Welcome back, everybody. I'm Jason Seidl, Cowen Senior Transportation Analyst. On behalf of myself and all of Cowen, we're pleased and honored once again to have Norfolk Southern presenting at our 15th Annual Global Transportation and Sustainable Mobility Conference. With us today from Norfolk, we have a triple threat. We have Alan Shaw, CEO; Mark George, CFO; and Ed Elkins, CMO. As Mark and Ed and I have previously discussed, all difficult questions will be given to Alan. I'm going to let Alan kick it off. He has some slides, and then we're going to a fireside chat. Alan, take it away.
Hey, Jason, thanks a lot for hosting us. It's always a pleasure to visit with you and to participate in this event. I'm going to transition to the next slide, which is generally the typical housekeeping. You know, we're going to have these presentation slides that are on our website. Mark and Ed and I will make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. I would invite your guest, Jason, to take a look at our website or our filings with the SEC to get a better understanding of our risk factors. Now I'm going to ask that we transition to slide three. Jason, as you know, service driven primarily by crew shortages has been challenging for Norfolk Southern this year, but we've addressed it with an untold urgency. We have added to our crew base throughout the year.
We hit a trough in the first quarter of this year at about 6,950 qualified crew members. Since then, we've added 275 qualified crew members net of attrition. You'll see later the positive impact that that's having on our service product. That's the key thing. We are really encouraged by the pipeline of conductor trainees that we have now. We have well over 900 conductor trainees in our pipeline. Our qualified crew numbers have increased 4% this year and are approaching where we were last year. We've hit the inflection point. We're on a really good trajectory here. Recall that it'll take conductor trainees about three to four months to get through the training program.
That gives you kind of some sort of timeline and some indication of when we're going to start seeing real material improvements in our service product towards the end of this year and into next year. I'm going to shift to the next slide, if you don't mind. As I noted, our improvements in service, our focus on leadership, and our change to our operating plan with Top SPG has yielded results. You can see that in train speed. We're now at levels that we haven't seen since the third quarter of last year. Terminal dwell is continuing to improve, and we're kind of at the best level that we've seen with terminal dwell throughout the year. Let's go to the next slide. As we've seen network fluidity improve, more importantly, we're seeing improvements in our customer-facing service metrics.
The chart on the left is our trip plan compliance in our manifest network. It's shared with the STB, as you know, Jason, on a weekly basis. It has improved materially, about 1,500 basis points since the middle of May. That is, again, due to the confluence of resources in the form of crews, leadership, and the change in the operating plan. We've made great strides in all of these areas in 2022. We've got a sense of urgency, and we are aligned around clear objectives associated with service recovery. Frankly, this organization is responding to those objectives. Importantly, it's having an impact on volume in a positive manner. I'm going to turn it over to Ed for his comments.
Thank you, Alan. I hope everybody can hear me okay. Now, quarter to date, we're down approximately 2% year-over-year in total volume, but that's improved substantially in the last two or three weeks. We were range-bound in that 133,000 unit-a-week range for most of the quarter, but frankly, in the last two or three weeks, we've seen substantial and sequential improvement. In fact, last week, we were over 138,000 units for the week, which was our best weekly performance in nearly a year. We are encouraged by the results so far. We think that some of the improvements that we're showing, both in trip plan compliance as well as in train speed, are starting to manifest themselves in additional volume. When you look inside our markets, our coal business continues to remain very strong. We're about 16% up versus 21%.
Looking at our merchandise markets very broadly, down about 3.5%, but I would say most of that is attributable to slower velocity, which is reducing the throughput of our network. There is still more volume out there that wants to ride Norfolk Southern that we can handle right now. Auto's up about 2%. In terms of intermodal, it is about a 5% shortfall year-over-year. That is really driven by our international business, where we have seen ocean carriers kind of throwing the kitchen sink at ways to solve some of the supply chain logjams. Part of that has been choosing to move freight to the ports and then using truck for the inland piece. We are seeing some of that. We think it is going to turn around, but we are watching it very closely.
I will say that even though that's happening on the international side, it's also manifesting itself in higher storage for us, as most of you are aware, which is actually creating some positive mix impacts for the overall franchise. The last thing I'll say on this slide is, as our service improves, as we rolled out our operating plan changes, we've stayed really close to our key customer to make sure that they, number one, understand what those changes are and what they need to do to make sure that they're taking advantage of those changes. Secondly, they're all very interested in how they could help us improve the network velocity. We are having really a constant back and forth with most of our big customers, particularly on the intermodal side, as we work to recover service here. That is our priority.
