All righty, we're gonna continue with our next session with CSX. Really happy to have Sean Pelkey, CFO of the company, back at the conference. Thanks for being here, Sean. We're gonna get right into questions. I'll start, but as folks have questions, raise your hand. We'll get you involved. So, you know, generally I'd just like to start with sort of a macro update and how you're seeing the world. Volumes, you know, give or take, flattish starting second quarter. How are volumes, mix trending relative to expectations of the quarter? What end markets are doing better than you thought? What's doing worse than you thought? We'll start there on volume, and then we'll... Lots to talk about.
Okay. Well, sounds good, Scott, and thanks for having me here. We're a little bit better than flattish. We're up 1%, quarter to date so we'll take that. And of course, as everybody knows, we've been feeling the impacts of the Baltimore outage in terms of our impact on export coal. I'll talk a little bit about that, 'cause I've got a positive update on that situation. But, you know, if you were to strip that out, we'd actually probably be up about 2%-3%, volume on a quarter to date basis, which with a macro that's still not extraordinarily supportive, you know, And there's some markets that are positive, some markets that are negative, but, you know, that's a constructive sign that what the CSX team is doing is working. The service product is definitely translating into new customer wins.
We've actually seen a pickup in some truckload conversion opportunities, where the team... I know Kevin's talked a lot about doing these whiteboard sessions with some of the customers and looking at, "Hey, where do we serve you today, and where do we think we might be able to serve you differently in the future on lanes that you're currently moving truck? Let's try to convert some of those lanes to CSX, given the success that we've had in serving you really consistently over the past two years." And we're starting to see a pickup in some of those, truckload conversion wins, even in the midst of a truckload environment that I think everybody would agree is still not very supportive in terms of rail conversion. So in terms of specific markets, you know, I think, we are seeing some strength in international intermodal and chemicals.
Those are two markets that, you know, were off last year. Chemicals, we had a lot of inventory destocking. That has now seemed to have, you know, that seems to be in the rear-view mirror, and we've seen nice growth in the chemicals market, which is a high-RPU market, so that's good. International intermodal was down significantly last year. Again, inventory destocking. That has turned around. We're seeing double-digit growth in international intermodal, even a little bit ahead of our expectations. And then autos, strong last year and continues to be strong this year. We had some nice wins, on the auto side, and so those are, those are really impacting CSX's volume growth as well. We started out the year with a bunch of quality holds.
We have lapped most of that, and there's actually a lot of inventory still on the ground that we've got to move. So I think that strength in autos is likely to continue. On the flip side of it, you know, ag and food has been a soft spot for a little while for CSX now. A lot of that had to do with the strong southeastern crop last year. So when it comes to feed grain, that's been a weak market for us. We actually, over the last couple of weeks, have seen that start to tick up. So there's positive signs there. We are setting up for, you know, hopefully some better trends in the second half of the year there. Metals has been off a little bit. You know, sheet steel's been okay.
Finished steel, not as good, supporting the construction markets. And, phosphates has been off, but, you know, it's important to kind of look at the details on that one, because most of the volume decline that you're seeing in phosphates, which actually has a big impact on our merchandise volume, is short haul. It's Bone Valley volume that's going from, you know, to the Port of Tampa, so very, very short-haul business. There's some outages there. Those are gonna resolve in the next couple of weeks, so you should see volume pick up. But in the meantime, we've actually had a lot of positive mix. You'll see that in Q1. You'll probably see that again in Q2 within the phosphate segment.
Very helpful, and just a couple of follow-ups. You mentioned Baltimore. What is the latest in terms of when you expect that to start reopening?
Yeah. So we got really good news yesterday. Not only did they move the Dali out, they actually were able to get to a channel depth of 50 feet, and 50 feet is kind of the magic number to get the big vessels in. The team did a phenomenal job getting the facility ready for the reopening, and so we actually started moving coal in about 10 days ago. We've been doing some midstreaming, so taking some smaller ships, loading those up, and then taking them out into the harbor, doubling those up into the larger ships, right? So, that started about 10 days ago. We've been running 2 trains a day into the Baltimore facility for the last 10 days.
