Norfolk Southern Aktie

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, October 22, 2026.

And I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section along with a reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio.

Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis.

Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We are here in Atlanta, and I'm joined by Brian Barr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer. Our third quarter was strong with steady execution, making notable improvements to our network while delivering solid results. We have an outstanding team of Thoroughbreds, who remained focused on the fundamentals, operating a safe, reliable railroad, serving our customers, growing the business and improving productivity across the network. So a big thanks to all our team.

Collectively, we delivered very strong revenue and operating income growth, while we continued to advance productivity. While we absorbed higher fuel costs this quarter, our team executed well on the controllables maintaining cost discipline while improving the efficiency of the operations. Overall, we're pleased to have our business performed in a dynamic operating environment and believe that the underlying fundamentals of the franchise remains strong. Demand for rail service is growing with encouraging trends in areas such as domestic intermodal and chemicals, which Ed will discuss in more detail. The current macro environment is tightening the truck market, and that helps rail be more competitive. And what you saw in the quarter is us capturing the increased customer demand. Operationally, we continue to make progress. Under Brian's leadership, we've made targeted adjustments across the network and key service metrics are improving even as we handle higher volumes. Brian will detail some of the changes that helped us achieve record productivity performance in the quarter, and we are making other operational improvements while adding resources that will improve network performance going forward. And you should expect to see these efforts show up more clearly as we close out 2026 and continue into next year.

Bottom line, we're handling the volume today and we expect stronger results as the resources come online and our demand pipeline continues to fill out. While we are encouraged by the meaningful progress we're making, we know there's more work to do. And we've consistently said that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We're accelerating some targeted capital investments into this year to accommodate continued volume growth so that we can deliver the level of service our customers expect. Meantime, we've identified opportunities to build more sustainable processes across our network so we can create a more resilient railroad for the long term.

And with that, let me hand it off to Brian.

Appreciate it, Mark, and good morning, everyone. I want to begin by thanking the men and women of Norfolk Southern. As I spend time in the field, it is clear our team is putting in the work. Our railroaders managed another demanding quarter overcoming significant weather and operating disruptions while remaining focused on serving our customers and operating safely. As I said on this call last quarter and say it to our teams frequently, successful railroading comes down to doing the fundamentals exceptionally well, originate trains on time, reduce terminal dwell, run the plan and align resources with demand. During the third quarter, our focus on those fundamentals drove clear sequential improvements across the network.

Turning to Slide 5. The most important part of railroading is ensuring our employees and the communities we serve remain safe. Our preliminary year-to-date FRA personal injury index is [ 1.08. ] Our train accident rate is at 1.74, a historical best for Norfolk Southern. Our accident performance continues to show step function improvement, and it's a clear sign of our railroaders commitment to safety. We recognize the progress, but we are not satisfied. We will never stop pushing ourselves to be the safest in the industry.

Turning to Slide 6. We ended the quarter with a clear plan to recover network fluidity by improving originations and reducing dwell, increasing velocity and getting the railroad back on schedule. We delivered sequential improvement across those foundational measures. These are results our customers can see and feel. This quarter-over-quarter improvement demonstrates that our operating actions are producing results.

Moving to Slide 7. Our progress came despite significant August weather across the north. On our networks high-speed quarter. The team quickly restored infrastructure, removing hundreds of downed trees, repairing multiple washouts and handling widespread power outages by activating strategic reroutes and repositioning resources. While the historic wind and rain interrupted some of our July momentum, it did not derail our progress. We made meaningful improvements versus the prior quarter as you can see by the metrics on the slide. We also drove substantial year-over-year progress, operating 5% more gross ton-miles in quarter 3 2025. The network to absorb this growth almost entirely through our existing infrastructure, driving a 4% increase in both train length and weight compared to the same period last year.

Turning to Slide 8. We we generated strong productivity in a higher volume environment. Our on-time origin performance increased by 12 percentage points, and we continue to see progress here daily. Running an on-time network is essential to driving cost out. Workforce productivity was a quarter 3 record. We have begun localized hiring to support growth and targeted train plan consolidations will reduce labor intensity where demand is strongest, allowing us to continue capturing truck-to-rail conversions. In the third quarter, the team made improvements by redesigning car connections at terminals and removing costly handlings to reduce dwell. In the quarter, we eliminated 95 crew starts per week and took 200 cars offline per day. These adjustments allowed the network to accommodate 3% carload growth in the quarter.

Let me give you a couple of examples of our recent plan improvements. First, we consolidated smaller trains between Birmingham and Macon. This saves 14 crew starts per week, reduces the number of locomotives needed and delivers cars faster to the customer. And another example, we shifted 50 daily switch cars from a NOLA terminal to Allentown Yard. That change freed up manpower for road service and Enola and moves the switching work to a lower cost per car location. It also removed 6 blocks at Enola, creating additional yard capacity. Adjustments like these are keeping our network fluid and agile. When trains originate on time and move faster, recruits decline locomotives turned more efficiently, cars spend less time in terminals and crews spend more time moving freight. That is how service and productivity reinforce one another. I'm proud of the way our operating team continues to improve the railroad. That work has us on track to deliver at least $650 million in cumulative cost savings.

We made meaningful progress during the quarter, but there is more work ahead. Our standard is a railroad that operates safely, executes consistently and deliver service our customers can plan around every day. We will keep leading from the front running the plan and delivering results.

I will now turn the call over to Ed.

Thanks a lot, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Our commercial results this quarter reflect a strong macro backdrop and a tightening truck market, which has allowed NS to drive growth across our network. Volume grew in every one of our business groups, and we set an all-time record for revenue less fuel.

Let's move to Slide 10. We achieved 14% overall revenue growth for the third quarter, which is inclusive of fuel surcharge. And when we look at revenue on a less fuel basis, we delivered a 6% increase to set an all-time record. We finished the quarter with broad-based strength, achieving 3% volume growth in each of our business verticals. These gains were supported by elevated global energy prices, a robust industrial backdrop and favorable truck market dynamics. RPU less fuel increased by 3% as our teams focused on pricing to the market. Looking within merchandise, volumes increased 3% and revenue less fuel achieved another record, increasing 5% from a year ago, driven by strength in our metals and construction franchise and by strong energy demand in our chemicals markets. Our POS fuel grew 2% year-over-year as strong core pricing was partially offset by some mix.

Let's shift our focus to our intermodal business. Volumes there increased 3% reflecting strong freight demand and a tighter truck market conditions that favorably positioned our intermodal partners to succeed with particular strength in our domestic and premium segments, which was partially offset by international. Overall, intermodal revenue less fuel increased by 7% and positive mix and a positive price environment pushed RPU less fuel up by 4%.

Looking at our coal franchise, volumes grew 3%, largely due to increased export volumes, which include the new customer that we announced earlier this year. And despite strong demand, utility volumes were relatively flat versus '25 due to plant outages, along with some localized service challenges that limited our ability to capture upside. RPU less fuel increased by 2%, lifted primarily by tailwinds from favorable seaborne pricing.

Let's go to Slide 11, and here we highlight several dynamic factors that continue to influence our market outlook. The inflection of fuel price has generated opportunities across energy-related commodities, which could carry forward for the duration of the conflict in the Middle East. However, if energy prices remain elevated in the longer term, it could begin to impact overall customer demand. We're keeping a close eye on this interplay. The tightening truck market bodes well for highway to rail conversions across markets such as forest products and consumer products. And lastly, new project activity in industrial development remains ahead of last year. Although the pace has normalized following an exceptionally strong second quarter. And as we look forward, we remain positive on the outlook for new industrial development activity as tariff-related concerns ease. Additionally, we have a subdued positive outlook for vehicle production. Industrial activity has maintained its momentum with manufacturing continuing its expansion for the ninth consecutive month. We are maintaining an optimistic outlook for the industrial sector despite ongoing volatility in the broader economic landscape.

Global energy prices, while a significant wild card, could continue to support near-term opportunities in markets like natural gas liquids, sand and crude oil. Looking specifically at our intermodal markets. truck market conditions continue to trend positively. Rising rates reflect tighter capacity against a steady demand backdrop. And we expect resilient consumer demand to support our domestic and premium segments in the near term as new orders increase and retail sales have shown modest growth. And on the other hand, more and trade uncertainty will continue to weigh negatively on international volumes on our network. And overall, we stand poised to take share from the highway as elevated fuel prices make conversion from truck to intermodal more attractive to our customers. As we turn to coal, the outlook is positive for the remainder of 2026, and we expect growth to be led primarily by our export franchise, but will also be supported by favorable market conditions within our utility business.

Let's go to Slide 12. Throughout the third quarter, we continued to build momentum across the business. Stronger service performance is enhancing customer confidence and their confidence in supporting market share growth and at the same time, new digital and operating capabilities are enabling us to grow more efficiently. Our digital investments are delivering tangible benefits for both customers and our operations through greater automation, visibility and better ease of doing business. Whether customers are requesting a rate or seeking information on an active shipments we're delivering tools that help deliver faster and more consistent answers. We are streamlining the end-to-end rate request process through a single intuitive platform that allows customers to submit manage and track their requests in one place. This reduces manual touch points, it increases transparency and accelerate decision-making. We're focused on delivering an increasingly seamless customer experience.

At the same time, we're also enhancing shipment visibility by combining real-time network data, historical trends and machine learning and super intelligence to adapt to changing network conditions. The result is a more accurate and more actionable shipment information, enabling customers to plan more effectively, operate more efficiently and ultimately make decisions with greater confidence. As these capabilities continue to scale, our goal is simple: Make Norfolk Southern the easiest railroad to do business with so that we win more freight in competitive markets. And as always, we want to thank all of our customers for their continued partnership and business. The entire NS team is aligned around delivering the service that our customers need every day building trust as a bottle partner for them in their supply chains.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jason to review our financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start on Slide 14 with the reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I will discuss today. During the quarter, we incurred $42 million in merger-related expenses and $28 million of net costs related to the Eastern Ohio incident. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was 65.4%, and earnings per share was $3.62.

Slide 15 details the comparison of these adjusted results versus last year. As expected, higher fuel prices were a significant driver of both the revenue and expense increases accounting for about half of the variance in both line items. Last quarter, we were expecting fuel to be a tailwind to our third quarter operating ratio. However, as I previewed a couple of weeks ago, fuel prices actually increased as we progressed through the quarter, and that negatively impacted our operating ratio by about 250 basis points from where we thought we would be. That said, higher volumes and RPU in the quarter helped drive a 10% improvement in earnings.

Drilling further into the expense line items on Slide 16. Costs were up 17% for the quarter. As I just discussed, over half of that increase was driven by the rise in fuel expense. I'll also remind you of last year's significant land sale that impacts the comparison to prior year as well. Setting aside those items, continued inflationary pressures and volumetric cost increases are the primary drivers in our other P&L line items, including comp and [ benefits, ] purchased services and materials.

Summarizing our financial results on Slide 17. Despite the inflationary headwinds we faced, we drove an increase of 7% in operating income and delivered a 10% increase in both net income and earnings per share. As we move into the fourth quarter, we continue to manage through the volatility of fuel prices that will influence the trajectory of the operating ratio. That said, we are optimistic about the current demand environment and our ability to grow volumes, revenue and earnings.

Mark, I'll turn it back over to you.

Okay. Let's turn to Slide 19. Looking ahead, our priorities remain clear. Most importantly, we will continue to operate a safe and reliable roll road. Safety remains the foundation of everything we do, and we remain fixated on that. Network velocity increased from Q2 despite the higher load on the network and some disruptive events that Brian talked about. Our team is actively recruiting and training new T&E employees to augment our resource base to accommodate growth while we still drive smart productivity and efficiency actions. Accelerating and maintaining a SaaS network is essential to provide the consistent high-quality service that our customers depend on through their businesses. Now turning to guidance. The fuel environment has remained elevated. As a result, our updated adjusted OpEx guidance for the full year is to be just north of $9 billion, which includes approximately $700 million of incremental fuel expense compared to our view at the beginning of the year. While higher fuel prices continue to pressure our cost structure, our team remains disciplined on managing controllable costs and delivering productivity improvements across the network.

I'm exceptionally proud of this team as they've managed through the volatile environment this year while managing to keep core operating costs within the original guide we set forth at the beginning of the year despite stronger volumes. The underlying business remains healthy, and we are committed to balancing growth with operational efficiency. Now we are increasing our capital expenditure outlook and expect 2026 CapEx to be roughly $2.1 billion, which is up from $1.9 billion originally. The incremental reinvestment in the franchise is geared toward positioning us to capture growth opportunities that we see on the horizon as well as to enhance network resilience and efficiencies. We're encouraged by the growth we're seeing across parts of our business, but we also recognize that today's environment won't persist indefinitely. We view most of the macroeconomic factors that are driving the recent truck to rail conversions as temporary. But with the freight market today is showing us is that when shippers are given a rail product that offers better value than the highway, they move freight to rail quickly. And the Union Pacific Norfolk Southern combination is designed to create those conditions permanently.

Okay. With that, we will now open the call to questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will be from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

Just a couple of things, Mark, your comment about the truck to rail conversion being temporary. Just add some color there. Is your thought that like when fuel goes down, we lose the share back to truck? Or are you saying that incremental share gains will get tougher whenever fuel goes down or I don't have another thought on that. So I'm just curious about that. And then, Mark, you've also just like in recent quarters, like been talking about the competitive dynamic, and I'm just wondering how that's evolving and how we should be thinking about pricing going forward in a world of higher truck rates and better rail volumes?

