Where are you going to sit, Ravi?
I'm going to sit here, so you can-
All right, I'll sit here.
In the middle here.
Thanks.
Great. Next up, for rail content for today, we have CSX and CEO Joe Hinrichs. Joe, thanks so much for being here.
Thanks for having me, Ravi. Good morning, everyone.
So, maybe we can start by where we started with everybody else, which is you giving us a sense of the demand environment as you see, see it right now. Obviously, the rails, particularly the Eastern rails, particularly yourself, have seen some pretty nice, volume tailwind in the last 12 months or so, which appears to be actually picking up. So kind of how, how would you characterize that environment?
Yeah, thanks. I think the third quarter volume is up compared to the first half of the year.
Mm-hmm.
For us, what's been good to see is chemical business has come back, and we're a strong chemical franchise. You've seen the intermodal-
Yep.
... both domestic and international, which has picked up. Autos are up for the year, although it's slowed down a little bit lately, but still up for the year.
Mm-hmm.
We're expecting a strong Midwest grain harvest.
Yep
... and movement to the Southeast, so we're encouraged by the ag and food side. You know, what's been weak, the metals all year, steel prices have been down, and forest products have been a little, and for us, a unique short-haul, fertilizer and phosphates have been a little bit down. But overall, the demand environment's held up pretty well, given the external environment.
Right. Right.
You know, IDP isn't doing anything great, and the overall economy has kind of, you know, fits and starts. But we've been encouraged by what the merchandise volume has been doing lately, for sure.
Got it. We've heard some of the LTL trucking companies point to a slowing in industrial end markets between July and August. Kind of, have you seen something similar, or has it been-?
No, I think the only thing we really saw in that timeframe with autos was a little slow to get started back up after the shutdowns.
Mm-hmm.
Probably 'cause they're watching their inventories and what's happening with demand, but I wouldn't say that we saw a slowdown anywhere else.
Got it.
Intermodal was still up-
Yep.
... for us, even in that period.
Got it. Nobody knows auto in this industry better than you do, so can you just unpack your comment a little bit more? Kind of, why was that slowing? Kind of, do you see that accelerating in 2025? Because there's been a lot of kind of focus and attention on the auto market rebounding post-COVID, and then you had the high interest rates and such, so what do you see the outlook for that for the next month?
I think it's hard to, you know, do a generic answer because every company is in a different spot.
Mm-hmm.
But I think certainly interest rates have been, you know, high, at lEast for this period, for a decent amount of time now, that consumers are feeling that. So as interest rates start to come down, that'll be good for the auto industry.
Mm-hmm.
Inventories have built back up.
Sure.
You've seen what we saw coming out of shutdown. There were some launches, and so that held units for a while with a couple customers. It's fascinating to watch all the different customers from this angle. At the same time, I think Stellantis has been out there talking about their inventories and then making some adjustments. It just, it's a mixed bag, but I think some of it's inventory, watching the inventory levels, and some of it was just launch related.
Mm-hmm.
But I think we've seen more commercials and more interest rate reductions and whatnot going on in the auto industry, and I'm hopeful that with interest rates coming down and continued stimulation, that demand should be there.
Got it. So just to kind of put a wrap on that, you've guided the volumes low to mid-single digit improvement. Right now, we are just about in the middle of that range. So do you feel like there's room to accelerate that towards the mid-single digit level?
Probably not accelerate, but we feel good about the volumes that we're seeing-
Okay
... especially on the merchandise side.
Yep.
Obviously, the intermodal we talked about, but, and again, the chemical being our largest franchise, there's still strong, strong demand for export coal, even though prices have come down recently on metallurgical coal.
Yep.
You know, if the trucking environment can, you know, get a little healthier, that could help with intermodal because there's a lot of competition there. But I think the volumes are gonna hold up nicely, and we've seen an encouraging sign so far in the third quarter.
Got it. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about just growth as a topic, and a few questions there. Because I think, you know, when you sort of became an outsider or became a rail CEO, I think you were the first U.S. rail CEO at lEast to really kind of talk up, you know, "Hey, we need growth. We need to kind of change the mantra here a little bit and kind of move away from cost towards growth." And I think a lot of your peers kind of have followed you. What drove that change? How has that been so far? How has that resonated? Kind of what do you see that growth pipeline looking like for CSX?