Customers want to transition business back to Norfolk Southern. It takes time, and it takes improved service. We are definitely working on the improved service piece. If we turn to the next slide, our outlook is still positive for the remainder of 2022. We talk to a lot of customers every day, and I know a lot of you do too as well. We are still encouraged by the feedback we are getting both on the international front from our steamship lines as well as on the domestic side from not only our manufacturers, but also on the intermodal side about the outlook for unfulfilled demand that is still in the marketplace. Our merchandise franchise, if you drill into that, on the auto side, we are looking for about an 18% increase in automotive production in the back half of 2022.
That is going to flow through to other commodities like plastics, aluminum, metals, etc. Commodity prices continue to be mixed, but grain export is still high for this time of year. We expect that elevated energy prices for the remainder of the year are also going to spur some additional shipment activity for us. In intermodal, again, we are looking for continued increases in imports. We do not see that slowing down. Our customers continue to see a full order book for the next 60-90 days, which I think is encouraging for peak season. There is still a backlog of demand. On the cold front, we believe that there is a positive outlook for the rest of 2022 for sure. Demand has remained really high and has really been limited by the supply on the inland side for production.
Those seaborn prices have come down a little bit, and we're expecting some sequential decline year-over-year. Still, we have an optimistic outlook for the rest of this year. With that, Alan, I'll turn it back to you. You're on mute.
Apologize for that. Jason, as you can tell, there's a lot of optimism about our outlook. There's a lot of momentum around our service recovery. I can feel it when I'm out in the field talking to our craft employees, when I'm talking to our operations supervisors. I can see it in the building, and I can feel it when I'm talking to our customer base as well. We've got a best-in-class group of customers, as you know. We've got a powerful network, and we've got a talented and dedicated team. Our future is bright, and everyone at Norfolk Southern is working tirelessly to take advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us. With that, we'll conclude our remarks and open it up for questions, Jason.
Yeah, I am going to hit you guys with a bunch of questions. I just want to remind clients they can ask questions in the chat or alternatively can send an email at jason.seidl@cowen.com. Somebody's already emailed me a question. We've already got questions in the chat, so that's a good thing. Alan, you mentioned getting out in the field, and I noticed when you took over the CEO title, that's what you immediately did. You got out in the field. You started talking to the rank-and-file members, and I thought that was great. Talk a little bit about your views on Norfolk Southern. You've been at the helm now for a little bit over a quarter, but you've been with the company almost three decades. How does your vision of what NSC should be sort of differ from the NSC of the past?
First and foremost, my immediate goal, and that of everyone on our team, is service recovery. It is important to me that I'm out in the field talking to our employees about the importance of service recovery. As you know, Jason, in my career at Norfolk Southern, I've actually spent more time in operations-oriented roles and in finance than I have in marketing. It appeals to me to get out into the field and show my appreciation and our customers' appreciation for what our employees are doing. As Ed noted, the demand for our product is exceptional right now, and it exceeds our capacity. As we speed up our network, which we've started to do, we have more capacity into our network, and we can take advantage of the volume opportunities.
As I think about kind of where we are at NS and where we're headed, we're going to leverage some of our unique franchise strengths. That includes our powerful intermodal franchise, our consumer-facing network. It's operating in the east, where we've got a majority of the consumption and majority of the manufacturing in the United States. We are going to do that by competing based on service. We call that operational excellence. We are going to deliver a consistent and reliable service product for our customers throughout economic cycles and layer on top a best-in-class customer experience. That's how we're going to compete with truck, and that's how we're going to address the flexible freight market. We talk about being customer-centric and operations-driven. When I talk about operations-driven, it means we are going to focus all of our resources on supporting our operations team.
We know that as service improves, it drives productivity for Norfolk Southern. It drives capacity. One of the fundamental and key tenets of PSR is strict compliance to the operating plan and then iterating the operating plan, looking for opportunities to drive improvements in productivity. That is what we are developing at Norfolk Southern. We are going down that path, and it is delivering results.
That's good to hear. Talk a little bit more on the headcount side because clearly, that's been sort of a thorn in the side of all the Class I railroads, including yourself. Where are you at in terms of your original plans? Are you going to be able to meet them by the end of the year? And then sort of how much blame for sort of the rail service would you place on the lack of headcount, if you will?
As you notice, headcount has been an issue for the entire industry. As I think about what causes service issues, as I look back over my 28 years, it's usually one of three things. It's usually leadership, resources, or plan. It's always a combination of that. For us, we're addressing all three of those things. With respect to leadership, we have two new vice presidents in operations. With respect to resources, this time, it doesn't have to do with locomotives, which is a good thing, right? We understand where the issues are. We've done the diagnostics, and we know what levers to pull. We've really accelerated our crew hiring. I'm really pleased and proud of the ability of our HR team and our ops team to get that ramped up pretty quickly. You're starting to see the results on that as well.
The other aspect of it is plan. We rolled out Top SPG in late June, another iteration of our PSR-oriented operating plan. You can see the results that we have delivered with that as well.
