Joining us, Jim Vena, CEO, and Jennifer Hamann, Chief Financial Officer. Throughout the day there's going to be, when you sit through these sessions, we do have an audience response system, so you look at this, like old-school BlackBerry-looking thing in front of you. Just pick that up because we're going to run through a couple audience polls here. So, for those of you in the room, just pick up the thing here, and let's go to question number 1 real quick before we get in with Jim and Jennifer. This should be: Do you currently own Union Pacific? Yes, overweight. 2, market weight. 3, underweight. Or 4, no? And if we can pull that, please.
Do I get one of those? No, you're not going to give me one, Brandon. I think Brad somewhere here.
Brad will vote for you.
Yeah, Brad, will you vote for me?
Question number 2? Got some others in the room. Question number 2, please. What is your general bias towards Union Pacific right now? 1, positive. 2, negative. Or 3, neutral. Go ahead and pull, please. In the back, are we pulling? Maybe it's not working.
Nope, it is.
Okay. All right, and then question number 3. In your opinion, through-cycle EPS for Union Pacific will be: 1, above peers. 2, in line with peers. Or 3, below peers. And Jim, while we get the results here, thank you for coming down. Really appreciate you guys coming to Barclays. I know you have a sheet here that you've handed every investor in the room, so maybe you want to walk through some of those comments first.
Listen, Brandon, thank you very much. And if you don't mind, maybe I can ask some of you questions, especially those ones that said you were not positive on us. I'd love to answer some of your questions, but we'll leave that till later on, okay? So I'll judge you at the end of how good the questions are when we come through. But Brandon, listen, thank you very much. I really appreciate everybody taking the time this morning. And I always have to do the boilerplate first, so let me remind everyone that we will be making some forward-looking statements this morning. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainty, so please refer to the UP website and SEC filings for additional information about our risk factors. Why don't I start with making a few comments?
When we handed out this sheet, I think what's really important to take a look at is, when you operate a railroad and you want to provide good service to customers, we have a clear vision and clear goal of what we want to be. Our what we want to be is we want to be excellent at safety. We want to be the best at safety. And as an industry, the railroad industry in the United States and Canada and in Mexico have done a good job of improving safety across the board on the employee interaction and derailments. But at the end of the day, I don't think it's good enough. I think we have more work to do.
We at Union Pacific will continue to invest in our employees, how we onboard them, how we train them, how we keep them fresh, how we make sure that all the tools that they need to operate are the best that we can provide, and that they work together as teams to make sure that they go home safe and we cover for each other what people are doing. The business that we're in—and I've been railroading for 47 years, probably more than most of you have been alive. So in those 47 years, I've seen a lot of change. We had 4 or 5 people on every train, and we're down to 2, and switch people is 2, and we're remote control. We have technology out there that inspects our track and our equipment. For us, that's real important.
We'll continue to invest that way because, as an industry, we need to get better. So even, you know, good is good, but guess what? If you want to be great, you need to improve from where you are. The second key point that we always look at in our strategy is built around service. What's service? At Union Pacific, we're simple people. We just want to deliver what we sold to the customer. That's what it comes down to. It's not anything fancier than that. We should have clear measures with every customer on what the expectation is, what we've agreed to do for them for the price they pay. We have a broad range of customers. We have customers that expect real fast service, on-time performance.
Our parcel group division and the group that we handle make sure that we have to deliver at a very high level, in the high 90s, 98%, 99%, so that they can make their sort and deliver the packages that they have on the street. There's others that have a different level of service that they want. It's much more of a consistent discussion versus a discussion of speed. Now, speed is always important. Car velocity is a metric that I look at very closely, and I break it down into the different segments. If we can move equipment quicker, what happens is the customer has a better experience. They can see how much their input costs are in what they're moving on us. We make it less expensive for them. We decongest the network.