Scott, thank you very much. Okay. So yes, look, the competitive environment, it's definitely pretty robust right now. I think you see all the competitors offering new products coming together in the wake of the announcement of the merger, we've definitely seen a more enhanced competitive environment. So for sure, we're seeing more competition. The good news is, and I think that's all good, by the way, for the rail industry as a whole because we are now finally getting some share back from the highway, certainly aided by the the rising fuel prices, but still, nevertheless, I think the rails cooperating together is really a good thing even if it creates a tougher situation for us. So definitely, that -- I would confirm that dynamic exists. And look, when I talk about temporary, what I mean here, Scott, is obviously the rail -- sorry, the fuel pricing has pushed freight to the highway. We're seeing a large part of our intermodal growth has been driven exactly by highway to rail conversion. No doubt about it. Now that is having an impact on the trucking market. And certainly, there's some capacity limitations now in trucking. But over time, when fuel goes back to where it was, you can expect that some will revert back to a large portion of what we've gained will eventually, and it might take a year or 2, but it will eventually go back to the highway unless this industry does some very structurally different things, which is really what I was alluding to there at the end. So that's why I think the merger is the real difference maker here in trying to make permanent some upward inflection on share recapture. So hopefully, that clarifies it.

Question will be from Jonathan Chappell at Evercore ISI.

Ed, every single rail call every single quarter asked about pricing, and we get some broad-based answer. But if we look at your RPU ex fuel across all three segments, they're all really strong. So I understand that intermodal, you have some truck benefits, [indiscernible] kind of the benchmarks, which is out of your control, but merchandise continues to set a record. So can you kind of help us frame out kind of what was controllable versus what wasn't and kind of where you are in kind of recapturing price as the service continues to improve.

Sure. Thanks for the question. I'll try not to be high level and generic even though it might be unavoidable in some cases. But look, we've had a strong history of price over a long period of time. And having a service product that is recovering that allowed us to exhibit additional value for our customers. And that includes our industrial customers. Now it also helps that what we see as a pretty robust industrial backdrop when it comes to the macro. We've got 9 months of expansion now in terms of manufacturing and new orders continue to sort of propel what's going on out there. We see a strong industrial development pipeline of our own, which we think is indicative also of a strong macro. So it is a growth environment right now on the industrial side of our business, which is where, of course, our merchandise business mostly lives. And we've been able to take advantage of the service that we've offered with that value to really try to price to the value of that product. And now other people say that, and we all aspire to it, but it's been a key part for us. And that really, in the merchandise segment, you think about it, we've had some some mixed headwinds in that side of the business as well, which kind of waters down our efforts when it comes to ARPU, which, of course, is not really price. So we're proud of that. On the Intermodal side, certainly, mix plays a role there as well. But I will tell you that we've spent -- and I've told you this before, we spent a lot of time renegotiating our contracts and reconfiguring how we adapt to changing market conditions. So I think we're in the really early innings of seeing that happen. And I really expect that we'll continue to see that happen as this environment persists. Thanks again for the question.

Next question will be from Jason Seidl at TD Cowen.

Mark, you sort of mentioned if the industry doesn't take a few steps that you fear that some of this stuff that you've gained, the traffic that you've gained can be lost over the next 2 years. I guess when you look at that assumption, are you assuming that capacity comes back to the trucking market as it has historically because it does appear to be some structural changes in and at least some of the regulatory regime here. And also, aside from sort of creating that transcontinental option that you and the UP are proposing, what are other things that you think the industry can do to retain this traffic?

Great question, Jason. Thank you. Look, yes, I think eventually, capacity does come back into trucking when the prices -- the areas to entry are very low. So capacity will come back when fuel prices go back down. And I think that presents a competitive challenge for rail. I think don't forget the threat of autonomy with trucking and what that also will do to make the product more attractive and appealing, just aside from the cost benefit for the truckers, they're going to also have a lack of rest hour requirements when trucks are driving. So they're going to also deliver products faster than they currently do today, which is already faster than the railroads. So those are the things that I'm talking about. We have to structurally change. So -- what we can do aside from the merger is we still have to be consistent and reliable with our delivery. And the challenges that railroads can't always flex to sharp inflections in volume. We saw that post COVID. And I think you see a little bit of that now, even when you start to see volumes hit beyond a couple few points, it starts to stress your crude capacities. So railroads have to be much more nimble. The challenge we all have as an industry is to bring on T&E resources, it's a grind. These are hard jobs to fill. You have considerable attrition through a 6-month training process. So you have to basically higher double what you think you need because you're going to end up losing half by the time you get to the end of a 6-month training process. And that means you have to predict 6 months in the future what the volumes are going to be. And if you get that wrong, you might be either short or you could be long on resources. And there's an area called Wall Street that thinks that you can be perfectly volume variable but it's a challenge. So we have to somehow crack that nut and figure out how to ensure that we've got adequate buffer in our resources to be able to accommodate a little bit more volume when we don't expect it. And let's just talk about recent history. In Q4 of last year, we were all feeling really terrible about the volume environment, and we weren't feeling very optimistic looking into 2027 about the volume environment. But it was exactly then you had to have the conviction to go and really augment your T&E resources and significantly increase for what eventually became a volume inflection in the middle part of 2026 or really the second quarter of 2026. If you get that wrong, you saw challenges in your service product. So that's a real-time recent example of the challenge railroads have, and we have to crack that nut. Thank you.

Question will be from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

And maybe I can pick up on that last answer. So I guess as we think about service and your capacity for growth and maybe take into context with the bump up in the CapEx guide. Can you talk about how much capacity that you have? I mean it seems like service in the last couple of weeks has gotten a little bit slower. Maybe that's from volume growth. Obviously, there's a lot going on out there from a demand perspective. So maybe you can just talk about big picture how much capacity you have to grow and sort of where you're going to be deploying the capital that you're raising?

Yes. I'll start off, and we'll tag team this answer. But look, we have capacity. And I think even in this quarter, you'll see that we've taken on volume. We haven't really added a ton of train starts. A lot of this is through filling out existing trains. So it hasn't really had too big of an impact. That said, there are -- there have been some more asset-intensive volume that's come on the unit train side. So certainly, those are areas where when you have more more bulk traffic and more unit traffic that you've got to move, that's where you end up feeling a little bit more of the pinch on the capacity side. But otherwise, in our regularly scheduled merchandise product and our intermodal products we've got capacity. But Brian, why don't you jump in with your views.

Yes. I mean we're walking through the service there regularly. And as I mentioned here earlier in the call, with some of the operational changes we make, we're creating capacity with train consolidations with removing touches on existing cars. As we mentioned, we are hiring here at some strategic locations that build resiliency into the plan we're on path with it and in a few strategic locations. And also with the locomotives, we have 420 that are in storage currently that are there for capability as volume increases as we grow. We've already been able to take on 3% more shipments this quarter and absorbed that into the existing network. Although, we're 4% bigger on length and weight, we still have a lot of capacity there on existing service.

Next question comes from Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan Chase.

Just a quick follow-up for Brian and a broader one about resourcing. Brian, we've been hearing a lot about trade driver challenges and availability, and that's not necessarily something you guys covered directly or managed directly, but it's clearly part of the whole supply chain on the intermodal side. So I wanted to see if there's anything along those lines, if you're feeling any constraints if there's any opportunities to work with your channel partners in there as this volume growth continues to be pretty significant, especially the conversion. And then, Mark, maybe just big picture, anything from technology perspective or maybe even a work contract negotiating perspective to get more flexibility to help out with some of that variability of filing with that long lead time item for which is obviously labor.

Yes. Well, I'll start here, and Brian can kick in as well. Look, we're investing at the terminal level to make sure that our drayage community is a fluid and as efficient as they possibly can be. They're a key component to what we do, specifically, not only in markets where they're doing in deliveries, but we also do a lot of cross towns in the current environment, and they're really important there, too. Is there stress, yes, there is stress across the entire supply chain, particularly for trucks and drivers. And I think that, that that's really been a part of the story here that people have talked about, but I'm not sure attention that they paid to it, but the supply of drivers and the capability there has been drawn down some. But we're investing to make sure that the drivers that come to our terminals are being efficient with their time. and that we are delivering value for them too. And Brian, I don't know if you want to talk about specific investments or where we're doing that. But I know you're looking at a number of places across the network.

Yes. So with growth -- I mean, we have locations right now that are hitting lift records here currently. So we have 5 locations going to hit a quarterly lift record within the intermodal ramps. We have 10 that hit annual. But we've been doing ongoing expansions and improvements in several of the terminals with the growth mindset and with increasing our capability. And we're hitting a few locations there in Chicago, Harrisburg, a few key corridors specifically.

Yes. And I think technology, in general, is something we're investing in. I think in the intermodal terminals, we're looking at a fair amount of autonomy opportunities there that will help us with moving boxes and scanning and hustling and things like that. So those will help with our terminal fluidity. But on top of it, Brian, you're doing a lot of investments in some of the yards automating switches and doing some other things that will help alleviate some of the manual work requirements that we have. Correct?

Correct.

So those are -- Jason, do you want to add anything else on some of the -- where the CapEx is the incremental CapEx?

Yes. I mean, our priorities with respect to capital allocation has always been first and foremost, to invest in the business and no change there. I think what you're really seeing here in this increase that we talked about at the end of the year is really preparing for growth. And that's really important. A lot of this takes some time to get in the ground or to purchase these assets. So it's important to get in ahead of that. The only other thing I would just add from a technology perspective is really what we've done on the portals and the benefits that we get out of that from efficiency and safety. So I think that's another key thing that's been important for us.

It sure has been. And I think the key thing here is when you look at our accident rates, they have been consistently declining for 3 years, and we are really at the envy of the industry levels of accidents, and that just means more fluidity on line of road, which means less resources required when you have breakdowns when you have accidents, if you really congest you, you need a lot more human resources to move things. It creates a lot more re-crews. We are more fluid because we are better online a road, thanks to the portal investments we've made. So let's move on to next question.

Which comes from Bascome Majors at Stephens.

When you originally framed the cost to run the business this time last year, I think that was a helpful framework. And it certainly played out where you've had the capacity to grow and largely maintain service levels in the network. And I appreciate the comments earlier about the buffer and how you're managing through that and capacity. As we look to next year, it looks like 4Q, the cost guidance is, call it, $2.4 billion. There's actually a lot of volume variability to serve the business into next year. But can you talk through the inflationary components and sort of the expectations that you're setting so we can get our own expectations for what that number looks like for 2027 versus 2026?

Thanks a lot, Bascom. Yes. So I'll let Jason talk to that. I mean we're not going to give 2027 guidance now, but certainly, inflation has been a challenge for this industry in the past couple few years. Obviously, the labor contracts are at the root of it. But on top of it, all the inflation we've seen elsewhere in materials and vendor costs have really hit us. We offset as much of that as we can with productivity. We've had a couple of great years with productivity, and we'll continue to drive cost out of the business there. But Jason, do you have some first looks at inflation.

Yes. I think just from a kind of early perspective here, I mean, we signed signed wage agreements with the unions 1.5 years, 2 years ago now. And so we have a good line of sight to that. So we've got a 3.75% increase that just went into effect in July and another 3.5% next July. So we know what the headwinds are there from a wage rate perspective. The other two things I'd call out, and I'm putting fuel aside here, obviously, is a bit of a wildcard. But the other thing is health and welfare benefits. Those have been very significant. Double-digit percentage increases in that, and we see that continuing as we move into next year. And then the other thing that I would just call out is insurance. Our cost to to receive insurance coverage as continues to go up. And I don't see that abating at all as we move into next year. So I think those are some big drivers that you should expect as we move into 2027.

And I'd imagine Bascome will do a similar type of guide next year and give you a cost envelope.

From Richa Harnain at Deutsche Bank.

So I wanted to ask maybe a more bigger picture one. One of the key strategic attractions of the merger is obviously the opportunity to convert more over the road freight to rail. However, we're seeing more and more evidence that conversion potential in Western and transcontinental corridors may be more limited than in the use, of course, that makes sense. But your largest IMC partner, for instance, reported a stark difference in growth for as versus transcon. So given your strong Eastern franchise, how are you thinking about that difference? And is it primarily structural given like shorter haul lanes being more truck competitive, or does it largely just reflect the absence of maybe a sufficiently reliable and competitive rail service offering in transcon, which the proposed merger is trying to to fix. I'm just trying to understand like what the structural sort of impediments are and how those get corrected from this merger?

Okay. Thanks, Rich. Ed, why don't you take a shot at that, please?

Sure. Look, we think that there are opportunities to convert truckload business to the railroad, no matter what the length of haul, whether it's long or short. Certainly, the transcon lanes have had more attention paid to them over the past 30 years with a variety of services. And so the penetration in those lanes is naturally higher than it is in the, what I would call, the East, which is for us, east of Mississippi. The results that you're seeing from a variety of our partners, I think reflect that reality that there's a tremendous amount of opportunity in the east to convert truckload to the railroad with the right kind of service and value. And I think we've become pretty good at that over time. We can always get better. What I think the merger is going to help us do is increase our penetration opportunity in those transcon lanes because we will have a better service and it will be a permanent change. It will not be an Interline product. It will be a local product that is durable across not only months, but years and decades. And so it is a -- we view that as a perpetual opportunity for share shift in those transcon lanes. And at the same time, the new company will have what I would consider to be and a prime opportunity to convert a lot of the freight that still rides the highway in the east that would much rather save money, pay fuels and deliver value to their customers using intermodal.