Yeah, I think... So my perspective is heavily influenced by my experience of 30 years in the auto industry.
Right.
And I tell this story a lot because it's true. You know, I watched the transition over thirty years of having rail docks in all the facilities and putting things in boxcars, engines, transmissions, frames, sheet metal, and it all went to truck. And so it and the reason for that largely was around service, and just-in-time was part of it because of the inventory carrying, but a lot of it had to do with reliability and repeatability of service. And so it's not illogical to me to understand the industry hasn't grown because the industry didn't serve customers well.
Right.
And so our view all along, since, certainly since I've been here, is that in order to grow this business, we have to give customers a reason to trust us, that we're gonna be there for them. Because there are advantages to rail over trucking, for sure: lower cost, better for the environment, better for taxpayers, safer, all those things that we know. But it has to be reliable, because it doesn't matter what the cost is, if it doesn't show up.
Sure.
So our belief was, if you don't start prioritizing the customer and provide better service, you're gonna get, never get out of this cycle. And then, our thesis is, to provide better service, we've got to engage with our employees to provide a better culture and a better experience because they're the ones providing the service. And you're not tied to an assembly line in the rail industry. It's a lot of discretionary effort, a lot of things happening out there in real time. So I, I just believe in my heart that there are advantages rail has, but we have to offset, decades worth of view that wasn't customer-centric, wasn't reliable, and we had to provide better service.
How have those conversations been so far? Is it just a case of convincing the customer that, hey, we have changed and the service is there, or does it have to do with the price?
It's really... You have to. Every customer is having a different experience and is looking for different things, but it's about that repeatable, reliable service. I mean, every survey that's been done in the last couple of years, last 18 months or so, CSX has led, you know.
Yep
... whether it's from groups, advisors, or whether it's from Journal of Commerce or other things, and that consistency matters.
Mm-hmm.
Because it's not about a one-time, this quarter we did something great-
Yep
... but it, you know, so it's about consistency. So that has to take place over time. Because it is resonating with customers, but it's, it's more than just the consistency of the service, it's do they feel valued and prioritized? Do they feel like they matter?
Yep.
Or are they captive, and therefore, you know, it doesn't really matter? And we've worked really hard to improve our communications, our responsiveness, even how we measure. We went out and asked customers when I got here, "How do you measure our success?" And our measurement system, the same as yours, believe me, they don't measure velocity and dwell. All right? They care about on-time performance, they care about communications, they care about customer switch, last mile, first mile, they care about all those kinds of things. And they care deeply about the variability, you know?
Yep.
It's not, you're an hour late, but if you're 12 hours late, those are different impacts, right? So it's just listening to customers and prioritizing them. The fascinating thing is, because when I first got this job and I was talking to analysts, you weren't in this role, but and I was talking to investors like, "Oh, my gosh, this is gonna cost a lot of money.
Yep.
You have to... In order to serve the customer better, you have to run an efficient network. It's, that's the only way you can do it.
Yep.
That's where the cost base is.
Mm-hmm.
They're not in conflict with each other, it's just a matter of prioritization and also balance.
Yep.
And so what we've been doing, especially in the last couple quarters, is really trying to find that fine balance between what do the customers want and how do we get more efficient?
Mm-hmm.
We've shown the last couple quarters some efficiency coming out of, you know, tweaking the plans. Our dwell has gone up a little bit, but our velocity's gotten a lot better.
Sure.
The dwell's gone up because we've actually combined trains and worked with customers for service levels.
Mm-hmm
... but actually it lowers our cost, and they're happy.
Mm-hmm.
So you can't be in pursuit of any one dimension or one measurement system. You have to. It really, what's important to the customer and how can you optimize your cost to deliver that?
That's a great way of putting it. Is that set of customer needs consistent across end markets or is that kind of different between-
It's very different, actually. Obviously, intermodal is its own space.
Sure.