We keep it fluid, and that helps us. So that's what service is for us, is how fast we move. And we're real proud that we were the winners from UPS in the Christmas rush and the buildup of their peak to be the railroad that won, best in class in performance. So that shows what Union Pacific can do when it gets its mind to it and everybody's working together to the same goal. And the last piece is operational excellence. And there's always a lot of discussion about, you know, what do you do to operate excellence? Do you forget that you need to still operate the railroad? Railroading is never consistent. It's never flat. If you graph it, there's peaks and valleys as you go through the year, both on demand and on the effect of working outside.
So January was a pretty tough month for a lot of railroads in the U.S. and in Canada. But I'll tell you what I'm real happy about is how fast we were able to recover and get the network fluid. That's real important. You know you're going to get impacted, especially if you get lots of snow. So for us, operational excellence is pretty simple. We think we have the capability to be the best operating ratio, best margin railroad in North America, and that's what we're driving towards. And we're not there right now. Now, do I think it's going to be easy? No. I, I know the other railroads, when I say that, I'm sure my friends at CN that I know real well go, "Nice try, Vena.
We're going to be trying to stay ahead of you." When Ghislain comes up later on this morning, you might want to tell him that he's probably going to be able to see me in the rearview mirror real quick, and then we'll see what happens after that. So at the end of it, that's real important, is how we move ahead. And if you take a look at the—what we handed out, you these graphs show the resiliency in the network, the quick bump up after we had the slowdown in January. You can see the productivity. Now, we've given you two productivity metrics in there: workforce productivity, real important for us, and locomotive productivity. But below that, there is a number of ways that we look at it underneath.
But it's a good guide that if you're using your assets faster and you're getting more mileage a day, then it's better for the system and better for our customers and better for ourselves and how we operate. And workforce productivity, we have some challenges. We, you know, we have challenges in, some of the agreements that we signed last year. And, you know, whether it's the, it's the 11 and 4, the scheduling, that it's going to have an impact on the number of people that we need to operate the railroad. We're working hard to make sure that, that we are able to be efficient in that and not transfer all the costs of the additional people to, the expense side of the company. And we did a great job of it in the fourth quarter, and we'll continue through this year.
I think we have a good plan to be able to mitigate most of that. That's what it's all about for us. Last piece, if I can talk about, is, is how do I look at operating ratio? For me, it's sequential growth, sequential improvement as we move ahead. Now, more revenue really helps you. We're driving hard, looking for business, and we're doing that by, by providing and investing. There's a new Phoenix intermodal terminal that we think that we can, we can, penetrate a market there that has not been penetrated very well, and we can remove trucks off of a highway coming from the, from the West Coast. We can use that as the leverage point in that area to be able to win with our customers.
We also have a new service coming from the border because we think, with nearshoring and everything that's happening in Mexico, that we have a great opportunity that traffic is going to both north and south stop traffic. We put on a train that is unparalleled. There's no one that can move as fast as Union Pacific on that corridor from the border. We have great access into Mexico. We have six different access points into the Mexican market, so it gives us great penetration. We own 26% of Ferromex, and we need to—and we've started down the road, and we will continue to build that so that customers look at us as one railroad and not as two railroads.
And if we can be more seamless on how we hand off traffic and how we move and we penetrate the market, I think it's a win, Brandon. So that's it. That's my prepared. And, I know, my compatriot from Union Pacific said I knew he was not going to read what I gave him.
Well, I appreciate that, Jim. And, you know, I want to ask much more about the long-term outlook here. But Jennifer, if I can, you know, volumes for Union Pacific and other carriers were pretty challenged in January. I think cold weather across the continent was really the cause. But what can you tell us about, you know, trends so far in the first quarter, if you don't mind?
Yeah, I mean, I think you hit that exactly right, Brandon. You know, if you look at our January volumes, they were down about 6%. Since then, as the chart shows, our velocities improved tremendously, and our car loads have come back. Now, quarter to date, I think we're down about 3%. So that tells you that February, we're seeing recovery. And, and you saw that from us in the fourth quarter as well. As our volume ran faster, as we improved network fluidity, we were meeting our customer demands. I think that's very much where we're at today. We knew there were going to be some challenged markets. Washington can overcome a challenged market, which is why you're still seeing us a little bit lower year-over-year. Biggest year-over-year challenge is in coal. Everyone knows what's going on with natural gas prices.