Next question comes from Brandon Oglenski at Barclays.

This is Eric Morgan on for Brandon. I guess I'll just ask one on the coal outlook. It turned positive. I think you mentioned driven by export but also the favorable conditions in utility business. So can you just help square that with the relatively low natural gas prices and how much line of sight you'd say you have on that business? And just any thoughts on how that shakes out for RPU. I appreciate it.

Yes, sure, sure. The -- on the domestic side, we saw our plants burn exceed the amount of tons that we delivered to them really for most of the year here. So we think that there's some replenishment that's going to happen. I agree with you that the low natural gas prices are going to be a strong competitor, but we do think that there will be some retalking going on for the remainder of the year and we know this maybe in the next year, but we'll see about that. On the export side, it's a pretty favorable environment when I think about pricing. You look at the third quarter, U.S. low vol ended up somewhere around $200 and API 2 was at [ $126. ] And right now, we're -- recently, I should say, we're at [ $210 ] and [ $125. ] So those are constructive levels, we think went into the fourth quarter. So yes, our outlook is a level. We're trying to be realistic with what the market can deliver on the utility side, but we think there's still some opportunity, particularly with the good partners that we have in the east here to deliver export tons.

Next question comes from David Vernon of Bernstein.

So Ed, I wanted to talk a little bit about intermodal. When you think about the trials and tribulations in the last 12 months, obviously losing some volume on the repositioning of some J.B. Hunt volume. How should we be thinking about the volume ex that headwind? And then as you think about your ability to not only touch on price next year, but also to think about new service introductions, things like that. What are you thinking about on the product side? I know you're in this sort of merger waiting game, but are you guys doing more work to think about where you can expand the network or add some services that could kind of tap into this elevated highway cost market?

Well, yes, we are, of course, and there's old say and my dad use, which is you make heal the sun shines. And so we're exploring every opportunity to deliver new value to our customers. And we'll see what emerges from that over the next few weeks and months, but I'm very bullish on that. When I think about our capability and what we've done, and think about the third quarter, we had the best domestic non-premium third quarter in history for volume. And that is -- that's saying something, given where we were a year ago, right.

In the business we had a year ago.

In the business we had a year ago. We had a really good quarter on the truckload side of our business. And I'm very, very encouraged by that in a couple of ways. One, we have great partners that are continuing to drive conversion out there on the street, which is incredibly important. And number two, we have a network that can deliver value very ably for those customers. And I'm going to speak or past you and talk to our customer base and say, I really want everyone to be confident that we can continue to deliver that value. We've got the capability. We've got capacity, and we're building more capacity. And I think we're in a really good shape there.

Next question comes from Tom Wadewitz at UBS.

So I wanted to ask a bit I guess you'll see this, but it's merger related. I think one of your primary competitor has pointed out that you have a really attractive intermodal network and access in Eastern Pennsylvania. And I think they'd like to get some access to some of it. How do you think about the capacity utilization of Harrisburg-Allentown, some of those key intermodal hubs? And just to kind of operational complexity of potentially having tracked rights or something where another railroad would get access to it, and not obviously that you're going to do that. But just kind of high level, is that something that's operationally doable and where you sit in terms of capacity of Eastern intermodal network that I think kind of fairly presented is a nice advantage for you?

Look, I mean, we have a very attractive franchise in Eastern Pennsylvania, no doubt the envy of others. And no surprise people are going to take moonshots to ask for access for it. Heck, I'd love to have access to Bone Valley in Florida. And I'd love to have access to South Dakota. There's all these other areas on the network everyone wants access to, but guess what, the tracks in the ground. We're going to live with our -- we're going to defend our franchise, and we're going to defend our network. And we're going to trust that the STB will view things like this through sober eyes and pretty firmly rejected, like they rejected a lot of the asks during the CPKC -- every ask during the CPKC merger application. So it's not really worth answering the rest of that question, Tom, because it's not going to happen. We're not giving up that franchise. I can't see a scenario where the STB would even entertain it. That's it. Thank you.

Next question comes from Ari Rosa at Citigroup.

So it sounds like you've detailed an attractive opportunity set here from a volume standpoint. But I was hoping you could talk about kind of how you see the attractiveness of the business that's available and just how discerning you have to be in terms of freight selectivity and expectations around that business kind of sticking around. I understand there's obviously a service component on your end. But as we think about just kind of apples-to-apples, is that business that you want? And how do you have to price that appropriately to ensure you get attractive returns.

Sure. Thanks to good question. We have a team of folks that are out on the street every day, including right now, looking for new business. And that team is very well trained and really capable smart folks, they're going to bring opportunities back that are attractive and accretive to the business. And that's the first mission they have. and I'm very, very confident that they're doing a great job of that, and they're going to continue to. You think about what business sticks around, well, here's the business that will take around a matter of what happens. And that is if we can deliver value in such a way that our customer can realize that value quickly and demonstrate that value for their customers, then we're going to be in great shape. And that means service, service, and that's what we're focused on. It means capacity, capacity capacity, and that's what we're focused on. And I'm very confident that as we move forward, our portfolio is only going to get more attractive in the current environment.

Next question comes from Walter Spracklin of RBC Capital Markets.

This is James McGarragle on Walter this morning. I just wanted to ask on the volume outlook. Last quarter, you flagged an update on your industrial customer investment activity. You mentioned it's normalized a bit after a strong H1. So I guess, was that a surprise to you that, that normalize? And any specific numbers you can give us surrounding that opportunity just to help us think about the opportunity in terms of carload growth there into next year.

Thanks for the question. We have over 50 industrial products that have moved into that design and construction phase, and that's the sort of the demarcation line, we think, between an opportunity that's theoretical versus one that's actually going to be executed. So we're encouraged by that. Yes, the first half of the year, we saw some acceleration and actually outperformance of that pipeline. And it has not decelerated but receded to the what I would call a normalized run rate. And that's okay. normalized run rate is very sustainable for us over a long period of time. Probably the more surprising thing was the acceleration in the first half. And so I feel like we're on track. We always have a budget every year for what we think is going to happen, and we're back sort of on that run rate now. And that's a very healthy thing. And frankly, very encouraging. In terms of carloads, we really can't find that here. But we're encouraged.

At this time, we have no other questions registered. I would like to turn the conference over to Mark George.

Okay. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everybody, for participating in the call. Look, I think I'll just wrap by saying, look, we've put an application forward for a merger. It's been -- it's more thorough than any merger proposal ever presented by an American Railroad. And it includes the first ever use of a complete data set as opposed to sample data. We now have greater visibility to the Board's time line. And we believe that the case for our merger is going to become clearer as the evidentiary record continues to build. And it is no doubt in my mind that we are very much in the public interest with this merger application. A unified network is going to provide customers with more opportunities to grow and compete placing new markets within reach, as Ed talked about, at a lower cost, and that enhances affordability for the U.S. consumer and the broader economy. I think second, reducing handoffs, improving network fluidity and delivering a more consistent service outcome. That's what's going to matter to the STB when they look at this, that service reliability, resilience and broader supply chain performance. and a more fluid network also means it's going to help the communities. We'll have fewer interchanges, fewer stoppages and that's going to translate into fewer block crossings. That's in the public interest, for sure. The freight conversion from the highway goes without saying we're going to save on overall diesel fuel consumption as a nation because we're up to 5x more fuel efficient than trucks. On top of that, we're going to make the highways safer by having fewer trucks on it. When you remove 3.6 billion truck miles, that translates to about 1,750 fewer accidents and injuries, which you can do math and estimate that's about 65 fewer fatalities. Not to mention for our employees being part of a larger company we are going to have more opportunities for employees, and we're actually going to start growing again, well paid union jobs. So we're excited about the progress we're making on the merger application of the STBs put out this time line, and we'll move on and continue to focus on running the business in the meantime. So thank you all for participating, and take care.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude the conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we ask that you please disconnect your lines.

[Audio gap]

Jump off point from there. At the -- in our second quarter call, kind of end of July, we were calling for a tailwind from fuel with respect to our operating ratio, right? So we thought we had seen the peak kind of in the May time frame. Prices were coming down, and we had a pretty favorable forward fuel curve. Well, two months later, that's obviously wrong. And so what we've seen is prices continue to go up, and we've got -- based on the curve that came out last week, just really elevated prices for the remainder of the year. So that's a significant headwind for us. So like I said, we're thinking we'd be at a tailwind. Now we're a headwind. And really, just to put that in a kind of order of magnitude, that's like 250 basis points on our operating ratio of headwind. Again, just from where we were two months ago. So we were calling for a sequential maybe better than seasonal sequential improvement from second to third. Now we actually think we're going to be a little bit worse than seasonal performance really due to that what's happening with fuel.

Understood. I'll come back to unpack war in a second. But to kind of endpoint, are there any nonfuel surcharge, like nonfuel revenue surcharge tailwinds on the revenue side in terms of share gains from truck or something that's a positive offset to that.

I think we are seeing some freight that is coming to us because of the extraordinary costs are experiencing on the truck side. And it's not just on intermodal. We're seeing it across many of our merchandise markets, what I would call the freight is not rail-centric or truck-centric, but it could go either way. Coiled steel, for example, or various paper products, consumer products, even lumber which is not an upmarket but we're actually seeing some -- I think, some share gain there because of because of what's happening with fuel, it's just pulling freight off the road. Talking about fuel, and we talk about $6 diesel, but out here, it's $8 diesel. We noticed on the way in, which is like science fiction. But anyway, I do keep a very cautious eye and Jason and I talk about it all the time. What does that mean for the economy over time. I think that certainly is something that we have to keep our eyes open to and really we're doing everything we can to put as much sensor in the environment as we can to see what's happening there because ultimately, over some period of time, there's going to be a drag on the consumer [indiscernible]. And I think like Ed said, that's really the key for us is to watch that. The fuel expense and the fuel surcharge we have over time kind of works its way out. Obviously, it has significant impacts quarter-to-quarter, but it's really that component. Do you get to a place where this really starts to impact demand.

With that $8 diesel talk, I'm going to ask you about electric locomotives in a second. But let's go back to the other two factors you mentioned, which is truck supply and demand. That's the demand first kind of you mentioned a few end markets here. What would you -- kind of any changes from what you told us on the 2Q call in terms of end market outlooks for any particular other positive rent or negative?

Not really. I would say we still see clear demand growth on the industrial side. And you've seen manufacturing expand for, what, 8 months now. So I think that bodes well. We still see a lot of, what I would call, tailwind for us on the industrial development side and projects rolling over into the design and construction phase, which we think bodes well long term. And then on the intermodal side, we're clearly seeing some demand growth on the domestic non-premium and on the premium side of the business. On the international side of the business, I think probably some pull ahead occurred earlier this year. And I don't know if this conference has talked about it yet or not, but there's a fairly extraordinary price differential between East Coast and West Coast landing right now, which I think is probably having some temporary headwind on East Coast port volumes at this point.

Got it. Just kind of sticking to the point on intermodal and merchandise volumes, just on intermodal itself, is this something that you see kind of coming fairly steadily through like a quarter-by-quarter as truckload kind of goes through whatever issues it's going through, or do you think it's something that's going to like you'll see like big step-up jumps kind of as you go through '27?

Well, I wish I knew that part. But here's what I suspect or what...

Consult your first aid [indiscernible].

What I expect is that we will -- we're going to continue to gain incremental share in the current environment. I think when we get to a bid season for intermodal, which is January through April of next year, that's where we'll probably see our next big opportunity to actually take share from the highway and deliver value for them as new contracts come on board for our beneficial cargo.

Got it. And just on intermodal, obviously, there was some share shift with the merger announcement. What innings are we in there? And kind of how do you see that playing out? What innings are you in for that share shift? And kind of how do you see that playing out?

We're going to lap all that stuff coming up in the fourth quarter. I think when you look at the data, what you see is that the local East in the U.S. network has grown the most. And so I think we'll show well going forward coming out here. And I think the value of our network and the value of the product that we're putting out there right now is a very good for the business and for our chances going forward.

Got it. Understood. On merchandise, kind of are there specific kind of mix factors to call out in terms of certain merchandise end markets versus the other, or is it like pretty steady through all of them?

No, there's a whole bunch of put and takes out there.

Yes. But what leg was the net...

Yes, I think what you're going to see over time is on the merchandise side, it's actually a positive mix over the long term. We're getting -- we're actually winning more business in our chemicals book, although, frankly, the portion we're winning is the lower rated side of the chemical book puts and takes there. Overall, we're going to grow Intermodal. We are growing intermodal pretty fast. So it will be flat to maybe a little bit of negative mix over the long period for the entire book of business. But the -- just talk about price for a minute, we're executing on price and our merchandise book. I feel really good about that. Our customers are clearly seeing the value in the network that we're delivering for them. And on the Intermodal side, we're in kind of the early innings of that story, and it will play out more next year.