We actually have some Panamax vessels that'll be arriving this weekend, and we've got Capesize vessels that are set to return next week. So we should see a return to full volumes as soon as next week. Again, I mentioned running kind of 2 trains a day over the last 10 days. We should ramp up to 3 trains a day in the next few days, which is great. That's on par with what we were doing in the first quarter.
And so to the extent that maybe there was less rerouting than maybe you would've ideally hoped for, that actually bodes well, I would think, for, like, a quick ramp, then-
Yeah
... specifically outbound.
Yeah. So we did have some rerouting back in April. It went okay. Probably not as well as we had hoped. There were some maintenance outages at some of the other facilities that we were rerouting to. But you know, as we got into May here, again, the last 10 days, roughly half the month, we've been loading at Curtis Bay.
Okay.
So.
Good. And then you mentioned, I think it was within phosphate, positive mix, but-
Yeah
... when you're just thinking about the aggregate business, right, chems up sounds good for mix. International intermodal may be negative mix.
Yeah.
In aggregate, how should we think about mix?... in Q2?
Yeah, so I think in aggregate, slightly negative mix with intermodal being, you know-
Okay
... outpacing overall growth. That, that's gonna be the biggest factor there, and then obviously, the coal market is a swing factor.
Right.
As well.
Is that any different from Q1?
Only, only different in the sense that, you know, the coal is not as strong as it was in Q1-
Right
... given the Baltimore outage.
Okay. So overall, just in terms of the guidance that you guys have laid out, you talked about low- to mid-single-digit volume and revenue growth this year. How do you feel? Are, you know, almost halfway through the year, are we on track for that? Higher end, lower end? I don't know, any-
Yeah
... Any thoughts?
Probably not gonna give any specific-
Yep
... you know, tightening of the range, other than just to reaffirm that, yes, we-
Yep
... we still think low to mid-single digit volume to revenue is the right place to be, and that's supported by strong pricing, particularly in the merchandise market. Intermodal's a little more challenging, given where the truckload market is. Export coal is, of course, a wild card. We feel very good about where the demand is at. In fact, if you look at our Q1 export coal tonnage, it was the best quarterly tonnage levels we've had in over a decade. We think that will continue going forward. We're gonna see this ramp up in at Baltimore and, you know, we've got good line of sight to the demand continuing. So, you know, that's very, very positive. That'll be supportive.
Fuel prices are down, so that's a, that's obviously a negative in terms of RPU and an offset to the volume growth that you're seeing and the pricing that we're getting in merchandise. But still feel confident in terms of the overall guidance.
Okay, great. So you mentioned price. I wanna spend a little bit of time here, right? It's been, you know, such a, you know, supportive part of the rail story for such a long time, just this idea of inflation plus pricing. And it, it just... It feels like over the last couple of years, not for CSX, but for the industry broadly, just high inflation, challenging truck pricing, just like this idea of, you know, inflation plus pricing as a, as a given, has felt like less of a given. When do you think, maybe you disagree, but, you know, when do you think we get back to a clear, you know, not just in this one part of the business, but in aggregate, right, an inflation plus pricing story for rails? And, and whenever we get there, do you, do you think that the...
Is there, like, a multi-year sort of inflation catch-up potential for you guys?
Hmm. Yeah, so a couple things I would say there. You know, having a sustained service product, and that's really what CSX is all about, industry-leading service on a sustainable basis, that supports the ability to price a little bit above of inflation every single year, and that is a key value driver. When we think about the long-term equation for, you know, operating income, EPS growth at CSX, it's being able to outprice inflation every year. Not by, you know, hundreds of basis points, but by enough of a margin that we see a drop through to operating income. We've been doing that over the last three years. So that's, that's, you know, that's... We don't necessarily publish what the dollars of price are, what the percentage of price are, is.