Just the stockpiles have been built up over the course of 2023, so that's just a much more challenged market for us. We also talked on the quarter about an intermodal contract loss, so that's a little bit of a headwind. But when we look at the rest of our markets, we see some great growth opportunities. And it really does go back to what Jim talked to, is service and meeting those customer needs, showing them the recoverability of the railroad. And so I think we're well-positioned as we continue through February and into March to move the demand that our customers have.
Appreciate that. And, Jim, you know, when you came on board at Union Pacific, I think you said, "Look at freight car velocity, right, to track improvement, or if we are or aren't." Is that still the metric that you want investors to focus on?
Well, listen, you need to look at a whole bunch of things. And I, I wouldn't expect everybody to look at everything I get first thing in the morning. So when I woke up this morning, I get a number of reports that makes it easy for me. I don't even have to go look at them. So there's a number of them. But if you take a look at, for us, and every railroad can look at it their own way, I find that, I find that some of the other metrics are not truly representative of the fluidity in the railroad and what they're delivering. So when people talk about train speed, if you look at how train speed is, is figured, it's a pretty easy fix.
If I change train numbers a couple of times or I stop them in a terminal and do that, you remove time out of that schedule on paper. The customer doesn't see any value in that. So you can have faster train speed. So if I was being compensated for train speed, I could get it to 30. But that's not a real metric. And the reason I like using car velocity and you know what? You have to make sure that what you measure is a clear description of the result. When my kids came home from school, and I got it, I'm a tough marker. No ifs, ands, or buts. But if they came home and said to me they got 85% on an exam, you know what the next question was, Brandon?
Where are you in the class average? Are you in the top group, or are you on the bottom group, or is this now the teachers are just giving marks away? Sometimes I think they are. But that's okay. Okay? So at the end of it, so car velocity is the metric. Car velocity is real important. And that gives you a good feel of what and how the railroad is operating. And for me, that's a key metric that I would ask people that want to look at us and see how we're doing. That's a good one to tell.
I think it most closely correlates with the experience that our customers have in terms of how fast those cars are moving.
Yeah, because car velocity is when the customer releases the car to the time you place the car at the customer. And that's the crux of it. There's a few other nuances, like if they don't accept them or a car goes bad order or something, you deal with that. But overall, it's a measure of how well customers see that. And the feedback is, you know, you get to the level where we are right now, customers are the feedback we're getting. I spent a lot of time with customers, earlier this week. And, the feedback is, you know, you're delivering what you sold us, and hopefully, we can grow the business together.
Well, when you came on board, you know, mid-last year, I think it was pretty rapid improvement we saw in some of these service metrics, including freight car velocity. What changes did you make in the organization? I think you've spoken about, you know, pushing decision-making forward in the organization. Is that right?
You know, Brandon, I give the team a lot of credit. I do have a very strong team. If you look at the people that a lot of you will not meet in the next short while, but hopefully, we get a chance to bring them out when we have our investor day, and you can meet some of the other people, you just have to be focused on exactly what's important. Don't lose sight of trying to do the things that you think are important, but you concentrate on them. We concentrated on our intermodal. We have a 70-mile-an-hour railroad. We've built the speed that we can operate freight trains to 70 miles an hour on the majority of our railroad, except for through the mountains and some of the curves. We can go 70 miles an hour.
Ourselves and our competitor, our West, are the only two railroads that, that build to that standard. It's a safer railroad because the tolerances are way less. And if you concentrate on what's possible and you have the team aligned on what's necessary, it's amazing what you can do. And they have to be focused. Now, don't kid yourself. It doesn't. It sounds easy when you're handling hundreds of thousands of rail cars, thousands of locomotives, thousands of customers that have a different view of when they release cars, when they move. But if you make the right decision, Brandon, you can do that. And, and that's what it's all about. And hopefully, I did learn something after railroading for 40+ years that I've, I've had a little skill. I'm not, I'm not good at a lot of things. I'm not trying to tell you I'm real good at everything.