Got it. The LTL truckers say that you sort of need ISM over 55 for them to see kind of juice on volumes. 50-plus is like good but not great. Is there a similar threshold for you guys it's 50 plus good enough for you? Is it 55, or where do you see that step up?

Well, positive, for sure. More is better, that's the second thing. But I would say, honestly, if we're in positive territory especially with the fuel environment and regimen the way it is. I feel pretty good about our chances in the marketplace.

Got it. Understood. And on Intermodal, kind of -- you spoke of the international dynamics kind of with the kind of the port ship. Remind us again what your mix is like and kind of what kind of potential margin impact there might be with that kind of hit to East Coast volumes versus...

You mean, East Coast, West Coast?

Not East Coast but as much as international, domestic and kind of how that contributes.

It's probably 65% or 70% domestic overall, right? So international, the minority and then our West Coast business is a minority of that.

Okay. Got it. So is that something that shows up in 3Q, or do you think it's more of a second half?

It will probably show up a little bit in 3Q. We'll see what happens to those differentials because there pretty dog on extraordinary right now. I don't know that they're sustainable.

Got it. So obviously, the conflict in the Middle East is a big factor that's influencing customer thought. What about tariffs kind of -- is that a thing where people are now past that and kind of we sort of have some kind of -- it seems like stable resolution, the Canada stuff notwithstanding, or is that still an item of uncertainty that's kind of keeping shippers at bay?

I suspect I can only go off what I'm seeing in terms of evidence in the marketplace. And I look at our industrial development pipeline as a clear piece of evidence there. We had a long pipeline last year that really wasn't moving very much. And I think that was really about people wishing to have more clarity before they invest, whether it's tariffs, whether the conflict, et cetera, et cetera. And I think, frankly, this year, people have reached a point where -- and companies reached a point where they need to invest, they need to expand and they're going to have to move so they are. And so I view tariffs as certainly still perhaps a known, unknown, but I think people are mostly past that. The war is different and certainly the effect on fuel and global shipping routing is something new.

Got it. You briefly mentioned your yield focus here. So give us a sense of what your pricing conversations are like right now. Does the truck market tightness make it super easy for you to basically name your price or are shippers now super sensitive to shipping cost. And so it does -- like you have to be more reasonable about it. And also, what does $6 diesel mean for that? If you're fuel surcharge numbers already eye-popping, does that help or hurt with pushing base rate?

Yes. I think this is going to be a really boring answer, but it all goes back to what the value of the product you're offering is. With a high-quality service product, we're able to go in and demonstrate value to customers, and it's a pretty easy decision for them to come across the aisle, so to speak, and move intermodal where you don't have a good service product, it's a dam hard conversation no matter what the price fuel is because if they can't trust you, it's very difficult to make those kind of decisions. So that's why Jason and I and Brian have spent so much time focused on making sure we have the right resources in the right place so that we can have those conversations from a position of, what I'll call, confidence in a position where our customers believe us.

Okay. Got it. Just on the topic of service, which you referenced a few times, there was a little bit of pressure on service metrics coming out of the winter that got much better kind of early in the summer. Where do you see that kind of ending the summer and going in the fall potentially as volumes start to surge with this drug conversion?

Yes. I think you heard us talk in our second quarter earnings call about some of the issues we had during the second quarter. I think Brian and the ops team have done a fantastic job really even by mid- to end of July, we were seeing like on-time originations were up 20% from where we were in the second quarter. speed and depth well had improved. So I think performing really well there. And that's in the face of really pretty high sustained volumes, 140,000-ish, 145,000 a week. So we felt really good about that. I think going forward, the network looks good. I think we're poised to take on additional volume. We've got -- we're continuing always to make sure we've got resources in the right place, whether those are people, locomotives, that type of thing and making sure that we're continuing to build that pipeline to focus on growth to come. So I think we're in a really good place from a service and network perspective.

Got it. So just a follow-up there, kind of how do you see the current resource utilization kind of how much excess capacity do you think you have in the network in terms of volumes you can bring on before you start bringing researchers back on again?

Yes. I think from a T&E perspective, we've talked before the folks that are driving train and engine that is a relatively long period to get people on board. So what we want to do there is keep a pretty consistent pipeline going, right? We're filling attrition. We've got 85 different locations where we hire people. There are some that are more significant. We're making sure those are full. So I think it's really watching that and then seeing -- working closely with Ed's team to see where is that demand going to be, right, because it matters. We can't just easily take a person here and move them over to a different location, right? So they need to be in the right places. So we need to know where is the bond coming and what type of volume is it? Is it unit train volume grain or coal, or is it just manifest cars here and there, right, which is a lot easier to handle. So I don't think we're at the point where we've got a spool up disproportionately to the volume increases. But obviously, you get to a point where we do need to start adding some additional resources. But again, I think we're in a good place right now from a from a people and a locomotive perspective.

Got it. You guys have delivered a significant amount of productivity savings over the last couple of years, which honestly is a little bit surprising just given how much you took out during the PSR year. So you clearly have found more. Where do we stand there? And kind of what's the opportunity for '27?

Yes. So like you said, Ravi, we've harvested about $500 million, a little over $500 million in the last two years, productivity cost reductions. We're on track this year for another $150 million. I think the thing that's impressive here, it's really all structural, what we've done. It's not volume dependent. And in fact, the last couple of years, we haven't grown that much, but we've still been able to take these out. So lots of good things in our control there that we're working through. And I think we still have -- you still have runway there from a -- whether it's a locomotive modernizations fuel efficiency, terminal productivity, all things we're continuing to press on. And then you add volume absorption on top of that. And I think it's still a really powerful story. So I think we've got a good path moving forward on productivity as well.

Got it. I'll come to merger questions in a second and just how long-term focused you guys are at this point. But just given all of those moving parts, obviously, you spoke to headwinds on the OR side for 3Q and 4Q, but what are we thinking kind of you put all this together is that long-term sustainable OR level that you guys can target from [indiscernible]?

Yes. So I think when you think about OR, like you said, talked about kind of near term, our focus is really on safety, service, cost discipline and earning the trust of our customers, right? That is a winning model regardless of what's going on. We think that, that will really help to drive us on a long-term basis to an industry competitive operating ratio. So I don't know if Ed wants to comment on any kind of commercial things that we could bring in. But when I view it, I think two things that are really in our control. One is service, right? Safely delivering a reliable and consistent service product. That's in our control. There's always going to be hiccups, storms, other disruptions, things like that, but it's how quickly we respond to those and get things back on track. And that's what we've demonstrated here over the last couple of years now. So that consistent service product, that will drive growth. It also drives cost efficiency as well. So that's one thing. The second piece is, like we talked about, is on the productivity front, right? It's continuing to push on those things. Not everything in our cost structure we can control, talked about fuel price. But for the other things, we're doing a good job of controlling what we can control, continuing to push on productivity. So I really think those are two significant levers, both in our control that are going to help us to drive that operating ratio to a perspective of industry competitive. The last thing I'd add in there, the macro probably impacts the timing more than anything else, right? Obviously, if we have a strong recovery that's going to help improve margins more quickly. If we don't, it's really about execution and maintaining that core strategy.

Got it. So let's switch gears and talk about, obviously, the topic that we have dominated your Q&A so far, which is the merger. So congratulations to the STB obviously accepted the application, move the merger proceeding from [ Avance], and now is in the merit's phase. How should investors think of this development? And kind of what can we look forward to from here?

Yes. I think it's really, really good development procedurally as we move into this merit's phase. We're pleased to be in that phase of this process right now. I think about it kind of in three big pieces going forward. So you kind of have a comment period and request period. and you also have DoJ and DoT comments. Those are kind of like mid-November to early December time frame. Then you'll have our responses to this. kind of in the February time frame. And then sometime after March, you will go into the public hearing. So I kind of look at it in those three big chunks, and that's when I would expect to see big pieces of information coming out from there. So ultimately, the final timing is, of course, up to the STB. But I think just having the schedule out provides us a lot of visibility helps us from a planning perspective and really gives us a date to kind of drive towards forward on this path.

Got it. And obviously, we'll hear from Jim Mana tomorrow. But so far, how has the procedure gone versus your expectations at the point that we're in right now?

Yes. I think sure, we've all wanted it to go faster, right? But I think when you think about this, we kind of came out originally, and we were talking maybe 18 to 21 months or something like this, that would take. And I think at the end of the day, if this procedural schedule holds, it's not going to be too much longer than that. So not too far out of that. that total time period, again, there's been puts and takes in terms of when things were accepted and when we move to different phases. But all in, I think we're kind of, again, where maybe we thought we'd be on a conservative basis, but also right where we should be from getting near the merits of the deal now.

Got it. And from your side, I mean you've added several customer protections expanded committed gateway pricing, reciprocal switching protections and rate dispute resolution. Can you talk about kind of the process that drove you to offer those concessions? And kind of do you think that meets the threshold for what the STB is looking for?

Well, it's pretty simple. I think we're doing exactly what the STB wants to do, and that's listening to our customers, engage with them, be responsive to the stakeholders who are involved in this. And that's really where we came from when we made those additional changes. And so you think about doubling the amount of freight that's eligible, so to speak, for committed gateway pricing, adding unit train to that piece. Those are clear line of sight responses to what we were hearing from our customer base. You put together those changes with the other part of this, whether it's the service alternatives or the pricing pieces. And really and truly, I mean I'm biased, but I think it's a very compelling package when we think about offering a lot of value to the market.

Got it. And kind of speaking of agreements you reached, obviously, resin agreement with Canadian National that gives them access to certain 2 to 1 and 3 to 2 shipper facilities as well as some Norfolk Southern interest that have been transferred over to them. Should we expect additional agreements like this? Like do you think that was a one-off? Do you think that's kind of again, enough to kind of meet the threshold for the STB?

Now sounds really boring, but I'll go back to what I said a minute ago. I think we're doing exactly what the STB wants us to do and that is we're reaching out to other stakeholders, trying to find solutions that offer value, but at the same time, protect the value of this extraordinary opportunity that we have in front of us to deliver for our customers and for America. And I think it's strategically important that CN is going to be able to offer that additional access, so to speak, for those 3 to 2 and 2 to 1. They're going to help us in places like St. Louis and the terminal road and all that kind of stuff. And we'll see what else is out there. I would never foreclose opportunities that may help us solve problems for our customers and for the risk.

I would just add on that. I mean, I think it's a great development, right, in this process, but it's just one element of what we presented to the STB in terms of the value that this transaction brings on its own.

Got it. We briefly touched on earlier, the share shift that came immediately after the merger was announced. To your point, you start lapping that pretty soon. When do you think you guys can go back on offense and kind of start taking share back? And does that need the merger to be consummated before that happens? And kind of how do you think competitive dynamics might permanently change between the Class 1 railroads as a result of this transaction?

You're inferring that we were ever off office.

Well, Fair enough. Again, I think some things that happened that may have been shortly outside our control. So when can you go back there?

Yes. I think we're always on offense and defense. That's just -- that's the way of the world. It's a competitive landscape, and we're out there fighting every day for new business and to maintain what we have. The power of our network, that's our intermodal network, in particular. It is one of our superpowers, right? We service -- I think it's something like 100 million American consumers wake up within 50 miles of one of our Intermodal ramps. Some of them like up within 50 miles of like four of them. So we have a substantial place in the market in terms of the value that we can offer with that network. And I'm very confident as we move forward, merger, no merger as a stand-alone company, we're going to be able to deliver that exceptional value because of that network, and the way we execute on it.

Got it. That's super helpful. We have a few minutes left. I want to see if there are any questions from the audience.

Yes, one up here.

I remember in the past that NSE was relatively strong, especially in automotive, given the location and a lot of cars coming from Western Europe. How is tariffs impacting that trade? And how important it is to still today in your business? I remember in the past about 12% of sales, also given public information market margins in automotive are relatively high. So what did they do with your business? And where have we touched the bottom and where are we with that all?

At the risk of making a bold statement, I would say, I think tariffs have been an event that has occurred and is now in the past. I don't think it has necessarily ongoing influence on a lot of those markets like the auto markets. We're very lucky by virtue of geography and the effort of past generations of railroaders. We have a superb automotive network, not only for domestic manufacturing from the Detroit 3, but also from a lot of European manufacturers. So we are in, I think, a very good place. The country is actually in a pretty good place with regard to being able to compete globally, but also be able to deliver values in that network that we have. So tariffs are a thing, but honestly, I think it was maybe a onetime event.

Questions?

Just wondering with the regulatory process potentially extending well into 2027. Just wondering how you guys are ensuring that management and employees remain focused on stand-alone execution. And if there's any investments, commercial decisions or capital allocation actions that become more difficult while the transaction remains pending.

Yes, sure. I'll start on that. Standalone execution is our mandate, right? And I talked about our focus on safety, service, cost discipline and building trust with our customers. that's key, and we're delivering. We're executing on that strategy. If you look at record second quarter revenue, continued productivity that we're delivering, the list goes on, second quarter decent OR but 5% operating income growth. So I mean, I think we're doing a lot of great things from a stand-alone perspective. When you think about investments, we continue to invest in our people. And in our infrastructure. This year, call it, just rough numbers about we're going to spend about $2 billion in CapEx, and that's to continue to support the network from a safety and resilience perspective, a growth perspective and continuing to invest in technology. So I mean, no change there from our strategy. And those are things that are going to be important as a stand-alone company, but also as part of a combined entity going into in that merger from a strong perspective.

