as we have been instructed.
If we talk about the third quarter or three quarters, 2022, now we are carrying more and more coal out of ports, but it fluctuates.
Not only energy coal, but also coking coal. That is also needed because it goes to metallurgy. If you want metallurgical industry to continue to function, we need to provide coking coal there. For September alone, that would be about 3 million in our transport. We actually achieve very high volumes. If we look at the fourth quarter, you will see growing results month by month. You have to be aware that the entire operation or that has been entrusted to us is being completed practically at 100%. Whatever the client orders, we complete. That is not only from ports, also from mines. Maybe not everyone is aware of the scale of those operations.
Could you give us some statistics on the record high transports from ports? With good cooperation with all parties involved, we can have 50 trains per day. We need to have locomotive and cars. Yeah, trains, 50 trains per day. They had 70 trips from ports. When everything works fine, the load is okay. We just provide our rolling stock. We have also some redundant stock just in case. We had 50 trains with full load. That is also something that should be stressed here, the huge effort of our partners, ports in this case
It is worth mentioning here also our employees who have to work far away from home, mainly train drivers, but other people as well.
People work far away from home, sometimes, the other end of the country. In order to make our operations smooth, we need to have people who are willing to do this work.
As PKP CARGO, we are responsible for warmth in the homes of their relatives and friends and families. We supply coal not only to the heating plants, but also to steel mills, especially the coking coal. We express our thanks to our train drivers and our train personnel who operate far from their families very often. That's very precious. Since we changed the transportation routes of ore, which now rise into Polish ports rather than coming from Ukraine, we have no deliveries from ore. In addition to coal, please bear in mind that we also transport ores. Right. With the power of PKP CARGO, we are still being able to operate, to be competitive, to be business-friendly. Cargo needs flexibility for this.
From question, from an inquiry to the business operations through the implementation, through execution, this closed decision loop makes us more competitive against our other partners.
In addition to those 50 ports, 50 trains, please bear in mind as we also operate from Szczecin, from Świnoujście, and also from foreign ports, Bremen, Rostock, Riga, and others. We also plan to expand over the south, southern ports, but they have to be viable business-wise.
We spoke about Slovenia and the Czech Republic. I believe that we try to play all our businesses during start we have in our portfolio now as orchestra. For this, we had to conclude deals, conclude contracts for operating on new routes. Some others we have got rid of. We stopped operating on other routes and in agreement with the partner today.
Before we have concluded those contracts, the time, some time will definitely pass.
I t's like we arrived as a team to the championships, the football championships. We want to come out of our group successfully. We want to make it to the finals. Similarly, we want Poles to feel safe and certain that they will have their homes warm in the winter. Hopefully, the president didn't call anybody from our team Lewandowski. Well, Lewandowski failed to score the penalty shot, so it's not always certain. We've been, so far, 100% successful in our shooting. We shoot the goal into various businesses, and we've been quite good at doing this.
Back in November, you were supposed to start negotiations with the social partners. Have you started those conversations? If not, what are the expected demands of the social partners as far as the pay raise is concerned in the quarters to come? I knew that you're going to ask a difficult question, for which I thank you. We have very close relations with our social partners, our employees. We've been involved in ongoing negotiations. Ladies and gentlemen, we are with the people. We are close with them. We are in constant touch, and we attempt to mitigate difficulties for them at work. Sometimes private matters come up, and we make life for them as easy as possible, like putting them on home office.
We know that prices went up. To rest assured that we can, that they can support their families, they need high wages. My colleague with the HR team has been doing a great job. I actually commend you for that. I give you the floor to tell us about our attitudes towards our employees. We conducted discussions, negotiation yesterday.
Thank you. President, yesterday, another round of negotiations took place as part of the mediation exercise. As you know, we are in a collective bargaining conflict, legal conflict with the social partners. We have a mediator who organizes and conducts the negotiations. The mediator is President Krzysztof Mamiński. He is the mediator. The discussions with the trade unions are a constant part of my job.
That includes not only that legal conflict phase and wages, but also discussions on other topics. This week, we spoke with our. Twice, we spoke twice with signatories of our collective bargaining act. We have endorsed amendments, and yesterday, we negotiated as part of that collective conflict. As you may have noticed, the conflict is about the expected pay raise, rise in wages. Yesterday, the positions draw closer together a bit, but not to the extent allowing us to reach an agreement. However, more significantly, we have not signed a protocol of divergencies. It's difficult for me to present the social demands because our partners are diversified. They are comprised of 11 trade unions, and they express diverse demands that I would like to refrain from presenting them here and now.
Most importantly, we have agreed that, part of the trade unions, the biggest one accepted that, the biggest one represent more than 50% of our employees, they were forthcoming, and we decided to have another round of discussions not later than January.
Certain proposals were made, but this is all as part of the ongoing mediation, and I don't want to give any specifics because there is a certain dynamics to those talks in progress. I think that the next mediation meetings will lead us to the signing of an agreement.
We also want to balance and find a common denominator between those things. How to value work. Of course, a train driver has very important competencies, but it is also very important to do the work of the maintenance worker who puts the segment of a train together. All jobs that are dedicated to that are equally relevant. All those jobs are needed so that we can work as a single team, one family without any internal divisions.
If we are talking about any pay rises, and we are obviously aware of the situation around us and people's expectations, we would like everybody to have a similar experience. And we also hope that the trade unions find a common denominator for themselves. That we make sure that each little task of every single person is vital for us. Sometimes those talks, if seen from an observable external observer perspectives, may seem protracted, but we also take all this as a form of caring about our employees. It is not that we are on opposite sides. We as management board are fully aware that a satisfied employee means good, more effective work. We want to keep those standards.