We got to strip out, of course, export coal and the coal impacts on pricing. But if you just look at merchandise and intermodal, on an aggregate basis, we are getting, continuing to get strong combined pricing that exceeds inflation. In fact, if you were to look this year at combined merchandise and intermodal pricing relative to dollars of cost inflation, so dollars of price minus dollars of inflation, that differential is as good as it's been or pretty much on par with as good as it's been over the last decade as well. So while, you know, inflation has come down and pricing percentage has come down over the last two years, it's still on a relative basis just as strong as it has been, if not a little bit better than it was the last couple of years.
And then I think the last point I would make is kind of go back to the last two years. If you strip out the noise of other revenue and what's been going on there with intermodal storage coming down, and you strip out trucking, and fuel surcharge, our RPU, revenue per unit, was up about 7.5% in 2022, up 5.5% last year. Now, export coal is a piece of that, but, I think that's evidence that we've, we've been able to deliver on this promise for the last couple of years and expect that to continue.
And so, if I'm thinking about this right, Q2 is probably our peak headwind from a coal, met coal year-over-year, and then sort of maybe the final headwind with storage revenue.
Yep
... so as we get to back half of 2024, RPU or coal yield-
Yeah, the co-
Overall yield-
Yeah, the comps are easier, certainly, as you get to the back half of the year.
Yeah.
I think, you know, again, a lot depends on what happens with global met prices, because, you know, those contracts do set, reset monthly and quarterly. So they've come down a little bit from the first quarter into the second quarter, so we'll see where they go from here. But stripping that out, yeah, I think it's, you know, it's more constructive going into the second half on a year-over-year basis.
Okay. I want to talk a little bit about on the cost side.
Mm-hmm.
So if I look from Q4 to Q1, right, overall cost, excluding fuel, came down a little bit, right? I think the commentary in the Q1 call is maybe we see a little bit improvement again, Q1 to Q2. Just maybe give us an update overall on the cost side.
Sure, yeah. So I think broadly what I'd say is, you know, One of the things that you're seeing a lot of at CSX is a lot of collaboration across the groups, right? So you've got Mike Cory and his team sitting down with the sales and marketing team, finance is part of those discussions, and we're looking at every dollar of cost, every opportunity to drive efficiency across the network, right? And so it's making tweaks to the operating plan, it's trying to think about, how do we operate with fewer locomotives? Again, you know, putting some of those constraints in and seeing if the operating team can adjust to them to save some costs. Labor productivity is something that we're looking to deliver as we get into the second half of the year on a year-over-year basis.
But we're more productive with our crews today than we were, you know, three months or six months ago as well. Same thing with our locomotives. And I think that cost discipline has really kind of made its way across the entire organization. Everybody, even including myself, kind of taking a fresh look at our budgets and saying, "Where are places we can find new opportunities for savings?" Whether that's legal fees, or within my world, insurance costs, or, you know, you name it. And that is translating into what you're seeing on the cost side of the equation. Not step function changes, but again, what we're trying to do is build sustainable improvements that drive ongoing momentum in the earnings, and I think you're seeing that happen. You saw it in Q1.
We mentioned that from Q1 to Q2, we do expect labor. You know, the implication is labor costs come down, labor per employee should improve by a few, few points sequentially. And, you know, we should be able to hold the line on purchased services and other costs, you know, plus or minus a little bit, depending on how things come out on the core, on the core PS&O.
I think that sounds like a yes. There should be a little bit of, you know, further sequential improvement in cost.
Yeah, I don't want to go quite that far and give you, you know, firm guidance on it-
Okay.
But we are seeing good momentum.
Okay. One of the questions that we're getting is, and I think this came up a little bit on the Q1 call as well, is just sort of balancing costs relative to the service metrics that we see every week, and then the more customer-facing service metrics. 'Cause when we look at, you know, dwell times, they're now 15% higher, give or take, year-over-year. So how... Just talk about the balance between, you know, the service metrics we see, where customer service levels are, and then what all this means for-
Yeah
... costs.