Any more questions? And [indiscernible], I did want to ask you about autonomous trucks because that's been a big topic of discussion for us all year at this conference as well. I believe it's gone up in kind of every meeting that people have had. How much time are you guys spending thinking about what that means for the industry? Obviously, truck conversion is a big part of the value created by this transaction. So yes, how much time I spending on it? Kind of what do you think that means for the transaction for the industry over time?

I'll answer first, and you can go into it. I don't know what it means for the transaction itself, but I would tell you, part of my mandate is to look out into the future and try to create a future that outcompetes where we are today, right? In many ways, I would say that autonomous trucking or trucking at large has done a pretty good job of moving the ball down the field. Railroads in general, we've got a fair number of headwinds to some of those more innovative pathways that perhaps truck companies have. I personally think that autonomous trucking probably reaches some sort of scale sort of maybe in the next 18 months. It's just Ed talk...

Okay. We would agree.

But it also means that we have to figure out how we do things differently and how we deliver additional value to our customers in a way that makes it more compelling than what they can find on the other side of the road, so to speak. That's our job. And technology has to be a part of that. That's just my opinion.

Yes. I would just add, not necessarily from an autonomous perspective, but just technology advancement. You talk about what we've been able to do here over a relatively short period of time, we've got 11 digital train inspection stations that we have across our network, kind of think about it like a large car wash, but the train is going through there at track speed, 40-plus miles an hour, taking like 1,000 pictures per car. And that's finding things that the human eye can't detect and definitely not at that speed, right? So we're constantly looking at everything that could cause a problem down the line. So allows us to fix it quickly, address it right away. At to end to that, it's good for us, good for our customers, keeps right on its way to destination. So I think there's things that we're definitely doing in the industry that super proud of that we've been able to do, even going back to locomotive modernizations. We've just done over 1,000 of those now. And that's been great for our fleet. So really trying to, like Ed said, stay on that front edge of what are the things we can do to advance technology.

I will say. And this is -- I'm reflecting on your question. Look, at the heart of this transaction, this merger is the idea that we want to become the most user-friendly, most customer-friendly pathway out there. That's very difficult to do when you have multiple railroads with their own strategies and how they're going to become more customer-friendly. And you can only touch part of your customers with your own strategy and they have to live with all these other strategies or maybe not on other parts of their network. So by presenting a combined company that can service the entire array of freight that's out there on a nationwide basis, particularly when I think about the platforms that we have developed, the investments that others have made, we clearly need that kind of innovation to successfully compete. And I think that's one of the value propositions behind this merger.

Great. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your thoughts. I hope to have you at Laguna next year or maybe not either way, you'll be fine. So thanks so much for being here.

Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation Q2 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, July 23, 2026. And I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results.

Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors Section along with a reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio. Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis.

Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Here in Atlanta with me are Brian Barr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer. Look, a lot has changed since our last call, most importantly, the sharp inflection in volumes. Initially catalyzed by the Iran conflict that bolstered our energy markets and that strength has now spread into other markets, including domestic intermodal and industrial products. With that backdrop, we delivered a strong second quarter with results that exceeded our own expectations starting with strong volume and revenue growth, culminating in 7% net income and EPS growth.

The results are thanks to the dedication of our railroaders and a special shout out to our commercial team who stayed close to our customers during this dynamic environment. As demand strengthened in several markets, our team continued to focus on operating safely while serving our customers. Absorbing the higher volumes coming out of the winter disruptions put pressure on the network, but we've addressed these issues head on. Our team has worked hard to execute with urgency and discipline.

We already drove acceleration of the network here in July, and we will continue to progress. Brian will give more detail on these actions in his remarks. Bottom line, I'm holding our team to a high standard. Our customers count on us to maintain consistent, reliable service, and as such, we have to be resilient, whether it's bouncing back from weather events or absorbing volume surges, we need to deliver the service our customers expect from Norfolk Southern.

And our priorities remain clear: safety, service, disciplined cost control and earning the trust of our customers. Those priorities guided our decisions throughout the quarter and will continue to guide the company moving forward.

Now before we move on, I'd like to touch on the recent appointment of Brian as our Chief Operating Officer. While he may be a new face to many of you, he's certainly not new to Norfolk Southern. Over the last 2 years, he's led our mechanical organization, where his team helped deliver industry-leading locomotive fleet reliability and he played an important role in optimizing network performance, while earning the trust and respect of our organization. He has had a long and successful history on the transportation side as well at our eastern peer, and he started his career at Conrail. So he knows our network well. It's another example of the leadership depth we have across the organization and our commitment to developing strong operators who are ready to lead.

In his new role, he's building on the progress he himself helped us deliver. Now leading the broader operations organization with a strong foundation and safety and a shared commitment to creating a faster, more reliable network while continuing to innovate and drive more productivity. So with that, let me turn it over to Brian to discuss our operational results in more detail.

Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. It's my privilege to be with you today. Before I begin, I want to recognize the men and women of Norfolk Southern. They worked through a challenging quarter, continued serving our customers and remain committed to operating safely. NS railroaders are the heartbeat of this network and their efforts continue to propel our results. Successful railroading demands doing the simple things exceptionally well. I have learned that throughout my career, including my time working directly for Hunter Harrison.

Planning and execution are built on discipline. Accountability and staying relentlessly focused on the operating plan. The reality is railroading is a grind doing the small things over and over again, very well. That is what delivers results. Those principles still apply today, which is why I'm spending as much time as possible in the field, leading from the front, not the top. Working with our teams, understanding challenges firsthand and driving the actions necessary to improve service and strengthen network performance.

This is not about changing our operating strategy, it's about continuously improving our results. The primary levers for improving service and productivity across the network are running the plan, aligning the resources with demand, improving terminal performance and eliminating unnecessary variability. We've got more work to do, and we know it.

Turning to Slide 5. To be the best-run railroad, you have to be the safest. Safety remains the foundation of Norfolk Southern. Our teams delivered another quarter of strong safety performance with continued improvements in FRA accident and personal injury rates. Let me be very clear, safety has no finish line. This is not about ratios, it's about our employees. No matter how strong our results are, we approach every incident with humility and discipline.

As you can see on the slide, the first half comparisons for our FRA personal injury index, accident rates and mainline accident rates are all improving. Specifically in the quarter, our personal injury index was down 16% year-over-year. I want to acknowledge my former department mechanical, for going 2 consecutive months injury-free, a significant step for an entire department operating in shops and yards across our entire network. Our accident rate was down approximately 25% in the quarter year-over-year, while our near-best-in-class mainline accident rate remained flat.

We're proud of the progress but we're not satisfied as we still have work to do. Strong safety performance drives strong operating performance, discipline, accountability and consistent execution. The 2 go hand-in-hand.

Turning to Slide 6. Demand remained strong throughout the quarter. At the same time recovering from several network disruptions while supporting that level of volume placed additional pressure on crew resources and created variability in portions of the network. We have a clear understanding of what we need to do to create real resilience and deliver on our strategy, improve originations, reduce terminal dwell, increase velocity, run the railroad to plan. That's where our attention is focused.

When we do those things consistently, velocity improves, the network becomes more fluid, and the railroad performs at a very high level. I'm highly confident in our team and many of the actions we have taken in these past 6 weeks are already starting to demonstrate tangible benefits. In the last month, on-time originations have increased 20%. Terminal performance is improving as we have balanced our resources, which is leading to a reduction in terminal dwell. And train velocity is rising as we are reducing recrews and getting the railroad back on plan. Our priority remains executing the fundamentals exceptionally well.

Turning to Slide 7. Operating safely and efficiently, optimizing asset utilization, driving cost discipline, delivering consistently for customers and developing our team of railroaders will drive our long-term success. We remain committed to at least $150 million in cost takeout during 2026, which will deliver at least $650 million in cumulative savings over the 3-year period, exceeding our original target.

One of the most powerful levers we have is velocity. When the railroad moves quickly and consistently, service improves and cost comes out of the system. Recrews decline, crew productivity increases, terminal congestion eases, asset utilization improves, locomotives cycle more efficiently and spend less time sitting in yards. The more efficiently, we move freight across the network the more value we create for our customers and shareholders. The opportunity in front of us is straightforward. Pairing disciplined execution with the strong commercial momentum Ed and his team continue to generate across the business. That combination is how we improve service, grow the franchise and create long-term value.

I am exceptionally confident in our team and the potential of this railroad. There is no shortage of talent, experience or commitment across our organization. We know where the opportunities are. We know what needs to improve, and we have the people and resolve to get it done. When we do those things consistently, the results will follow.

With that, I'll turn it over to Ed.

Thanks a lot, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Let's move to Slide #9. We can see that fuel surcharge was a major factor in the second quarter, helping to blunt some of the fuel expense pressures. Now if you look past these headline numbers, you'll see that even without fuel, we achieved record revenue in the quarter. Volume increased 4% year-over-year, driven by strength in several commodity markets that benefited from elevated global energy prices as well as very favorable trucking market dynamics that bolstered our intermodal business.

RPU less fuel was up 1% as steady pricing was partially offset by some high-level mix. Within merchandise, volume increased 2% and revenue less fuel achieved another record, increasing 4% from a year ago, driven by continued gains in energy demand in our chemicals markets. RPU less fuel grew 3% year-over-year, supported by price and mix. In our intermodal business, volumes increased 5%, and this reflected firm consumer demand, highway market conditions that increased demand for intermodal and recent business wins, particularly within our domestic segment.

So overall, Intermodal revenue less fuel increased substantially by 7% and RPU less fuel increased 1%, marking the beginning of a positive shift in intermodal pricing. Turning to coal. Volume increased 3% benefiting from the continued ramp-up of our new metallurgical coal export customer as well as incremental export thermal business opportunities, reflecting volatile global energy markets. RPU less fuel increased 1% due to favorable seaborne coal pricing, and this was partially offset by some negative mix within the commodity group.

On Slide 10, we highlight several dynamic factors that are influencing our market outlook. The war in Iran impacted many energy-related commodities in the second quarter. These impacts could carry forward for the duration of the conflict, bringing volume and revenue opportunities. Overall, we're positive on the growth potential across the markets that we serve. Now as you would expect, however, energy prices, the consumer and interest rates all remain wildcards and factors that we will be monitoring.

In merchandise, we have a subdued but positive outlook for vehicle production. Industrial activity has shown solid momentum with manufacturing continuing its expansion for the sixth consecutive month and we maintain a cautious but optimistic outlook despite volatility and a shifting economic landscape. Additionally, and specifically, we could continue to see near-term opportunities in markets like natural gas liquids, export plastics and crude oil.

Turning to our intermodal markets. The truck market has turned positive with dry van rates trending upward and capacity continues to tighten as demand is also firming. Demand has been supportive for our domestic and premium segments in the near term as new orders are rising and retail sales have shown some modest growth. This has been partially offset by tariff and trade uncertainty that's going to continue to weigh on international volumes.

Taken together, we have a bullish view of intermodal, an outlook which is only reinforced by elevated fuel prices that will continue to make truck conversion more attractive to our customers. Considering coal, we expect to see continued overall strength led by our export and metallurgical coal business. And while our outlook for utility coal remains positive due to growing electricity demand and a favorable regulatory backdrop, natural gas prices and growing renewable energy production does create some uncertainty for utilities heading into the second half.

Now let's look at Slide 11, where industrial development remains a key strategic priority for Norfolk Southern. Our project pipeline continues to gain momentum with a number of new manufacturing facilities and expansion projects that are expected to enter the design and construction phase in 2026 projected to be nearly double last year's level. And as you would expect, we're also projecting substantially more carload potential to materialize as a result across multiple commodity groups. All of this bodes well for the long-term value of our network and for the American economy.

To highlight just a few examples. SODECIA AAPICO joint venture will build a new manufacturing facility in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, to produce ladder frames for Scout Motors. Additionally, Virginia Transformer, the largest transformer manufacturer in North America will build a state-of-the-art power transformer plant in Muscle Shoals, Alabama to support growing demand in heavy manufacturing, mining, energy infrastructure, grid expansion and behind-the-meter power generation in the U.S.A.

And lastly, Silvi Materials is constructing a new cement terminal in Columbus, Ohio, Piedmont, South Carolina; Greensboro, North Carolina and in Charlotte, North Carolina to support increased construction demand. As always, and finally, we want to thank all of our customers for their continued partnership and business. The entire NS team is aligned around delivering the service that our customers need every day building trust as a vital partner in their supply chains.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Jason Zampi to review financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start on Slide 13 with a reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I'll speak to today. We incurred $51 million in merger-related expenses during the quarter, while total costs related to the Eastern Ohio incident were $15 million. Additionally, we incurred $6 million of restructuring costs. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was 65.5% and earnings per share was $3.52.

Moving to Slide 14, you'll find the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year. As expected, higher fuel prices were a significant driver of both the revenue and expense increases. Overall, the operating ratio increased 210 basis points versus last year, with fuel price headwinds driving an approximate 110 basis point increase. In addition, inflationary pressures drove another 190 basis point headwind compared to last year. That said, higher volumes and RPU in the quarter helped mitigate these expenses, leading to a 5% improvement in operating income.