What intermodal customers count on is speed-
Mm-hmm
... and then also getting the trucks in and out of the terminals quickly. That dwell time, the delay in this, you know, it's all about that. So we weren't even measuring that to a large extent and weren't even prioritizing it. We were prioritizing the speed, but we weren't prioritizing their view of the world, which is when my truck driver shows up, how quickly do I get through the gate? How quickly do I get my container, and do I get out? And can that get better, better, better, better, better? And we're now doing that, and that's one of the reasons why our intermodal business is, you know, number one in customer service for many years now in surveys in a row. But a chemical customer cares first and foremost about safety -
Right
... and risk.
Yep. Mm-hmm.
And then also cares about, obviously, you know, the timeliness, because they own the fleet.
Sure.
Turnover, you know, turnaround time is pretty important. Automotive customers care just as much about empties being arriving as they do about delivery of the finished vehicles. We were always focused on the finished vehicle delivery.
Mm-hmm.
But they care deeply, I know, I lived it about the empties being there to load.
Yep
... because if they can't load, they start getting all jammed up, and there's a cost and quality and all kinds of other things. So they're all different. Some want you to get there early, some don't really care if you're early. It's just everyone is different, and we can't treat them all the same.
Yep.
Coal customers, unit trains, very different, right? They want empties there to load because they don't want to put coal on the ground. So there's lots of, you know, different things to think about, which makes it kind of fun and fascinating.
Sounds like a hard job, Joe.
It's not. It's complicated. It's hard because of the weather and because of all the variabilities.
Yep.
But it's kind of fun because, you know, each one of these needs a different solution.
Mm-hmm.
And each one of these is its own little business in and of itself-
Yep
... which to me is kind of fun.
All right. Just thinking of the growth topic, you've been very vocal about the pipeline of opportunities that you guys have coming, kind of, on your network. Can you just talk about that a little bit and some of the bigger chunks that you think are kind of fairly imminent over the next year or two?
Yeah, we're blessed to be, you know, centered in the Southeast United States, which is where a lot of the industrial development is happening. You're seeing stuff move from the Midwest, Northeast down to the, to the Southeast or new stuff coming to the Southeast. And it's really broad-based. We have over 500 projects going on with our industrial development program. We have this site process where we use, where we rate them, and we work with the local jurisdictions to make it work. We had a great team in industrial development. That's exciting, and we've said, you know, it could be a point or two of revenue coming, you know, for the next several years because of all that work. It's not just electrification, it's a little bit of everything in our portfolio, which is great.
That's gonna continue, I believe, we all believe.
Mm-hmm.
Some will go to Mexico-
Sure
... and some will come to the U.S., and that, that's, that's pro-CSX, that's pro-rail, because a lot of those customers are looking for rail to be part of the solution-
Yep
... are looking for connectivity to our network-
Mm-hmm
... either through a short line or direct onto our network. So we're encouraged by that. I mean, a lot of companies know they've got long-term emissions reductions requirements to meet... and they're thinking long term when they make these massive investments, and they locate. So they're also thinking about that, you know, 10, 20, 30 years out. We're very encouraged by it, and we'll have a lot more to say about that in our investor day coming up.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
What are your and probably your customers' thoughts on nearshoring at this point? Kind of, obviously, a pretty tremendous opportunity for you, kind of as the supply chains become localized, but at the same time, there may be some risk of losing some of those volumes to truck, and you have an intermodal, international intermodal business as well. So how do you think about all the puts and takes there, and has any of that changed with the geopolitical environment over the last few months?
I don't think any too much of it has changed. I mean, international intermodal is gonna be around forever because there's just things that are now not made in the U.S., they won't be made in the U.S. I don't think we're gonna have a textile business come back, as an example.
Sure.
And so whether it's made in China or made in Southeast Asia or made in Mexico or something to that effect-
Mm-hmm.
So I don't think that's gonna affect too much. If there are tariffs and other things that happen on certain elements of the marketplace, that could affect things, but on balance, it's probably a net positive for us.
Sure.
Because if they're gonna locate in the U.S., they're probably gonna go in the Southeast.
Right.
It would be, on balance, probably good for us, but we watch it very carefully. We're very excited about, you know, the new interchange point with CPKC in Myrtlewood, Alabama, coming across that Meridian Speedway-
Yep
... it gives us more access to Mexico and some parts of Texas in partnership with CPKC. That's gonna be a big deal for us, hopefully soon. And so I think we're well positioned for that.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we're watching the port dynamics-
Right
... you know, and everyone's interested in that. I mean, our view is it's not likely to be a long strike-
Mm
... if there is one on the Eastern ports. But on balance, actually, there's not a lot of risk for us over an extended period of time because if things move to the West, they still got to get to the population in the East.