But railroading, I'm, I'm not bad. I give myself a B, you know, B-plus mark because I'm a tough marker.
What's the class average again?
I know. I was just going to ask you that, Brandon.
Nice try. I'm not answering that one, Brandon. Jennifer, I think I heard sequential improvement in the operating ratio. I mean, is that something that is possible here in the first quarter, just getting the January headwinds, and?
Yeah, I mean, when Jim talks sequential improvement, I wouldn't take that as an absolute. I mean, he's looking at and this is the way we look at it, and, and you all should judge us, is how do we perform last quarter? What are the metrics that we're putting up? You obviously have different seasonality in our business. And so that takes away what I'll call pure sequential improvement. But are we showing productivity? Are we holding the metrics? Are we continuing to, to whittle away at the cost structure? We know we have the inflation. We've talked about that pretty broadly. What are the opportunities to, to chip away at that and be more productive and use less assets to, to move more?
Okay. And on the volume outlook this year, I think you guys were maybe a little bit more muted, given I think you mentioned an intermodal contract, headwinds, and coal. Can you speak through some of the headwinds and then some of the tailwinds as well?
You hit the headwinds. You know, we could have come out with a different message. I think we want to be prudent in the message that we give. If you operate the railroad in a very efficient manner, you give our marketing and salespeople every chance to win in the marketplace. That's real important. That's what we've done. I think we have a product now in the entire network that we have in the different commodities. Now, we're not sure. We were not sure when we spoke in the January after the fourth quarter about what the economy's going to look like. You know, if it was a dream, I would hope that interest rates drop down to 2. GDP growth is 3 or 4. We get industrial production up. But that's not the facts. I can't see it.
We can't see it. So we decided to be the way we should be. I've always been like this. I don't you know what? Judge me on what we do. Judge us on what we do. Judge us that we have the capability to move ahead. Anybody that says that they know what's going to happen in the in the latter part of the year is really guessing as far as what I see. Maybe they're smarter than me, and they can they can see it better than me. We're ready for it if it happens. But we have to be we have to be cognizant of what the economy will give us. We're well set up with the capacity that we have and the way the railroad is set up for us to, to improve. But that's why. We're being very careful.
I've always been like that. You never hear me tell you, "Oh, we think we can deliver an operating ratio of X. Let's go deliver it, and then people can judge it." I've come out and said that, we're going to be the best. I'm pretty confident about that number. I'm pretty confident that we'll get there. But the rest, Brandon, I don't guess. I think it's not prudent for us, and for our investors to tell them a story that is not factual from what we see. Now, if the economy turns on us, if we have an improvement, some of those things happen.
If we have an improvement in the general economy and interest rates that can help us with forest products and a number of products that we move, in the housing business, if the consumer keeps on spending in services but also moves to products that they buy for their homes and building, I think we're well set up because of the capacity that we have in the railroad to bump up.
Kenny and Jim have done a good job in terms of business development. You heard us talk about that on the fourth quarter call. When we look across the portfolio, we know we've got some business wins in the automotive side, so we feel very bullish about automotive volumes, both parts and finished vehicles this year. Biofuels is going to continue to be a strong growth area for us as more plants come online in our served territory. We also have had some business wins in the petrochemicals market, plastics, some of that supporting the auto industry. But that's another part of our business that we feel really good in, soda ash, continued growth and strength in that market.
If the audience has questions, by the way, this can be interactive. Just raise your hand. We'll get you a mic. I guess, Jennifer, how long does it take for this new service equation to then translate to customer wins? Is it new customers, or is it just winning more business with your existing base?
Go ahead. Why don't you start?
You know, it's both, right? I mean, certainly, our easiest opportunity - and I'll put it in air quotes because Kenny would say it's never easy - is with existing customers because we know most of our existing customers aren't shipping all of their business with us. So that's where us demonstrating day after day, week after week, that we're a resilient customer, service product, that gives us an opportunity to grow with them. But then it's also the truck conversion. We know that's the holy grail for railroads. It's converting more of that business that's moving on the highway today. And again, that comes down to consistency. And I think we need to show that over a period of time. It's not weeks. It's showing it through different cycles. It's showing it through different weather events like what we just went through, showing that resiliency.