Yep.
Right.
Well, right, I mean, the fundamental question is service to the customer as good or better than it was a year ago, right?
Yeah.
There's lots of metrics that we as an industry publish, and it's easy to get lost in those metrics and draw conclusions from it. What we need to do is go by the evidence that's the most direct, feedback that we can get from our customers. So there's a few data points, right? And I, I think we've talked about some of these before. One is, what are the customers telling us? And there's many, many touch points that we have with customers. The feedback remains extraordinarily positive. Customers are having a positive experience with CSX. In many cases, they're looking to figure out how they can move more, not less business with us, on a go-forward basis, and that includes some of the truckload conversions I talked about earlier. You look at the customer satisfaction surveys, which we do on a quarterly basis.
The service metrics within those surveys are as good as they've been as they've ever been in the history of doing this survey. So that's a positive data point. You look at... We look internally at our customer switch data. How often did we actually switch the customer when we told them we were going to do that? That's been at 95% consistently for the last year and a half, two years. That has not changed. So to the extent that you've seen other public-facing metrics like velocity and dwell go in the wrong direction, you know, I think that's a function of a couple of things. First is, Mike and the team making changes to the operating plan, right?
A lot of those changes are driving efficiency gains, improving locomotive productivity, improving crew productivity. In some cases, recognizing that there are certain areas across the network where it's still really difficult to hire. We don't have enough crews to run the train plan that we have, so let's not run that train plan. Let's reduce it a little bit and see if we can get into building new habit strength. So as those train plan changes settle in, you see the velocity in that area of the network start to recover. You see a real focus on the dwell. They've got daily calls at 8:00 A.M. going through, where are cars sitting? Where do we need to get them moving?
So I think you'll see some of that start to settle back down into where we were previously. The other thing I'd mention is just engineering. We've got, you know, a heavy capital plan this year. There's a lot that we needed to accomplish, and in order to do that, we needed to make sure that engineering got the track time they need. We actually have seen a 20% improvement in engineering productivity laying rail this year. So that's significant. It means a lot less overtime. It means less dollars being spent to install that rail. And we're actually reallocating some of those dollars in places in the network where we can actually drive future efficiency, so that's a real positive. But when you think about it, how do you get 20% improvement in engineering efficiency?
You need to give them more track time. Okay, so that's going to have an impact on velocity, potentially on dwell as well. And Mike mentioned this on the Q1 call, but many of those projects in the first quarter of the year happened in the same areas across the southern part of the network. That had an impact across there. So they're looking at, how do we do this in a smarter way going forward? Is there a way we can spread some of that work out, still give engineering the track time, but don't concentrate it in one geographic area to make sure we don't repeat the same issues.
Okay, but it sounds like overall, right, you're happy with where, what-
Yeah
... the aggregate service product is and-
We're... Well, you know, the important thing is, is the customer happy?
Yeah, right.
From every indication that we have, including, you know, we look at this weekly, how many calls are we getting from the customer, reporting service issues? Those are actually down year-over-year.
... And so I, I wonder what does all of this mean from, staffing, headcount perspective?
Mm-hmm.
We're seeing, still seeing some negative labor productivity.
Yeah
... CSX. Should we think about, I think you said second half, we should see a positive inflection in labor productivity?
That's right. That's right.
But how should we think about, you know, absolute headcount levels for CSX going forward? Do we-
Mm-hmm
... say flattish? Any opportunity to reduce some, in some certain places, or-
Yeah
... do you think it still needs to move higher?
Yeah. So it headcount went up a little bit from Q4 to Q1. That was really not driven by train and engine. We're at a pretty good spot when it comes to our train and engine headcount. It was driven by a ramp-up in some of the engineering headcount in advance of the capital program that we had. Because we're running so well on the capital program, we're probably gonna be able to manage that headcount down through attrition as we go through the year on the engineering side. And then in terms of T&E, I think we'll see that maintain at a fairly even level. We do need to start, over the next couple of months, hiring for the spring peak of next year.