Thank you for this answer. One additional question.
So far, the negotiations resulted in one-off rewards or change of base salaries. Are you considering this time any variable element? For example, something that will make salaries dependent on company's profits?
Yes, we are considering such an element. It is not as part of the mediation. Within this collective dispute, we focus on specific demand that is pay rise in the part of base salary. In the talks that we have with trade unions, for example, change of the collective agreement and other talks also include this element. This is something that is still work in progress. Until we have finished this process, I don't want to discuss any details.
Each such decision in this company concerns not just thousands, a few thousand people, but dozens of thousands of people. You know that, in the company, we have 80% participation in trade unions. This is a significant percentage of employees who are unionized. We as the management board see a broader perspective for the company. Then there is this powerful social partner. In order to reach a common ground, we need to compare our visions and show certain elements, especially financial ones, because the decision we are going to make will have its effects throughout the coming years. Amid geopolitical uncertainty, we have to be responsible in our decision-making. This is a very important question. It must take time.
We really need to find a common denominator with a sense of responsibility for finances of our shareholders and people who trusted us. In no way do we want to do it at the expense of our employees. We want to achieve this thanks to more efficient operations, greater performance, commercial element, but never at the expense of the employees. If I may, I would like to go to the topic of consumption of energy and traction fuel. If let's look at traction energy, nominal value, in the third quarter, if you adjust that by transport work, we had slightly over 20% up from compared to last year. The price for the third quarter was secured for the company.
I would like to ask you to comment on the prospect by the end of the year, to what extent is this price secured? Another part of this question, what can we expect in 2023? We are also negotiating details, so I don't want to talk about them as it also concerns our partners. We have secured our needs until the end of the year, and we are now close to reaching an agreement for next year. This agreement has been developed with a sense of business responsibility for what might happen. We have also the hindsight of this year's experience. We know how those energy costs changed.
You have to take into account 2 parameters that have to be factored in.
One, that was work. We had a significant increase in that. We had not a sufficient stock of fuel. We had to rely on spot, and then were affected by significant increases in fuel costs. As for the future, decisions are now being made about the parity and price regarding additional purchases on spot market. It will be premature to reveal any details of that, but that will be driven by transport work volume.
Thank you very much for that. It is worth stressing that trains are the most ecological ways of carrying. That's our argument and our strength.
Another question asked online: What are the prospects of the mineral market for 2023?
The management board mentioned some positive outlook. PLK does not sign any agreements. Doesn't it mean that there might be less demand for such work?
Good question. I think the contracts are being finalized. Some will end this year and next year. I think it does not pose any risk for us at this point. I think it's going to be one of those business and commercial elements where we are going to focus quite significantly in PLK. We have a management board member who was on the management board of PLK. Some processes there were approved under his watch. As for commercial part, I think this is going to be an element on which we want to win in the Polish market. Investments, CapEx?
Ladies and gentlemen, of the capital expenditure projects that we have been conducting on the Polish railways with us participating through the contractors who provide us with aggregates, we don't see any declines in that. You transport aggregates in various volumes and for various needs. There are still ongoing capital projects in road building, and there is a tremendous amount of aggregates that need to be transported, and we are doing our best to supply, to transport whatever was contracted. The road projects require bituminous products. In addition to aggregates, there's also what we transport. There is a demand for this as well, and we want to transport it. When it comes to the railway building projects, they are very big, and they are ongoing. We focus on supplying those projects with aggregates.
We don't want to have any delays here. I wouldn't worry about 2023 in this respect.
We are also in close contact with our partners, the Directorate of Road and Highway Building, in order to overcome any barriers to supplying materials to capital projects, construction projects. We thank our partner for that collaboration. We know about their priorities, and together with our clients, we want to supply them in the uninterruptible way.
The government has been consistently pursuing construction of roads, so there is no decline here. The average distance that we transport aggregates on has increased, which translates into improved results. Poland is not the only country that receives our aggregates. We have 2 neighbor countries, Germany and the Czech Republic, who are also our clients. I tended to be convinced that the volumes would decrease with time.
The discussions with our partners indicates that they're very optimistic, we want to be optimistic as well.
To add to that, when it comes to our rolling stock in terms of box cars and locomotives, we are Poland's largest operator of the rolling stock, we are in a very privileged position because it's not PKP CARGO that transports everything. There are also private transport companies that also transport aggregates, due to the amount of rolling stock, we can be more competitive, which is a big competitive advantage.
As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, it is sometimes a privilege, at times it is a big load of responsibility. We are an open book sometimes for our competitors who might exert big pressure during price negotiations. We see this as something that helps us grow.
The competitive pressures keeps you on your toes. It actually makes you look around for opportunities, look for opportunities. We want to be competitive on a sound basis. We want, as a national carrier, we want to achieve a bigger share in the market. Unless there are questions, please, let's conclude the official part. We will then continue discussing offline. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts that you come to our conferences, that you are with you. It is perhaps our last meeting before the end of the years, this is why we wish you a Merry Christmas, a lot of good fortune. As the board of PKP CARGO, who continues in the vein of the previous management boards, we want to improve the situation of our company together.
We are all on the deck, and we thank you for your trust vested in us. We want to assure you that we do our best to make our employees and you yourselves also richer than before. On this optimistic note, I assure you that we are going to commit ourselves to that promise. Thanks once again for accepting our invitation. Please be with us because cargo is the future. Let's stay together. Thank you very much.