Last quarter, we had highlighted our expectation to match normal operating ratio sequential seasonality of 200 basis points despite the known fuel pressures. The team did a great job capitalizing on the sustained volume trends in the quarter while managing our controllable costs to deliver a 320 basis point sequential improvement.

Taking a closer look at our expense profile for the quarter on Slide 15. Costs were up 15%, over 2/3 of which was driven by the substantial rise in fuel expense this quarter. In addition, inflationary pressures continued, notably as you see in comp and benefits, but also within purchased services and materials. Finally, volumetric and some network fluidity-related costs drove increases in overtime, rents and materials.

So to summarize our financial results on Slide 16, despite the cost headwinds we faced, higher fuel prices, inflationary pressures and volumetric expenses, we drove a 5% increase in operating income. Importantly, we also delivered a 7% increase in both net income and earnings per share in the quarter. We are pleased to see the continued strength in volumes, and we will continue to focus on opportunities to improve our service product, which will generate incremental revenue and drive cost efficiency. Mark, I'll turn it back over to you.

Okay. Thanks, Jason. All right. Closing on Slide 18. As we move into the second half of the year, our priorities remain clear. First, we will continue to focus on operating a safe and reliable railroad. As Brian said, safety is paramount. Our metrics are good relative to history, but we will never be satisfied or done seeking improvements. Second, we remain focused on disciplined execution, there's more work to do to fortify service, but we are making progress and are driving improvements across the network that you'll notice in the weekly data. The stronger-than-expected results we delivered this quarter reflect the hard work of our team, delivering continued productivity improvements and managing through a dynamic operating environment, all while positioning the company for long-term success.

Looking ahead, as Ed laid out, we remain optimistic about the demand environment. We are seeing encouraging trends across key markets, including domestic intermodal, chemicals and coal. And while there is uncertainty in the broader economy, we are well positioned to capitalize on profitable growth opportunities while continuing to improve operational performance.

Now regarding the financial guidance, our original OpEx guidance was $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion, which we are updating to account for the large swing in fuel estimated to be $400 million to $500 million of incremental expense compared to our review at the beginning of the year. So our new 2026 operating expense outlook is $8.8 billion to $8.9 billion. Now neutralizing for the fuel impact, our core operating costs are trending toward the higher end of the prior range due to a stronger volume outlook.

But overall, I am pleased with our team's cost performance in this dynamic and volatile environments. Our CapEx guidance of approximately $1.9 billion this year is unchanged. We are maintaining discipline while continuing to invest in the safety, reliability and capacity of our network. And finally, while we are fully focused on running the business and serving our customers every day, we continue to make progress on the proposed combination with Union Pacific. We are even more confident about the unique opportunity to strengthen America's supply chain delivering greater value for customers and communities with single-line frictionless service that will create benefits for all stakeholders.

You'll have seen our agreement with CN, which is a win-win-win scenario that further enhances competition in the freight rail space on top of the additional enhancement features that we will be presenting in the STB response here shortly. And with that, we'll open the call to questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] And your first question will be from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

Maybe I could start with a question just on sort of the pricing environment and the opportunity that maybe you guys can see. We tend to think about the sort of truck markets being a little bit more of an interplay with the rails in the Eastern part of the U.S. And obviously, you have a very robust intermodal franchise. So I guess as we think about the tightness we're seeing in the truck market, can you talk about how we might see that sort of transition into pricing opportunity for you, both on the intermodal side of the business, but also merchandise as well?

Thanks, Chris. Ed?

Thanks, Chris. Sure. It's a great question and one that we're dealing with every day here. It's really an encouraging freight environment right now, not only for truck freight and competing with the highway, but also, in general, for freight in the U.S. I'll look at a few key indicators and all of them have improved themselves since the beginning of the year when we really laid out our plan. And that includes GDP as well as manufacturing and housing start, shockingly, which was also improved in terms of outlook.

And when I think about manufacturing, we've seen 6 months of sequential improvement now in the ISM Manufacturing Index, and that's the best post-COVID performance that we've seen. So I think that's very encouraging for the U.S. economy. You couple that with what I just talked about regarding industrial development, what we're seeing with our pipeline moving. And I feel like that, that also bodes very well.

Thinking of truck and specifically, you look at outbound tender rejections, right, up at around 15% now on average, I think, across all truck types across the U.S. That is a multiyear high in and of itself.

And then we look at flatbed rejections, which are a subset of that, that's about 40% right now, which is about as high as I've ever seen it. That means construction really. And so I think that bodes well in general. And then, of course, we've talked about fuel as have other people. That too sets the stage for our intermodal business, but also merchandise and both franchises to compete very ably. So we are very optimistic for the outlook going forward, both in terms of volume opportunity, but also the opportunity to price in several key markets.

All right. Thanks, Chris. Next question.

Next question will be from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

So it sounds like you're confident about making progress on the service side. I'm just wondering, do you feel like you need to add a lot of headcount and other resources in order to get that service improvement. And so maybe just along those lines, like I don't know, Jason, if you have any thoughts about like how to think about the just near-term cost and margin trends into Q3 and Q4?

Yes. I'd start first regarding headcount. I think overall system-wide, we're probably at an area where we can absorb volume, but we do have pockets where we are a little bit tight on T&E. So that's -- those are the areas where we're focusing on. So we probably have a little bit more hiring to do there. But again, we have to continue to hire to replace attrition because we do run at around 8% attrition a year out of our T&E ranks. So we're always going to be hiring system-wide, but we've got a handful of core locations that we probably need to augment, and that's where we're putting our more immediate focus. Brian, I don't know if you have any other comments on that.

Yes. So going through the operations here, I mean, where we're at in the second quarter and transitioning to the third quarter now. We're seeing improvements in originations. We're up 20% right now from where we were in the second quarter. We're seeing improvements in the velocity, the car miles per day. So as we go through the operation, that's really generating some efficiencies for us where there won't be a massive add to resources other than the natural attrition that occurs in the second half of this year going into 2027.

But there doesn't need to be an ad. We're really running the plan, refining our processes getting back to basic fundamental railroading of on-time, over-the-road to help us pick up speed.

You got to remember, Scott, when you slow a network down, which is what happened to us for a couple of reasons, it requires more resources to dig back out. So the quicker we can accelerate the network, the fewer additional incremental resources you actually need to add. It actually frees up resources on the human side and on the locomotive side. So these are encouraging trends that Brian has driven here in the past 1.5 months or so to actually spool the network up a little bit. So we're in less deficit than we otherwise would be if we were still stuck in that, call it, 18-mile an hour range, 19 mile an hour range. Jason, is there something you want to add.

Yes. I think, Scott, the last part of your question, just kind of talking about what we should think about from margins here on out. Obviously, like we talked, we're pleased where we finished the second quarter outperforming both historical seasonality and our own expectations. But what I would say, if you think about the third quarter, typical seasonality on average, call it, flat to 50 basis points worse as you move from second quarter to third quarter. But 2 things I'd call out here specifically.

First, we've talked about that fuel price headwind that we've been experiencing here in the second quarter and that's switching to a tailwind in the third quarter. That's both true from a year-over-year and a sequential perspective. So we will have that benefit sequentially going from second to third. However, we do have some almost about a 4% wage increase that's going into effect that -- excuse me, did go into effect in July here. So that will temper a little bit of that tailwind. So you put that all together, I think we're at a place where we believe we can beat that normal sequential seasonality. And I'd put that up to 100 basis points better than normal.

Okay. Thanks a lot, Scott. Next question.

From Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan Chase.

Maybe just a follow-up for Ed. Looking at the RPU ex fuel, not a whole lot of movement so far in the quarter. So maybe you can give us a sense in terms of how the cadence progresses with some of these renewals, maybe some of the tighter truck market environment starting to flow through the numbers. And I guess when you try to balance that out with volume. A little while ago, we heard about the flexible freights and trying to get freight off the highway and keep it. Maybe you can give us an update in terms of how that's progressing because clearly, the market's got a lot stronger since I think the last time you laid out that framework?

Yes, for sure, and appreciate the question. I think as I said earlier, it's a very optimistic freight market out there. And I think we have the right tools in place to really be able to capitalize from that and deliver value for our customers. So when I think about price right now on the highway, you're hearing it from some of our customers and probably some of your other channel checks, that it's a really good environment.

Spot price has been putting pressure upward now for several months. And that's exactly what it takes to drive that contract price, which is longer term up as well. I typically say you need 3 to 6 months of upward pressure to start moving that line up or downward pressure to move it down. We're solidly in a place where there's upward pressure being applied now on the highway, and that will flow through over time into our long-term contracts as well as our short-term contracts with our intermodal customers and with others.

So we see -- and I think I've talked to you guys a lot over the past 4 years, about a coiled spring and all that stuff. Well, we're right here ready to uncoil now. And I think as the year progresses and we move into '27, a lot of the work that we've done over the past 3 or 4 years to really restructure our contracts to make us more responsive to that pressure that I was talking about from the spot price into the contract price is going to manifest itself.

All right. Thanks a lot, Brian. Next question, please.

Jason Seidl at TD Cowen.

Mark and team, I hope you guys are well. How should we think about the intermodal conversions that are coming off the highway? In other words, when you guys take this business back to the...

Jason, I think we're doing really well today. Ed, why don't you respond to that?

For sure. It's really our customers on the intermodal side who are out there selling our service and theirs to the BCOs, the beneficial owners. Typically, what we would see as an annual bid cycle. Sometimes there's a few that are multiyear and some that are what we call mini bids, which might last for a shorter period of time. But typically, we think an annual pulse is for those customer commitments and as I do that, what I'm really thinking about is how do we deliver value alongside our partners on the intermodal side so that that 1-year commitment maybe turns into a generational commitment because the service is good and the value is outstanding. And that's...

[Audio Gap]

And the demand environment and the weekly volumes certainly seem to be pretty consistent and consistently improving. We've reached kind of the anniversary date of the announced merger, and I know there was a lot of share shift or share loss, honestly, in the early stages of that. Has that ended at this point? And do you feel like you're at a point now where you start winning some of that business back, even given the uncertainty and the timing of the review process?

Yes. Actually, great question. We did have some losses right out of the gate there, which we're going to be lapping here in September. So I would say that the bulk of what those losses were, were probably experienced between September and November, September, December. And frankly, I think we've had a pretty good run since then. I'm not sure that we're going to recapture those specific things that were lost, but we are growing in other areas that are really helping to offset and compensate for it. But we'll largely be lapping that here in the fourth quarter. But Ed, do you want to add anything to that?

Sure. When you look and when you talk to our customers about where they're growing and where you've heard from them about where they're growing on their recent calls. The action is mostly in the East, which is really good because our network is superbly positioned to take advantage of that. And I think that's why you're seeing this share conversion and the opportunity that's there, specifically on our local network alongside our transcontinental connections that's really driving a lot of that growth. So I'm confident, just like Mark is that over time, we're going to get that business back because I think our network delivers the most value. In the meantime, we're continuing to accumulate share from the highway from other places.

Thanks, Jonathan. Next question.

From David Vernon at Bernstein.

So Ed, I wanted to get your perspective on sort of what you're seeing in the activity book for you guys from an industrial perspective. I think a lot of our investors are keenly focused on whether we're starting to see some broadening of industrial activity outside of AI and data center build-outs. So I'd love to get your perspective on that.

And if you could also share kind of what the underlying sort of volume growth rate is in intermodal ex some of the declines that you had from some of the merger actions before the volume numbers there are coming in above 3, probably stronger than I would have thought they would have been at the beginning of the year, just given what we're talking about with the competitive share losses. So any commentary there would be helpful.

Sure. Thanks for the question. If you look back to that slide we presented that showed the acceleration, I think that really tells the story right there. We have maintained a robust pipeline over the past couple of years of economic activity in terms of industrial development. And what we try to do is watch as that activity moves its way through the pipeline from being a prospective investment to one that we believe is actually turning into freight.

And so we've seen that pipeline accelerate over the past 6 months. I would probably argue that it was decelerating for the past year before that, mostly because of trade uncertainty, tariff uncertainty, a lot of economic uncertainty, which was probably impeding customers from making those investments. But probably through a combination and this is conjecture on my part, through a combination of they've waited so long, they can't wait anymore plus getting signals from the market that it is a safe investment despite all the uncertainty, we've seen a real acceleration in that pipeline, which we think is encouraging, of course, both for our network and for the American economy.

And I think this goes beyond data centers. It really is new manufacturing capacity coming online, either in the form of expansions for our existing facilities or new facilities actually being located there. So we feel very good about that, and we look forward to seeing that continue.

On the intermodal side, we think there's still plenty of room to run in terms of opportunity and our ability to absorb that volume over time here. We have a good intermodal network. Brian has made some real strides in terms of delivering that value and reaccelerating the network, and we're being aggressive in terms of making sure that our customers, as they go out and sell that freight have a real solid place to land.

And I think with regard to how much headwind were the share losses to our intermodal, we say it's about 3 points. That's right, in the quarter, right? So if not for those share losses, we would have had 3 points more growth.

100%.

Thank you. Appreciate it, David. Next question, please.

From Ravi Shanker at Morgan Stanley.

This is Madison on for Ravi. I was just wondering if in the results, you guys saw any pull forward of import volumes and if you're expecting any bounce in volumes after the August tariff deadline?