Jason, I'm going to shift gears a little bit. Talk about rail pricing. For more than a decade, rails have been able to easily exceed their cost of rail inflation, if you will, on the pricing side. However, this time around, we're seeing inflation that we've never seen before, at least in my 24 years as an analyst. Is this rate of inflationary increase going to sort of cause the railroads to not be able to meet that exceeding rail cost inflation due to timing on a couple of quarters, or are you still confident that you're going to be able to get there?
Alan, you want me to address that one?
Yeah.
Let me skip to the punchline, Jason. We've seen very encouraging results already this year and very encouraging signals from the marketplace already this year. I think 10% in the second quarter with 4% merchandise and double-digit from intermodal and from coal. We are encouraged by the current environment. As we said earlier, customers want to do more business with Norfolk Southern. We are offering a valuable service. As we improve our services, it is only going to become more valuable. For inflation, yeah, it is high, and it is remarkably high. I have been around for 34 years, sad to say, but it is higher than I have seen it in terms of rail inflation. We use all-inclusive less fuel as kind of our benchmark for rail inflation. It is north of 7%. It has started to tail off just a little bit quarter over quarter.
The forecast is for it to kind of normalize over the next 24 months to something in what I would say you and I would both call a more normal range. We've still got a portion of our book that's still yet to be priced this year. I think, as you know, our contract cycles tend to be heavily weighted toward the first and then the fourth quarter, primarily around the ag season. We have some high expectations for ourselves going into this year, but we're very optimistic based on the results that we've already seen. Alan wouldn't let me get away without reminding you that we've had a long run of strong price growth, 28 of 29 quarters for merchandise, and I think 22 for intermodal. I have to keep that tracker going.
No, you do.
Yeah, exactly.
Can you put some numbers behind that larger percentage in the fourth quarter? Can you give us a percentage basis in terms of what is left to be repriced?
We typically have about half that's available to be repriced on any given year, somewhere between 50-60%. I think on the last analyst call, I said we still had about half of that half yet to go. Most of that is still available going into the fourth quarter. The big contracts will be going into the fourth quarter.
Okay. Perfect. Let me shift gears a little bit. We talked about trying to improve service, and you guys emphasized just how much of a focus it is at Norfolk Southern. And Alan, you went into sort of your views on addressing the service issues that we've had here. That's obviously caught the eye of the STB. In all my years, I don't think I've seen, for lack of a better word, a more sort of rail hostile board, if you will. What are the implications of sort of their views on the railroad industry? And what can the STB really do given its limitations and its authority?
They're appropriately exercising their authority. They're interested in service. We are interested in service. Our customers are as well. We have every economic incentive to get this thing fixed. Clearly, there are some areas in which we disagree with the STB. I've engaged personally with each of the members multiple times, as have the other members of the NS senior team who are on this call. I can tell you that we agree on a number of items as well, right? That's primarily taking trucks off the highway and leveraging the sustainability advantage that Norfolk Southern brings relative to our primary form of competition, which is truck. We're really focused on restoring service now and then keeping it at that consistent level, right? That's what operational excellence and customer-centric and operations-driven requires.
With the change in labor dynamics and some of the lessons that we've learned recently, we've got a really exciting opportunity to revisit how we handle downturns so that we can drive more consistency, more reliability into our service product throughout the economic cycle. Frankly, that includes the use of work rules. That includes the use of technology, and that includes the use of automation. We are aligned with the STB on that. We are going to deliver it. I think they are doing what they feel like they need to do.
Fantastic. I want to throw in a question here for Mark before we start trying to address all the client questions that have come in. Mark, there's obviously been some changes in the tax regulations for share purchases. Will that impact how you view giving money back to investors?
Yeah. I mean, the new excise tax certainly is an unfortunate burden now that it's being placed on shareholders. That said, our capital allocation strategy is not really going to change. Our first priority is to reinvest in the business primarily for resiliency, but also to drive growth. Then the excess cash after that, which goes back to shareholders, will go back primarily as a dividend and supplemented with share repurchases.
Okay. I'm going to jump to questions right now to try to get them all in. Question number one, are you saying the real improvement in service and volume won't occur until 2023? Or now that you are past the inflection point, will that improvement come through in a significant way in the second half of this year?
No, we absolutely are projecting continued improvements in service throughout the remainder of the year. We believe that's going to deliver year-over-year volume growth in the fourth quarter.
Okay. Next question. I have to read it off my phone because they're coming in different ways. Are you expecting to run at elevated headcount levels into or during the next downturn in order to ensure customer service metrics improve? How are you thinking about relying on the furlough model during the next recession?
Yeah. As I mentioned, some of the assumptions that have been baked into the historical use of the furlough model are not holding anymore. In the past, we could assume three-quarters of our furloughed employees would come back. The latest furlough activity, less than half of them came back. We are reevaluating all options, as I noted. That includes work rules. That includes automation. That includes additional training and technology. We are looking at everything and evaluating it to deliver improved service throughout the downturn and make sure that we are more opportunistic on the upturn.