Absolutely, yeah.
So then it's just a longer haul for us, actually. And a lot of stuff that comes into the Eastern ports gets trucked from the port-
Mm
... to the population centers that are on the Eastern Seaboard.
Mm-hmm.
So in many cases, it could actually be a short-term positive for us.
Right.
So it's not a big risk to us, but we don't... Obviously, we hope it doesn't happen. We don't want it to happen. We're very proud of the investments and the growth that's happening on the Eastern Seaboard-
Yep
... within the ports, and we're proud to be a part of that. But that's something to watch as well in the near term.
Yes, that was the next question, actually. So, can you elaborate that a little bit more? Kind of remind us what the timelines are, and kind of any steps. Are you taking any preemptive steps right now to maybe prepare for that? The Canadian ports, when they saw something similar, saw volume diversion away. Are you seeing any of that right now?
Well, there is more movement in the West. There is more going to Western ports.
Mm-hmm
... and more movement coming across, which has been good for our domestic intermodal business.
Sure.
Is that pull ahead? We're not really sure.
Mm-hmm.
No one's really come out publicly and said it.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause the Eastern port volume is still up a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
So we'll have to watch that. We're not taking a lot of precautions, you know, 'cause we have a good partnership with both the, you know, with the Western rails and a good, strong intermodal business with them, and we're ready at the interchange points to do more if necessary. We didn't get really affected too much by the Canadian because we don't really interchange a lot with the Canadian rails out of Canada.
Mm.
But we're watching it very carefully. It's the end of the month, you know?
Sure.
Is the timeline-
Yep
... that you asked about, so it's not that far away.
Yep.
Again, and you know, having a lot of labor experience in my life, I'm hopeful that... You know, there's always a lot of rhetoric, but I'm hopeful that in the last hours, they'll find a resolution.
Got it. Understood. So, I mean, in the past few years, you've seen a lot of almost bouncing back and forth between West Coast and East Coast. So they had their own labor situation.
Yep
... and then kind of it's coming here. Where do you think that ultimately settles out and kind of, when you, if there's not a dramatic change in global supply chains, like between West Coast and East Coast, like, do you think one can take share from the other?
We saw East Coast take share over the last, you know, few years.
Yep.
I think it'll settle down a little bit. There's been more risk over the last couple of decades on the West versus East.
Mm-hmm.
There hasn't really been a stoppage in the East in quite some time.
Yep.
There's been more stoppages on the West. But I hope that, you know, what we see going forward is some stability, because that's good for everybody to plan their logistics network and plan their lanes, et cetera. My hope and my expectation would be that'll settle down once we get through this Eastern thing. Good news is, both West and East ports are investing heavily in growth potential and capacity in most of the big ports.
Yep
... and getting more efficient, which is good for all of us.
Mm-hmm.
That should help with the flow of goods, which is good for all of us.
Got it. So that was very good color on volume. Just kind of how are you thinking in terms of the pricing dynamics here? Kind of what's your... Like, do you have a target, price that you, that you're going for? And kind of, you know, how, what do you think the conversion is like? For instance, there have been some questions about whether some of the volume growth you've seen kind of has come at the cost of price.
Yeah.
So kind of what's that, what's that balance look like?
So it's really still two stories between merchandise and intermodal.
Mm.
The intermodal business has seen some pressure from the trucking environment. You know-
Okay
... there's so much excess capacity, and rates are down. So the pricing on the intermodal side has not been where we, where we would've hoped. But the merchandise pricing has been strong.
Okay.
And it's been good, and we're really encouraged by that. Now, though, so that's those two worlds. And so, you know, merchandise is, you know, three-quarters of our revenue, half our volume, so it's really important that we have strong pricing there. And a lot of that's due to the service.
Yep.
I mean, they, you know, the good, reliable, industry-leading service is really contributing to that. I will say, though, a couple of things have happened more recently. Fuel prices have come down.
Sure.