It is a 9-month cycle, essentially, from when you decide you need to bring somebody on to when they're fully marked up. Which includes the, the period of time it takes to actually hire them and get them on site for training. So, we'll be getting into that. That'll flow into the headcount numbers, but even with that, yeah, probably about flattish on headcount this quarter sequentially, and then, and then continue along those lines. I think the other thing that I would say is, we've introduced a lot of data science into the way that we figure out how many crews we need and where. Unique to our industry, we've got 100 or so different crew hiring locations, and some of those locations might have 20 or 30 people, some might have 200 people.
I'm talking about train and engine crews here. So trying to forecast how many people am I going to need in nine months is not an easy exercise, and I need to essentially land it on the head of a pin if I want to maximize efficiency and make sure that I, I can serve the customer the way they need to be served. So I need to know, what's my attrition gonna look like? What's my operating plan gonna look like? What's my... What are my volumes gonna look like in that area of the network? A lot of work has gone into refining that model. So we're never gonna get it perfect, but I feel a lot better about where we're at now than where we were in 2022 and 2023.
Helpful. So what does all of this mean from a operating margin perspective? I don't know, you know, let's start maybe near term, and we'll get longer term. But I know Q2, you know, sequentially, we typically see improvement. Should we see that typical improvement? I don't know if you want to think about it year over year. You know-
Yeah
... however you want to answer the-
Yeah
... the Q2 op margin.
Yeah, I mean, I think what I feel comfortable with is in the second half of the year, we're gonna see year-over-year improvement, both in terms of operating margin and operating income growth. You know, I think what's gonna be exciting is all the noise of, you know, intermodal storage revenue and hopefully fuel surcharge and export coal price and all of that will go away, and, you know, the smoke will clear, and you'll actually be able to see what we're seeing on an underlying basis, which is momentum in our core earnings power. And so that will manifest in terms of the actual reported numbers. That's because we're continuing to serve the customer well. We're getting pricing. We're growing the volume.
You know, every Monday, we get together, and we get a list from Kevin of, "Here's all the new customer wins," right? "Here's the business that we converted that's gonna move by rail, and most of it's gonna start pretty soon." This week, he had 5 items on the list, and those 5 items were, in aggregate, $5 million of annualized opportunity. So Kevin put the slide up, and he said, "You know, we had an okay week on conversions." Well, you take 5, and you multiply it by 52, it's a pretty big number, and if 5 is just an okay week, you know, you can pretty easily get to, you know, where are we on an annualized basis in terms of new wins?
Now, there's always gonna be some, some losses, some plants that shut down, that sort of thing, a little bit of churn. But I can tell you, the wins are a lot heavier than the losses, and I, you know... With the truckload market where it is, I think when that starts to turn, there's gonna be business that we have won at plants that we currently serve that will start to convert over to rail. That, that cost differential, as it widens up, widens, we're, we're gonna see some of the volume that's been committed to us actually start to move over. So we've seen some of those nice wins. They've manifested in the numbers. They've offset some of the negative impacts in terms of the manufacturing economy and the macroeconomy.
But as that starts to break loose, I think, you know, there's good things ahead.
Is that, that $5 million this Monday, I don't know what was... I'm not, I'm not gonna ask you what last Monday was, but- ... is that like in every week, we're getting something along those lines kind of thing?
Yeah. I would say it's rare we ever see a week where it's not at least $3 million-$5 million. Yeah.
And so ultimately, when you think about, you've talked a lot about, like, some of these industrial-
Yeah
... development projects. Like, what, how much in aggregate, you know, what's the, how much volume does this, is this gonna add, you know, per year-
Yeah
... to CSX beyond whatever the market is doing?
Yeah, so let me be clear. I mean, the weekly numbers that I'm talking about are not industrial development.