Very good question. I would say, I would argue that we probably have seen a little bit of pull forward throughout the beginning portions of this year, the first half. It's probably too early for me to determine whether or not we're seeing any additional activity predicated off new tariff implementations or regimens coming online.

Thanks for that question. Appreciate it, Madison. Next question, please.

Stephanie Moore at Jefferies.

Maybe touching on a couple of questions that were asked, but maybe asked a little bit differently. You talk a lot about the maybe resurgence and industrial activity. And to your point, some of those major projects getting to a more accelerating phase. That being said, given there is a lot of noise and conversations obviously going on around what the network will look like post-merger, if the merger goes through, I can imagine it creates maybe some uncertainty for your customers. So to the extent that you've obviously seen really good progress across a lot of your industrial customers, maybe talk a little bit about the response from others that maybe are taking a little bit of a pause if they are, just given maybe some of the uncertainty deal related?

Thanks, Stephanie. Look, I think, honestly, the merger is giving a lot of the potential customers here some hope. And so it's definitely not slowing things down. If anything, it's accelerating things because they know that they're going to need maybe 18 to 24 months before they're live, so they want to be ready to take advantage of the new network. But Ed, why don't you add more color, please?

No, I agree. And it's been talked about plenty of times before, but I'll say it one last time, and that is removing interchange friction, removing the impediments to a transcontinental network here is good thing for customers. And I think it's a remarkably good thing for new customers who are investing today in a network that we believe is going to be even better and more powerful going forward.

It actually has the opposite effect, Stephanie. It's not paralyzing decision making. If anything, it's accelerating decision making. So thanks for the question. Next one, operator.

Bascome Majors at Stephens.

Brian, I wanted to see if you could go a little more into the sequential shift in the customer-facing side of the metrics, particularly where the merch plan compliance dropped about 10 points or so quarter-over-quarter, but you did talk about directionally, a lot of the service metrics improving both client-facing and the ones that we can see into the end of the quarter now?

Yes, absolutely. So the merch plan compliance there year-over-year, we were down 12.8%, 13.9% sequentially. Here right now in the third quarter, we're a 6.62% improvement currently from where we finished the second quarter. We have a lot of activity around the car movement, and I spoke of the improvement in the originations and the velocity. But just to give you a perspective, we went out and whiteboarded a terminal there in Chattanooga in the month of June.

Going through that. We took 150 cars a day out of Chattanooga that were coming off interchange and from other locations on the network, we were able to take that handling out at Chattanooga. So we weren't processing the cars there, moving them up the network, process them a second time. With removing that handling, we were able to serve those cars deeper into the network, speed them up. That helped Chattanooga pick up their originations. It improved their terminal dwell. And it helps us provide the resources for the entire south as Chattanooga and Birmingham, where we've done similar things occur, which then carries the traffic to the north.

So we're finding activity like that all across the network, and opportunity is ripe for those events as we're creating blocks in even areas in the north at Bellevue and in Elkhart, where generating those blocks because we're running on time because we're processing more rapidly than we were in the first half of the year is allowing us to create capacity. Those blocks are allowing us to even remove train sets from the network, putting resources, both crew and power back into the network and help us provide service to the customer, reducing their time en route. So we're seeing very positive effects here with the speed, with the origination and some of the internal measurements, but it's all really in an effort to help process cars for the customer and be more reliable.

And I think what you're seeing here is really a team that's getting into the details and getting out there in the field and being very, very tactical, trying to really accelerate the network and free up some resources. So a lot of the moves that Brian's talking about lessens the dependence on human resources. So that's another way to free up T&E to actually be able to respond to some of the volume that we've had. So that growth, coupled with these actions, we've actually seen an improvement in our train speed now here in the past few weeks. So we're feeling very encouraged about where we are operationally. So thanks, Bascome. Appreciate it. Next question, please.

From Richa Harnain at Deutsche Bank.

Yes, I just wanted to see if you could talk about the competitive dynamic a little bit more. Your competitor -- primary competitor in the East has introduced some new product improvements, be it their new partnerships and Howard Street Tunnel beginning to sell that. Just curious if that's affecting the competitive environment at all and how that overall environment is basically evolving. I know you kind of touched on it. You're seeing opportunities to grow in other areas. But yes, just addressing those specific points.

Yes. I think both competitors in the East are doing good things for their customers. Ultimately, we're both driving to try to take freight off the highway and we're having success, and this is a really strong market backdrop to do that. So we applaud them for their successes and we're really proud of ours. Ed, do you want to add anything?

No, I agree. I'm really proud of ours, too.

All right. Thanks a lot, Richa. Appreciate it. Next question, please.

Brandon Oglenski at Barclays.

This is Eric Morgan on for Brandon. I wanted to just come back to pricing in intermodal. Can you just maybe speak at a high level to the extent to which you normally participate in the truckload cycle. I'm not sure if you have like a rule of thumb where truckload contract rates are up X, you might see your yields move Y, a certain number of months or quarters later. And relatedly, just it sounds like you're incrementally constructive on domestic relative to international and intermodal. Can you just speak to how that might translate to mix in that line from here?

I think you got it right in terms of -- we are very constructive on the domestic side, maybe a bit less so on a sequential basis for the international side. Look, we have spent years working on reframing our contracts and our relationships with customers so that we can be responsive to that market dynamic of rising or falling truck prices to number one, stay competitive; and number two, deliver as much value as we can to shareholders with the service that we're offering.

We've taken that from a lag that's probably signed in many months or sometime maybe a year down to a couple of quarters, a couple, three quarters. And I'm really rounding off there. But it's a shorter cycle than it was previously, and we are very encouraged by what we're seeing both in the headlines on the highway, but also what we're seeing in our own day-to-day pricing opportunities.

Question is from Ari Rosa at Citigroup.

So this is one of the more upbeat calls I've heard from you guys in a while. I guess, understandably given the macro backdrop. But talk about the downside risk. Like how do you think about what -- the kind of the sustainability of this macro environment, do higher fuel prices pose any risk or any concern to some of the industrial customers? And then broadening that out for a long time, we've talked about the ability for NS to get back into that kind of low 60s OR. If we see this macro environment sustain itself, do you think that's something that's feasible as we think about kind of the trajectory over the next 2 to 3 years?

I think from a macro perspective, we all feel good now, but there's -- we're cautiously optimistic and the cautious part is due to higher fuel prices, sustained higher fuel prices eventually hurt the consumer, which can diminish demand and start working against us in the future. So that is the risk. I think we all felt like a short-term bump in fuel is something that the economy can handle and it has handled thus far. How long this persists and the long-term impact of it is the question mark, and I think that's probably the big risk. Let's face it.

We've had basically 4 years that we've navigated through a freight recession. And we've been waiting for this to break. This is the longest freight recession in history. So we've been ready to come out of this, I remember quite well when we were at 18, 24 months, the recovery was imminent, and it never actually came. So it does feel like this confluence of higher fuel prices and also some of the enforcement on commercial driver licenses and drug and alcohol testing, all of these things maybe have had an impact finally on the trucking side of things, where we're coming out of this in a much more rail competitive environment.

But we have to keep our eyes on what happens long term if fuel stays high for long. Maybe if we stay under $100 a barrel, we can handle it. But if it goes to $110, $120 for any prolonged period of time, maybe it becomes more problematic. I don't know where those thresholds are but that's where we feel we have probably the bigger risk. Did I miss anything, Ed?

No, you nailed it. I think we see a good demand environment, improving the command environment and the supply side that has been constrained on the highway for all those reasons that you talked about. And I think you're absolutely right to be cautious about fuel price and how long it sustains itself with those higher prices.

Yes. So hopefully, that gives you the answer you're looking for, Ari. And look, that same 4 years, we've been dealing with a freight recession, which has basically blunted our top line completely from a volume perspective. We've also had to absorb very high inflation, right? And that's a real hard combination that's had an impact on the overall P&L and profitability. So can we now enjoy a couple of few years, a real strong top line where we keep in check the cost line.

That is going to be the path toward really improving margins over the long term. I don't think the inflation goes away, quite honestly, because we're locked in with these union agreements that are fairly generous but we have to control all the other aspects in our P&L on the cost side, while we try to manage the volume growth that we expect if things turn like we think they will, and better RPU, hopefully not offset by mix like we've also had to deal with in the past several years. So there is a path there. There is a path there if everything goes right, and we manage well.

Thank you, Ari. So look, I think at the end of the day, we're going to wrap the call up here, and I want to thank everybody for listening in. Again, we're executing in a very dynamic environment, thanks to the discipline of the team. I'm really excited about the work that Brian and his team are doing to already improve our network so we can handle more and more volume. That service is improving, and we've got momentum. So I feel good about that.

We haven't taken our eye off the ball at all with regard to productivity. Productivity and service and safety, they all must move together. Safety, we're really proud of our results. We are doing well and looking ahead, we're just -- we're cautiously optimistic as we've just said. So thanks again to our railroaders and thanks again to our customers and all of our other partners out there. We'll see you on the road. Take care.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.

All right. Afternoon, everyone. We're going to get going with the next session. So we've got transports the rest of the day. By the way, I'm Scott Group, the transport and airline analyst here at Wolfe.

So for our next session, we've got Norfolk Southern. I know it says Jason Zampi, CFO, to my far left; but also Mark George, CEO from the company, is here as well.

So Jason, Mark, thank you, guys, for being here.

Glad to be here, Scott. Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

We're going to jump right into questions. I've got a few that I want to get to. And then if you have additional questions, raise your hand.

So I think -- I guess we'll start on the merger. Let's get an update. You guys resubmit -- you and UP resubmitted the application late April. I guess we should expect to hear from the Board probably end of next week, if they deem the application complete. Maybe just take a minute or 2, where are we in the process? What in your mind were the key enhancements you guys made to the application? And any sort of expectations that you have for next week?

Yes. So where we are in the process is kind of like you laid out, we had resubmitted the application, like you mentioned. I think we expect to hear next week -- I mean, the deadline would be technically the 29th, but it could be before that, that we learn what the STB does, which is we expect a full acceptance. And then there's a whole procedural schedule that they follow with hearings and then environmental reviews. And then that gets you -- that gets them to the point of final decision, where they have 90 days after they close the docket to publish their final decision.

So when you add it all together, we've said publicly first half of 2027, I think, let's be real, this is not going to happen in the first quarter of 2027. So it's sometime in the latter part of the first half, which means probably the summer months, that we learn. It could be May, it could be June. But ultimately, it's up to the STB how long they take.

The good news is that when we get acceptance of the application, the STB is going to publish their schedule. So we'll get a sense of how long this is going to take to play out. So we can stop speculating at that point and we'll have something to work off of.

Okay. Obviously, a lot of...

You asked about completeness?

Yes.

We think this is really complete. We think this is more fortified than the original application. And let me explain why. Not only did we answer the 3 things that the STB wanted. We responded to those fully and, we believe, in full satisfaction of their request. But we chose deliberately to almost redo the math using traffic data that was provided by the railroads. So we're the first merger application who's ever taken the full data set from all the railroads to project the future, as opposed to the sample data, which is the way everyone has done applications in the past and the way we did it initially, to project the impacts.

And that's a big deal. That's a big deal. Because the good news is it kind of validated where we were coming out. It actually -- we actually have more, we think, more conversion doing the math that way. We maybe lost a little bit of the merchandise conversion, but actually got more intermodal conversions in the second submission. But the data is irrefutable now.

And that took a little bit longer. I mean we had to run all of this data through, just like we did the first time, through all of our modeling. So it added a little bit more time to the resubmission, which is why it took us until April. But we feel as though we're taking away any potential argument that the other roads might say about the, "Well, I know this is sample data used, but this isn't really accurate data." This is their data. This is the full data set.

So we feel as though it's a much stronger application, more defendable with the data. And we went into even more articulation of the public benefits and enhanced competition. Go ahead.

A lot of comments from all the other rails, right? Maybe none of them surprising, that they're saying it's incomplete still. But anything -- any of the public comments from rails or other stakeholders that give you some pause of, hey, maybe we missed this or maybe we missed that? And then I'm sure you love hypotheticals, but in the hypothetical world where we learn next week they've deemed, for the second time, it's incomplete, like where do we go from there? Does that sort of put an end to this or not?

No, I'm not going to get into hypotheticals. We think they're going to accept it. I don't know if they ask for more information. But if for some reason that scenario played out, we'll deal with it at that point. But -- what was the first part of the question?

Any of the comments concerning you in any way or surprising you?

No. We responded to that. We think that people are somewhat grasping at straws right now. They're reopening things, and arguments they made the first time, that the STB ignored essentially, but they're opening it up again. So we're not too concerned nor are we surprised. I think the other roads that are in opposition to this would love to just stretch this out and drag it along. So they'll use whatever tactic they can.

Right. And I was just saying because last May, we were sort of -- at our conference, we were dancing around the M&A conversation a little bit without really able to get into specifics. So at our conference at least, maybe first opportunity for you to talk about it from this standpoint, right? There are, at its core, 2 key requirements for a merger. One is it has to be in the public interest. And two, now under the new rules, it has to enhance competition. So maybe just if you could just touch on those 2 pieces. Why is it in the public interest? How does this enhance competition?