So, fuel surcharge, on the revenue side, fuel surcharge will be lower, probably for the rest of the year. And also, metallurgical coal prices have come down pretty meaningfully in the last few weeks-
Yep
... which will hurt our coal RPU, or will lower our coal RPU in the fourth quarter. So the combination of those two things, which aren't within our control-
Mm-hmm
... so the things we control, the, you know, pricing, has been good. The operations are performing well. Merchandise volume is up meaningfully-
Mm-hmm.
Intermodal business is up meaningfully. The things we can control and influence, but two things we don't control, fuel prices and metallurgical coal prices are both working against us. So that's gonna put us in the lower end of that range we gave on revenue.
Yep.
Where we said low single- to mid-digit increase the volume, we said that, and we're trending nicely there.
Yep.
But because of things on fuel surcharge and metallurgical coal prices, you'll see us on the lower end of that guidance on revenue, things we can't control. But I feel good about the volume, and I feel good about our service.
Got it. I was just thinking about 2025. I'm not asking you for pricing guidance of any kind, but would you... Like, if you got, say, a 2-3%, even a 3-4%, like, is that enough to offset inflation, the way you see right now?
Obviously, we're expecting and seeing inflation overall come down.
Yep.
We have a good line of sight of what our labor inflation's gonna be.
Yep
... because we've reached agreements with more than half our workforce-
Yep
... going forward, so that's 4% next year, you know, next July, 4.5% this July, so we're in a heightened period on the labor side, although we're seeing some efficiencies, which are helping with some of that, so if inflation comes down as expected-
Mm-hmm
... and interest rates come down, which hopefully affects the consumer, then the other thing we need is the trucking environment to stabilize.
Yep.
It's been a long trough.
Mm-hmm.
So if the trucking environment can stabilize and actually the rates can go up, that would be contributory to a better pricing environment on the intermodal side. But feel good about the merchandise side.
Yep.
Feel good about our cost structure.
Right.
and we'll have to watch and see what happens on the intermodal side. But again, it's good business, not bad business. It's just feeling some of the pressures from the trucking capacity.
Got it. Just moving to the cost side, obviously, you mentioned the labor deals. Again, you led the industry to kind of in reaching these agreements. Can you just talk about that a little bit more, kind of, you know, what precipitated that, and kind of are you happy with the outcome?
So we are happy with the outcome, but. So we tried, I think it's because I think the TCU press release acknowledged this, so we tried as an industry to voluntarily come together to get some deals done early. And the logic behind that was nobody won from what happened last time.
Yep.
Everyone was dissatisfied, the employees, the unions, the government who had to intervene, the regulators, customers who had a couple of times go through, "Are we striking or not?" And so we came together as an industry. I chaired the AAR this year. We came together as an industry and said, "Can we try to do something different?
Mm-hmm.
We couldn't get there as a coalition, and so we quickly, you know, CSX wanted to do this and lead because we think the advantages outweigh the costs. We're proud of the results. We're encouraged by how quickly we were able to get over half our workforce.
Mm.
There's still work to be done. They have to be ratified.
Yep.
But also, there's still more agreements to be done. But the benefit this gives us, I think people misunderstand national negotiations a little bit in the rail industry. At the national level, you, because you, when you have a coalition-
Mm-hmm
... and there's value in having a coalition. When you have a coalition, you're dealing with very high-level things because everyone else's work rules and different agreements are different. And so you're dealing with wages, you know, general wage increases, healthcare, medical benefits, time off provisions. But the work rule stuff, the real meaningful stuff about helping you get more efficient and get better, happens anyway on your own property.
Yep.
You can't do that because UP's issues are different than ours, and BNSF's different than NS, et cetera. So the good news here is we reached these agreements. Our workforce feels appreciated and valued.
Mm-hmm.
They don't go through what happened last time. They waited three years to get a raise. They had to go through COVID, this high inflation environment, bad taste in their mouth. Didn't feel valued.
Yep.
Hurt us attracting people.
Mm-hmm.
So we get rid of all that, and then we can focus on working together now, once we get the noise of the national agreement done, to get to help us be safer, be more efficient, work better together, and work on things that are in our interest to do so. But you have to clear the decks of the national stuff to get to that stuff.
Yep.