Okay.
These are, these are wins, right?
Mm-hmm.
They're either competitive wins or they're truckload conversions or expansion of business that we're doing at an existing facility as that customer grows and invests. But the industrial development activity, you know, that is picking up. I think a lot of that originated during the supply chain crisis immediately post-COVID. There's been a significant amount of spending in the Southeast and Midwest across our network. We're seeing some of those plants come online. We have seen some come online, more coming online in the second half. What Kevin has said is, we think it'll contribute 1% to merchandise growth this year and on a longer term basis, 1%-2% of net growth within merchandise. We've got 500 projects.
We shared a slide, if you haven't seen it, in our earnings released in April that talked about the 500 projects and the diversification of opportunities that are out there. I think there was a perception by some that it was all EV related, and if that doesn't sort of manifest in the way that we maybe thought it was going to a year ago, that the industrial development story was somehow at risk. Hopefully, what that chart did is dispel that concern, and give you some confidence that this is real. We've got a massive spreadsheet that's got these 500 opportunities. Here's the private investment, here's the carload opportunity, here's the ramp.
We know, you know, it's very difficult to predict exactly when all these things are gonna come to fruition, but we do think in 2025 and 2026, you're actually gonna see a ramp up.
And so if we take the industrial development and then, you know, $3 million-$5 million in wins a week, right? There should be-
Yeah
... it sounds like, you know, call it an extra 2 points of volume above whatever the market's gonna give you.
Yeah. I'm not gonna-
So-
I'm not gonna commit to that just yet.
Okay
... but we should be able to outgrow the market.
Okay. So when people say, "Hey, volumes have declined in seven of nine years for CSX-
Yeah
... volumes are lower than they were a decade ago," right?
Yeah.
Do you feel like, you know, again, we gotta see what the overall economy does, but-
Yeah
... you feel pretty good that we're, you know, at or at that inflection?
Well, I mean, that's the key question, right? We have a file that goes back to 1979. Merchandise volumes are down over 1% a year, every year on average since 1979 for CSX, right? And not just for CSX, for the industry. That's what we're looking to reverse, and, you know, I think we do have the wind at our back in terms of the industrial development. But I also think that our service is as good as it's ever been, and we've been able to sustain that now for almost 2 years. As 2 years goes to 3 years, goes to 4 years, goes to 5 years.
And, you know, let me add the importance of getting employee engagement higher and higher each year, which we do an employee survey, and I can't share the numbers publicly, but what I will tell you is that from where we are today versus where we were two years ago, even on the union side, dramatic improvement in terms of the amount of employee engagement that we're seeing. And as Joe has said many times, we are a service industry. Yeah, we're B2B, but we are a service industry.
If our employees are not engaged and focused in what they're doing, one, they don't operate as safely as they could, and that's the number one priority, and two, they don't give the discretionary effort that's required in order to serve the customer consistently and reliably, even if they have the assets and resources they need. So that's all part of the equation that drives, you know, what we hope is, you know, growth ahead of the economy within merchandise and intermodal.
Just 'cause you mentioned the unions, you know, I can't believe we're, like, six months away from the next round of -
Yes
... labor negotiations. It'll take a few years, but, you know, it will start at some point, I would think later this year. Any, you know, maybe too early, but, you know, any big priorities as it relates to, you know, what you and the rails are looking to accomplish? And as the CFO, right, how do you think about sort of starting to accrue for those wage increases? And obviously, that was a-- the current deal was a-
Yeah
... negative surprise-
Mm-hmm
... for the industry in terms of wage increases.
Yeah.
How do you think about accruing for that?
Sure. Well, in terms of the overall strategy, I think that's something that you know, we as a company, we as an industry, are still in the process of putting you know, parameters around. Obviously, we have some thoughts individually. The industry, you know, has some thoughts. You know, Joe, I'm sure will pull the CEOs together and you know, try to be as constructive as we can there to get to a good outcome. He's been very clear that in his view, the process that we went through during the last round was not the most successful way of approaching it. So, hopefully, we will see some changes that lead to positive outcomes. But in terms of the wage accruals themselves, there's nothing that we need to do until we get to July of next year.