So, Brandon, no customer. If you sit down and talk to a customer, and you tell them, and they've seen it, you know, for three months, you've had great service. You're providing the service that you sold us. Three months is not long enough to actually make the transition where people say, "We trust the Union Pacific enough that we are going to shift some of that business." The business is there for us to convert. And the nice part about the network that we have, you know, if I take you for a quick tour around the network, everybody wants to start with the intermodal business that's anchored in L.A., Long Beach, and Seattle. And that's real important to us. And that's important for us to make sure that we're in the right place.
If we are efficient, if our margin, if our operating ratio is the best in the industry, it gives us way more to play in that truck competitive business. And we think we have a product, greenhouse gas emissions 70% less impactful to the environment than by truck. So we need to sell that. And I expect Kenny to sell that and make sure. And that's why we opened up Phoenix to make sure we do that. But if I keep on going around, it's not just there. That industrial complex that we have, that we serve, and we're the biggest server from all the way from New Orleans down to Brownsville, Texas, is a great franchise for us to have. And that product actually is doing real well. Okay? That is up year-over-year.
We see continued investment by, by U.S. companies in that area, by companies in that area. We see that as an improvement. I could keep on going. I could spend the rest of the time, whether it's the grain franchise. This is that's the way I look at it. If you operate the railroad well, you operate it for enough time that the customers are comfortable that you have a product that they can rely on, and you're cost-effective, and I'm not talking about cutting the prices. That's not the game I'm in at all, especially with the inflationary pressures that we felt, then there's no reason for Kenny and the team to go sell that. I'm going to judge him, and he knows it, on how well he sells. I'm a patient man for about three weeks. Okay? So guess what?
You better get out there and start selling the business that we have and bring it on the railroad.
Three weeks. Got it.
Yeah. He, he just added a week. I thought it was two.
You know, Jennifer, you did you did provide guidance, though, on the cost side this year for inflation expectations of 5%, I think, both on compensation benefits and overall inflation. Can you talk about potential offsets to that? Does that include productivity expectations, or?
No, that does not include productivity. That's just the inflationary pressure that we see in those categories. So to your point, that's our opportunity, is through the productivity and the efficiency that we look to gain on the railroad. And we have opportunities in every category. There's no cost category out there that we think that we have maximized our productivity or that we're doing the best job possible. So with labor, we know that we can do better with our labor. We're learning as we're implementing some of these new agreements. But we're also implementing remote control technology that helps us. We're looking at how we can reduce recruits as the velocity of the railroad spools up. That gives us better predictability, helps us improve and reduce that, reduce our need for borrow-outs across the company. That's a cost savings for us.
Fuel efficiency, that's a big one. Locomotive productivity helps that. But also just looking at how we're running the locomotives across the network and being more diligent about shutdown startup procedures to save fuel, some very simple things that we can do. Purchased services, some of that's driven by purchased transportation. If you think about our Loup subsidiary and the demand for autos, but then it's locomotive maintenance. It's car maintenance. So as we reduce those fleets, as we use fewer assets, that's helping us save money. And just our procurement of services, being out there, being efficient in how we're contracting for the services that are provided.
So, we have a Union Pacific. We have this inflationary pressure. And you tackle it two ways. One is through price. And I think we're going to do a good job of being able to make sure we cover that, and we can price so that we cover that expense. But on top of that, we think that there's productivity on assets, how we use the railroad, efficiency of the people, everything else. Listen, the people that we have operating the railroad every day that face, they're pretty good jobs. They pay well, and we're comfortable. The deal's the deal. I don't like some of the things that we provided without getting some productivity gains within the agreements. But I can't look back.
But looking forward, we've identified ways for us to mitigate that on an efficiency basis and also how we price and make sure that we get ahead of that. Now, it's not a six-month. We don't have all our contracts coming up in a short term, so it might take us a little bit longer. But I'm very comfortable. I see a point down the future where we will cover all the expenses that we have for inflation, and we're able to operate more efficiently. And I think you saw that in the productivity numbers for the fourth quarter.