And if it takes you three years to do the national stuff, you never get to the local stuff-
Yep
... which kind of happened last time.
Right.
We think it's a big opportunity, but it also resets the relationship with our union partners and with our employees. The big thing about us at CSX is about this one CSX culture, that we want our employees to feel valued and appreciated, respected, included, and listened to. I can tell you, I'm out in the field every week.
Mm-hmm
... randomly showing up in yards and, which I really get a feel for what's going on, and the biggest issue I heard often was, other than safety, which is always on everyone's mind, is what happened last time didn't work for us and really made us feel like we weren't part of, you know, the company. And so I can tell you, in the last few weeks when I've been out, several yards, the employees really do appreciate the proactive nature of what CSX has done and the industry's done, to get this noise out of the way and try something different-
Yep
... and start working on the other things that need to be worked on, and give us five years to work on that instead of two.
Yep, absolutely. So speaking of the other things that need to be worked on, we won't say the P word, but this industry kind of had a tendency to, you know, just focus on cost cutting above everything else and maybe went a little too far there. Obviously, you and your peers are focused a lot more on service right now. How do you think about cost versus productivity actions versus investing in the service?
Yeah.
You know, how do you think of just in a pure cost per carload ex inflation, you know, how does that trend?
It's a great question and something we spend a lot of time on, and Mike Cory and his team have been great about us. I think in the last couple of quarters, showing you can do all the above.
Mm-hmm.
But it's a balancing act. You know, when you're only pursuing operating ratio improvements, you can have a tendency to leave some attractive business on the side because it'll hurt your OR-
Yep
... but it can improve your margin. It can improve your income.
Income, yep.
So, you know, I like to describe to people, if we have a 40% rail business, a 40% margin rail business... and someone brings an intermodal business at 30% margin, but nothing else changes-
Mm-hmm.
and then you don't pursue that because it hurts your OR. You didn't create value. You actually left value on the table, because your cost of capital is less than 10%.
Right.
So we have to reframe the dialogue around making sure the rail is efficient...
Mm-hmm.
-which is what the, you know, the cost over revenue approach was about, which generated a lot of, you know, value in many ways, but we also have to recognize that to create shareholder value-
Mm-hmm.
We're gonna grow our EPS.
Yep.
We wanna grow our balance sheet.
Yep
You know, capability. We wanna, we wanna grow-
Mm-hmm.
Profitably grow, important.
Sure.
And so, the key thing for us is to keep all that in balance. So we invest strategically in key locations to help with service, but recognizing that, again, what I said earlier, to provide the best service, you have to be more efficient. This is a network, and if it's not flowing with good fluidity, your cost structure is gonna get in trouble. So you don't want to add too much volume or too much on that affects your fluidity, 'cause your cost structure will go out of whack. At the same time, we have capacity on almost every train that we run right now.
Yep.
You can add to that at very strong incremental margins-
Sure
... and make sure you have the capability to do that. On any given day, the limitations to our network are not the actual physical infrastructure.
Mm-hmm.
It's usually crews' availability. 'Cause just having the right people at the right place and time-
Right
... and show up for work and be there, and have them trained and have them ready to run. And so, how you coordinate that and how what size trains you're using and how you do things is really important to optimize crew availability. It goes back to working with the unions again.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause if you're fighting over this bigger stuff, you never get down to, how do we work on the crew availability challenge?
Right.
Around schedules, around all of that, having the right people trained and all those things, which we can do in partnership if we have a true partnership, so that's the balancing we have to do, and all metrics matter, but not one can matter over the other.
Yep.
At the end of the day, we want to show you that we can, that we can demonstrate efficiency improvements, revenue growth, and with our, with our strong cash earnings, return some value to shareholders.
Right.
And that will give you double-digit EPS growth. And if we can stimulate that more with more demand because we're serving customers better, all the better.
Got it. So on that metrics point, so what is the metric or metrics that you would like to be measured by? Is it EPS growth? Is it cash flow? Is it EPS growth?
I think EPS growth is important.
Yep
... because that's a shareholder perspective. You know, I think that's important. Margin is really important. They're related, but, but, you know, obviously, more shares you buy back, EPS can be impacted. But margin's really important.
Mm-hmm.
Because margin can be worked out on both, from both equations, cost and revenue.