So if we get to that point and we still don't have a contract, that's when we would, that's when we would have to start accruing some kind of wage growth, and it's too early to say exactly what that would be.
And everything that we've been talking about, what does it mean from a capital standpoint? We're spending, I know, 16%-17% of revenue on CapEx.
Yep.
Is that a good number to use going forward? Does that number go up, down?
Yeah. Well, I mean, when you look at our total CapEx, we, 2017, 2018, 2019, and even into 2020 with COVID, you know, we were at a lower level of CapEx than we are now, fairly significantly lower. You know, part of that was you look at the transformation that we made in 2017 and 2018. We really didn't need to invest in locomotives or freight cars. The business wasn't growing significantly. Capacity was readily available. So, you know, we've now cycled a lot of that. I think that's why you've seen an increase in overall CapEx. Inflation has been part of that story, but, you know, we have been investing in locomotive rebuilds in order to make sure that we have what we need in order to move the growth going forward.
We've been investing in freight cars, and we've increased our strategic investment as well. In fact, we've doubled our strategic investment over the last five years. It's still, you know, a very small portion of our overall CapEx. I'd like it to be bigger, but, you know, we've done a number of things, from acquiring Pan Am, the investments that we're making with Quality Carriers on the ISO tank product. You know, they just had a really nice article in Forbes magazine from one of their customers that's converted over to the ISO tank, just talking about, you know, they've gotten a 55% improvement in environmental impact. They've saved 20%-30% versus moving truck. This is a win-win-win.
So making more of those investments is really positive for us, I think, on a go forward basis, two and a half billion of CapEx is probably about as high as we would like to go for the next couple of years. Notwithstanding any, you know, major shifts in timing or new strategic opportunities that could present themselves. But in terms of the core maintenance capital, that's, that's probably a good number. I think the other thing about CapEx to note is, you know, Mike Cory is very focused on how do we continue to drive efficiency across the CapEx, the maintenance CapEx, which is, again, the majority of what we spend. As we do that, let's free it up and spend it on money on projects that can actually deliver efficiency gains and be better for the customer.
We had a quick one. If you-
Hey, good morning. Cheers on the whole network update. Sounds like things are going great.
Yeah.
If I could just ask you to follow up on Scott's question earlier. I think there was some confusion last week, so maybe it's dynamics. You know, you mentioned obviously the favorable update on Baltimore, and I think-
Yeah
...in the earnings call, you made a comment that there was an opportunity to get closer to similar to last year, excluding that Baltimore impact.
Right.
Could you just kind of readdress that comment, maybe as a proof point or point of progress, like, and compare start to get easier at 2Q, should we have less difficulty or better than 1Q at least, or?
Yeah. What I don't wanna do is give any specific kind of Q2 guidance, but, you know, I think you hit on the right things in terms of, you know, Baltimore. Probably, probably a little bit better than what we expected. Overall volumes, I would say, you know, there's some puts and takes, but we're, we're, you know, pretty much on track, and it you know, on the core expense side, good momentum on the labor side, good momentum on PS&O. I think we're focused on the right things and excited about seeing that translate into, earnings growth as we get into the second half.
Yeah, so it sounds like just as, just as we wrap up, right, the message is, you know, Q2 is gonna be what's gonna be. We get to the back half, you know, assuming we maintain some of the, you know, modest volume growth that we've got, labor productivity and flex positive. We lap the storage, the worst of the net headwinds-
Yep
... And so we get back to volume, revenue, margin improvement, and that-
Yeah
You know, the algorithm of that double-digit type earnings growth.
Yeah. And we've got capacity to continue to do that for the next several years.
Okay, great. All right, we got to wrap it there.
Okay.
Thanks so much, Sean. This was great.