We're almost out of time here. Maybe we can cue up question number four. I hope we got responses to three earlier. Audience's question number four here, please, in the back.
Jazlan, you cannot ask the question. I'll see you back there.
Derek, welcome, gentlemen. Folks in the back, question four. It's not working. Oh, there we go. In your opinion, what should Union Pacific do with excess cash? First two here are M&A. Third is share repurchase. Fourth is dividends. Five, debt paydown. Or six, internal investment. And while we wait to get the responses there, Jim, I do want to ask, what's your view of capacity on the Union Pacific? Because if we look back, you know, volumes from an RTM or GTM perspective probably peaked a good bit ago and probably 20% lower today than where they were at peak.
Well, you know, a lot of that is the coal business that's come down. So where the coal franchise is, we have capacity, 20% or whatever the number is. You always want to have some capacity in the railroad because it's not a flat line. Capacity helps you recover. It helps you recover quicker. So I'm very comfortable that the railroad infrastructure is set up for us to handle any growth in business that we foresee in the next few years. No issues there. Are we going to have to invest in certain pockets? We will. And we'll continue to do that to make the place more efficient. On the locomotive side, you know, I joked around last night and said that we have more locomotives parked than one of my Class I friends. And it's the truth.
So I don't think we're short of locomotives. We're in good shape there in the number of locomotives we have. And the rail cars and everything else, I'm very comfortable. Can you flex up for people? We have had no problem hiring at this point. We go out and look for people to come on the railroad. We've been able to bring them on after the pandemic. It was a little bit harder right after. But right now, when we're looking for people to join the railroad, they want to join them. They're good jobs. And they, they come to us. No problem. So if you put the three things that you need, railroad capacity, asset capacity, and people, I'm very comfortable that, that we have the room to grow.
Okay. Question number 5, please. In your opinion, on what multiple of 2024 EPS range for Union Pacific trade? You have ranges there, 1 through 6. And we saw time. Can you guys talk about capital priorities, though, outside of investment? Is it share repurchase, dividend? Where, where's the priorities?
Let me start, and then I want Jennifer to jump in because, you know, we want to talk about generally the way I look at it is operating income is real important. And I think Union Pacific does a great job on operating income. With that, we will continue to invest in the railroad. And this year, we have a plan for $3.4 billion. And that means we're millions of dollars every day spent on the railroad. Half of that goes to refresh, renew the plant, and make sure we operate a safe railroad. And the rest of that is in assets and investments for growth. And that's the way we look at it. Now, we can flex that number if we have to. If something comes up, we're not so locked that it has to be 3.4.
It could be 3.3 by the time we're done or 3.5. But at the end of it, it has to be we're clear on what we do. So we spend the money to reinvest. People want to look at a lot of things. I don't know. I'm an investor in other companies. I look at how much money we make, net income, free cash flow, very important to me. And if we can have free cash, we want to buy back shares. We want to increase our dividend. And we want to make sure that the shareholders, the owners of our company, are taken care of when they invest in Union Pacific. That's what I look at. You can ask Jennifer. I always look at, what's our free cash flow? How much money do we have left over after we've paid all our bills?
What are we doing? That's very important to me.
I think that buzzer means we're almost out of time. But maybe we can get to the last question up, question six. What do you see as the most significant, share price headwind for you, core growth, margin performance, capital deployment, or execution strategy? Jennifer, last word on capital. I really appreciate you guys coming on.
Yeah. No. I mean, I think Jim summed it up very well. And, you know, we said that we aren't going to be back in the share repurchase market here in the first quarter. We've got about $1.3 billion of debt coming due. And so we're going to use operating cash to pay that down. But we absolutely know that share repurchase is something that's important to our shareholders. And as we improve our earnings profile and grow that cash, we're going to get back in the mode of distributing it through share repurchases.
You bet. Great. Well, thank you both. We have so much more we could add. But we're out of time.
Well, Brian, listen. Thank you very much. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.