Okay. Next question is attrition levels. What are attrition levels today versus pre-pandemic and peak of pandemic levels?
Attrition levels are largely holding with where we were during the pandemic and pre-pandemic. One of the issues that we're seeing now is it's a network. They're largely the same, but we are caught in some higher attrition levels in some unique areas or some specific areas on our network. As you know, Jason, we've got about 95 different crew hiring locations. While we're focused on the big number, number of available crews and number of hire crews, we really need to be focused on all 95 locations. Some areas in the Midwest, such as Fort Wayne and Louisville and Cincinnati and Elkhart, where the unemployment rate is at historically low rates, we're having more issues with attrition. We're hiring aggressively there.
We are confident that the new labor contract, which will maintain our employees amongst the highest in all of industry, will help with retention and help us recruit employees as well.
Okay. Here's a question a little bit about that. What are your accrual levels versus the PEB recommendation?
Mark, would you cover that, please?
Yeah. I mean, we haven't gone out, and we're not ready to go out yet because we're still in negotiation. We haven't concluded with the entirety of our rail labor union. We're not going to talk specifics about numbers. Suffice it to say that we've been accruing to numbers less than what you saw in the PEB recommendations, probably more aligned with historic levels of annual increases. I think when we get to the third quarter call, we'll be in a better position to talk about the top-up that we might make given the PEB numbers that are out there to our labor rate accruals. We'll be very clear and specific on what those numbers are from a retroactive piece as well as prospective impact.
Okay. Fair enough. Next question here. Is there any portion of the intermodal—hold on one second. Sorry. It just moved on me here. Is there any portion of intermodal volumes geared towards consumer retail versus the industrial markets?
Would you cover that, please?
Jason, I think that question is what's in the box, basically?
Yes.
Yeah. Most of our intermodal shipments occupy two spaces. One, it's coming from overseas intact and going to a distribution center for reconsolidation, or it's coming from that distribution center and going to an actual customer's distribution center. In both cases, most of the stuff in the box, so to speak, really is intended for the retail market eventually, but it does go through a couple of processing. I would say a sizable minority of the composition of our freight intermodal is actually some sort of industrial component or intermediate.
Fair enough. Next question here from another client. Does your full-year OR guidance contemplate the increased compensation bonus and benefits envisioned by the latest union agreements, or does that represent a headwind to achieving your guide? In other words, have you accrued for the incremental labor cost pressures, or will there be accrual adjustments in 2H?
I'll lead off by suggesting and stating that the PEB recommendations were higher than what we anticipated. I am going to turn it over to Mark to talk about the accrual.
Yeah. I think we were clear on the second quarter call when we issued our guidance. We talked about the fact that any increment related to final outcome on labor negotiations and excess of what we accrued were not necessarily contemplated. That holds true. I mean, whatever the increment is, we're going to highlight on the third quarter call. We'll make it very clear what the impact is for the year, how much was related to prior periods. It's probably going to have an incremental impact on our guidance.
Okay. There's another guidance question coming in from a different angle here from another client. Can you please bridge current trends to your guidance for the full year?
The top-line guidance that we had given anticipates sequential increase in volume rates. Like we said, most of that was going to be concentrated in the fourth quarter, where we'll see year-over-year improvement manifest. That is foundational. Basically, all the other guidance follows that.
Okay. Last one here from another client. Can you talk about some of the early successes from Top SPG that have enabled you to improve velocity over the past month?
Yeah, absolutely. Top SPG is founded on the principles of PSR, which are managing your assets, serving your customers, controlling costs, developing your people, and working safely. What we really strove to deliver with this implementation of Top SPG is more simplicity and more balance in our network. I can measure simplicity by the fact that our line-of-road train meets have been reduced by 40%, which really helps us to deconflict our network, Jason. I look at balance. By balance, Jason, I mean that individual terminals, you generally want the same number of inbound locomotives, inbound crews that equal the outbound locomotives and outbound crews. With this iteration of Top SPG, we have doubled the number of major terminals that are in balance on our network. That is really go back and look at our service metrics.
You see a big lift in our service metrics in the first half of July as we implemented Top SPG on June 27. We continue to make iterations to it. As I noted, PSR is about strict compliance to the plan and iterating changes to that plan, testing it using the data-driven approach, understanding how you're going to measure success, and understanding how you're going to measure failure. You are seeing the results.
Clearly are. Gentlemen, we've hit our allotted time. On behalf of myself, my team, and Cowen, I want to thank you again. It's been an honor to have you. Can't wait to have you back for next year and be safe out there.
Jason, thanks for hosting the NS team. We appreciate it.
Thank you. Take care.