Yep.
I think the industry ended up spending too much time on the cost side, which is great.
Mm-hmm
... important, but we need to balance-
Yep
... and get work on both of those. So margin growth and operating income growth are important, but probably more operating income growth than margin growth.
Mm-hmm.
'Cause if you - again, as I said earlier, if you've got really strong margins and you turn away business a little bit less-
Right
... your margin might go down, but you might earn more. So operating income, efficiency around margin, keeping your margins strong, and then that gives you a profitable growth, which leads to EPS growth, especially with the return to shareholders we can do. And I think it's important to look at volume and revenue growth because it shows you how healthy your business is and your demand portfolio is with your customers over time. Because, you know, one of the knocks on this industry is we haven't been able to offset the coal loss.
Yep.
With intermodal, we replaced it with intermodal, largely, and we haven't grown.
Mm-hmm.
But man, what's the potential of this business if we can get customers to be advocates for rail?
Sure.
That potential exists-
Mm-hmm
... because we have benefits to give them, as long as we provide reliable, repeatable, and dependable service.
Absolutely. On that note, any questions from the room? Let's see.
Hey, good morning, thanks.
Good morning.
My question is just sort of on the cost efficiencies that you guys have been driving this year. You alluded to them a little bit earlier, but would love to unpack kind of what's left to come in the second half of the year, maybe in particularly in light of some of those revenue headwinds. And then, as a bigger picture, like, how do you get confidence that, if volume influx a little bit more strongly, macro comes back, that you're gonna be able to hold on to those, not have to resource up and kind of, you know, undo or unwind anything that you've done to date?
Yeah. Wonderful questions, and frankly, I'm not gonna give you a lot of answers because we're gonna address both those questions in our Investor Day in November, and I don't want to give away the some of the fun story. But,
It's in Amelia Island. We'll be there, one way or the other.
Yeah, we want you there.
Yeah.
But it's important because one of the ways we do that is by looking at our network and investing in places to provide ourselves more efficiency and capability to get ready for when that comes. And also, Mike's been very vocal, publicly, about the opportunity he sees for us to redesign our network and our service plan to optimize the travel time and to take out-of-route miles out, which can be substantial savings for ourselves and our customers. There's two little dangling things there. But very important topics, but I got to save a little bit for so people come to see us in early November.
Understood. Maybe just to kind of quickly wrap up here, kind of, you very clearly focus on the, on the safety side of things, and I think, the STB and the regulators will be very happy to hear the industry's growth focus now and away from cutting, but at the same time, regulation has been a focus area, especially focus on safety, kind of.
Yep.
How would you characterize that right now? Kind of, is that stabilized or?
I think the industry's come together on this topic very well after what happened with Norfolk Southern's derailment in East Palestine and the reaction to that.
Yep.
I'm encouraged by the progress we're making. There's more to be done, to be sure. We focus a lot on the bearings and the wheel temperatures and whatnot, because there's a risk there.
Mm-hmm.
But I'm encouraged by the work that's being done in the industry and what we're doing. We had some fatalities last year that were unacceptable, and we have to own that. And so we've taken a step back, and we've revamped our entire safety culture team. We have a three-year plan with some outside services helping. This industry tolerates a lot more risk than it should. And a lot of it has to do with the environment we're in. Our people see things happen on a daily basis. I mean, it's a staggering thing for me, coming from the auto industry, to see, you know, the railroad crossing accidents, and the suicides, and the things that happen on our network.
And I think in some cases, it numbs our people to the risks.
Sure
... that are out there.
Good point. Yep.
We have to, we have to not accept that. There's more to be done.
Mm-hmm.
There will be a rail safety legislation at some point. We want it to be focused on actual rail safety and not all the other political agendas that got involved in this. But at the end of the day, I'm encouraged by the industry coming together on this. There's a lot more to be done, and we're committed to it, and it's important. We're already the safest way to transport on land-
Right
... by far, but we gotta, we can be better. And we have to embrace... We can talk about it. We have to embrace technology to be part of that solution, and we need our regulators and the companies to work together to make that happen, and that's been a challenge. That's an opportunity in the future.
All right. Joe, thanks-
Thank you
... for a great update, and looking forward to the investment.
Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you.