Yes. That's -- it's easy. I mean on the public interest side, I mean what we're doing is massive in terms of trying to convert freight from the highway back onto the railroad, where it belongs, frankly. Heavy fleet belongs on the rail infrastructure.

There's reasons over decades after the interstate highway system was built out why freight has migrated. It's just convenience. But as passenger vehicles have filled up the highways, it's becoming less and less comfortable and more and more risky.

So what we do is if we can take, like we projected, 3.8 billion miles of truck traffic, off of the highway system, we're talking about reducing injuries -- I'm sorry, reducing accidents by about 1,750 per year on the highway system. We're talking about reducing fatalities on the highway system by about 65 million -- 65 per year. So that's a public interest.

I think there's also an affordability angle here, right? The truck is more expensive than the rail network. So we are going to save consumers money by shifting traffic back on to the highways (sic) [ rail network ]. It will be cheaper, it will be more convenient as well. So the public interest stuff that we've laid out is absolutely real.

And I think in terms of enhancing competition, as soon as we announced this, you saw how the other railroads started to work together. So the competition is already enhanced. In fact, we've lost business because they've decided to compete differently. I mean let's face it, this industry, the rail industry, has been a little bit lazy, and a little bit -- since I've joined 6 years ago, I kind of had the realization, "Oh my God, I joined a utility." There wasn't a lot of spryness to try to compete aggressively and to perform at levels that your customers expect. So we're seeing a spryness now in the industry just by the fact that we've announced this merger. So I think frankly, this is -- the enhanced competition is taking many forms.

Another thing, just by coming together, we're going to now offer single-line rail service compared to interline. That is huge. And when you look at the facts, where single-line rail service exists versus interline, customers are -- there's a 44% higher market share for rail on the merchandise side, okay? That's 144% on the intermodal side. When there's single-line traffic compared to interline, the share's 144% larger than single-line -- than interline alone.

So the competition benefits are significant. And ultimately, at the end of the day, we're trying to do this for customers. And I know people have been out there saying customers didn't ask for this, this is all about Wall Street. You guys didn't even know I was having these conversations. This wasn't for you. This is for the customers because of those stats I just laid out. The customers are demanding better transport service. They've been moving away from rail to the highway. So the only way to reverse that trend and to give customers what they want is to get together and work on single-line options for them.

So just to follow up, like, obviously, people can disagree. I think the public interest case you're making seems pretty clear, right? I think on the enhancing competition relative to truck, I think pretty clear. I think where there's probably more debate is on the enhancing rail-to-rail competition, right? And I understand you made your point, hey, look, you've seen competitive response from everyone else. And that's sort of, by definition, we're enhancing competition.

Do you have a sense, is the Board looking at broad competition, including truck competition, when we have to enhance competition? Or is the Board going to sort of look more singularly at intramodal rail-to-rail competition, with that enhanced competition? Is it clear to you which way they are going to look at this?

I think when you go back to 2000, I know there's a lot of people that are saying, no, no, no, the Board intended back then, 25 years ago, that this was intramodal, that this is really just focused on enhanced competition within the rail space, okay? The reality is the Board, whatever they were thinking at the time, they deliberately decided not to define it, okay? And I think it was the wisdom of the Board back then to not define it, to know that when something comes up, it gives them the flexibility, depending upon the market dynamics at the time, to interpret it appropriately.

So here we are 25 years later, 25 years later, the markets have changed dramatically. Rail has been pummeled by truck. And now this Board gets to decide how to define enhanced competition. And I think that they're smart. I think that they're wise. I think that they're going to be progressive-looking enough to see that we have to look at the broader ecosystem, and it's not just intramodal.

That said, even within rail, we believe we are enhancing competition because, again, look at the responses, they think they can compete, and God bless them, with partnerships. They're taking share from us, rail-to-rail share movements. We're going to try to compete with single-line, and there's rail-to-rail conversion from single-line. So absolutely. And then the committed gateway pricing is another enhanced competition feature. So we believe we're responding to it both ways.

Okay. That all makes sense. And I remember reading in the Board ruling about the CPKC merger, "Our job is not to protect one rail relative to another," right? So maybe other rails complaining, maybe that doesn't matter so much. I think what -- maybe what shippers have to say, what unions, other stakeholders have to say, so maybe just touch on that. What are you hearing from those other stakeholders positively? What are the negatives you hear from other stakeholders outside of the other rails?

Yes. I think we do a lot of talking with customers, we do a lot of talking with other constituents as well. I would tell you, let's break it down. You talked to our intermodal partners and those shippers, the beneficial cargo owners, they're all excited. They see the benefit for this. They see the fact that they can go into single-line versus interline. So it's all really good.

I think when you get down to some of the merchandise shippers, they're hearing the noise from the others, and they want to talk about that with us. And then when we have the dialogue and we open our eyes to what the prospects are, that whether it's a grain shipper in Ohio who now sees, "Hey, I can move uninterrupted into Texas on single-line service? That's a new market that I don't serve today." Or someone in the Midwest who wants to ship feed to chickens in the Southeast that would have had to go through watersheds so, therefore, they don't even bother competing in the Southeast. Or steel customers who now we can tell them, you can serve markets in the West on single-line service. Their eyes open up, and they understand, and they see the potential, and they get really excited.

So it's a slog. We have to go through and explain it one by one, which we're doing. And when we do, there's a lot of enthusiasm about it.

Yes. Makes sense. And then as part of the merger process, I think the Board needs to consider downstream effects. One thing that just wasn't clear to me, when you guys laid out like the synergy targets, is there an assumption -- inherent assumption that this is the only merger? Or is there an assumption that there's 2? And if there are 2, like how would that change the merger synergy assumptions that you guys have laid out?

Yes. I think the rails have -- the other rails have basically kind of made their case, right? We kind of know what their intent is. And there's one in particular, who's not publicly traded, so therefore, they're going to behave in a certain -- they've come out and said that they're going to behave in a certain way, which is to not do a merger.

So I think you could probably assume that what we've gone out there with is assuming that there is no follow-on. But otherwise, I can't really speculate. They're all on the record individually. If they were all publicly traded, I might have my own prognostication. But they're not.

Right.

And I think too, just to put a finer point, the revenue synergies are really -- we feel confident with or without a follow-on merger that those are attainable. You think about the portion of that that's coming from the truck market and how large that truck market is compared to the rail, so I mean there's plenty of business there for conversion.

And not offering up specific concessions, is that a realistic outcome in your mind, Mark?

What do you mean? We've offered up all sorts of concessions.

You're talking about the gateway pricing and all that.

Yes. I mean the gateway pricing, we've offered jobs-for-life guarantees, open gateways. So we've put concessions out there. And we'll see how this whole process evolves over the next year or so. But it's not like we haven't put concessions out there.

Okay. Fair. So maybe -- well, unless -- if there are other merger questions, we can get you involved. But maybe let's turn to just the business today. Maybe, Jason, I'll let you take a few here.

Just volumes up about 3% quarter-to-date. What's doing better than you thought? What, if anything, is worse than you thought? Just give a little bit of a demand update.

Yes, sure. So first quarter, I would say, was kind of bumpy from a volume perspective, right? January started off pretty good. February was kind of really impacted by a lot of the winter weather storms. And then March really picked up. And we've sustained that momentum here into April and May.

So we're around 140,000 units a week, and this is now I think the 11th week in a row that we've been at that level. So we're seeing some pretty good volume momentum there. And that's translating to the 3% you mentioned, that quarter-to-date perspective.

I think a couple of areas that are probably better than we expected, I would put chemicals in that bucket. Really kind of those energy markets, whether it's NGLs, frac sand, petroleum products. Those are coming in better than we thought. And then I think coal is better than where we expected it to be.

The third one, and there's puts and takes in all of these, but the third is domestic intermodal. International is still pretty weak, but domestic has come in better than we were expecting.

So I think there's a lot of positive things out there. I think as a whole, we're -- I'd kind of categorize it as cautiously optimistic. Things that we thought might have been better, if you look at the housing market, I think we were hoping maybe for some rate cuts and for the housing market to kind of take off, that has a big impact on our business. We're obviously not seeing that, and that's probably not going to change here in the near future. So it's something to watch out there.

And then I think the last piece is just the -- we know what happens with fuel prices. Do we reach a point that at some point that starts degrading demand out there? So we're not there yet, but that's something we're keeping an eye on. So definitely some puts and takes, but there's some favorable things we're seeing in the business for sure.

Okay. And that strength in domestic intermodal is in the face of losing some of the share that we did from the announcement of the merger. So it's a pretty good story. And I think we've been all tracking, everybody in this room, a little bit of what's going on with IPI and some of these manufacturing leading indices, and maybe that is starting to show up a little bit on the production and manufacturing side. So we're cautiously optimistic, as Jason said.

And then you just mentioned the domestic intermodal strength, and it seems to me, if I just take a step back, we've got this environment right now of rising truck rates, high fuel, right, rail service levels generally pretty stable. This feels like it should be a very good backdrop for certainly intermodal, but maybe the broad sort of rail market. Are we -- do you think we're starting to see evidence of this in terms of share gain from truck? We've been talking about it for so long and it feels like we haven't had it.

What is it, a 4-year freight recession, unprecedented in history, may be coming to an end? Whether that's a function of the evacuation of excess supply of trucks finally or if it's temporary because of what's happened with fuel pricing, hard to say. We are in an unusual spot with this war and with what's happened with fuel prices.

Right now, it feels good. If the war ends in the next couple of weeks and fuel prices start going back down over the next couple of few months, does that dynamic still persist or does it reverse back to where it was? Hard to say.

I think the key there, just to add on to what Mark said there, is really, can you retain those customers? And that's through, you pointed out service, right? And that's kind of the linchpin of that whole thing. So however, these shippers are attracted to us in the first place, we're ready to serve it. But it's -- that good service levels that will maintain it and keep them on rail for the longer term.

Jason, just a quick near-term margin question for you. You guys talked about 200 basis point sequential margin improvement Q1 to Q2. How are we trending relative to that given the volumes? Could it be even better? I don't know. Your thoughts.

Yes. I'd say we talk about that historical seasonality, 200 basis points. First quarter has some higher costs from comp and ben and incentive comp, payroll taxes, things like that. And then normally, we see -- we do see an uptick in volume moving from first to second quarter. So that is happening. That's good to see.

And I think we've got a lot of productivity initiatives underway that are really -- have taken hold. Over $500 million in the last 2 years and another $150 million planned this year. So that's all baked into that.

The real wildcard here is fuel. And I talked on the quarter-end call, I think the price we're paying at the pump in March was up over 40%. In April, it was up 80% year-over-year. So that is a really significant headwind. We don't see that coming down anytime soon here at least, we're halfway through the quarter now. So that is a significant headwind. Even with all that, we still feel good about the 200 basis points of OR improvement.

This wouldn't do anything to change like the cosmetic impact of fuel, but I asked this to one of the other rails on earnings, I'll ask too, like I don't really understand why rails still have 2-month lags on fuel surcharges. Truckers are 1 week, FedEx, UPS are 1 week. Why are we still doing 2-month lags?

Well, with intermodal, we're on like a 2-week lag, right? So I think it's really the other commodity groups. So that's a legacy. A lot of those are individually negotiated. And it tends to average out at about 2 months, right?

That's right.

But you want to talk about that?

Yes. No, you're absolutely right. 60% of our fuel surcharge revenue is based off our intermodal volumes. And like Mark said, that's only -- that's a 2-week lag. And that's really due to the fact that it is competitive with trucking, and we're matching what they're seeing there from a price perspective so the customer can really choose which mode makes the most sense given all those economics.

But the rest of our business, merchandise and coal, that's more on a 2-month lag. It's really based on what the customer needs. And at this point, we think that that's sufficient to address the market and the lead time for a lot of these customers.

At the end of the day, it all evens out, right?

Sure. Right. Jason, if fuel sort of stays here, what's the OR headwind to the year from fuel? It's just cosmetic OR headwind; the earnings impact is immaterial.

Right. So I think the way we're thinking about it is it was a pretty significant OR headwind in first quarter, will continue to be a headwind in second quarter. But as we move through third and fourth, again, assuming that fuel stays at this -- based on this forward curve, should switch to a tailwind in the third and fourth quarter. But overall, a bit of a headwind for full year.

And so when you add it all up, do you -- is there a path to full year margin improvement, you think, in 2026?

Yes. I think a couple of things to factor in here when we think about what we're facing this year. So we've talked about pretty significant inflation this year. We've got wage rates going up another 3.75% starting July 1, on the back of 4% last year. So we got significant wage inflation. Health and welfare rates are really high, insurance premiums, all those things. We had some pretty significant land sales last year that we're not planning on this year. So those are some headwinds we've got going against us.

On the good side, we've got productivity. I talked about what we've already achieved. We've got another $150 million of productivity. And I'd classify that as structural productivity, not volume dependent. So those are all good.

Now on top of that, you throw in fuel. And I think that, again, if you use that term, it's a big wild card and we'll see how that plays out. But I think what we're super focused on, and you've heard us talk about safety, service and this cost discipline, and we're really kind of showing how we're achieving that. The cost envelope that we've laid out, we feel like we are going to control what we can control.

Fuel price is something that it's a bit out of our hands, but what we can control from a fuel perspective is fuel efficiency. And really proud of what the team, the ops team has been able to do there, 5% improvement last year on top of 3% the year before that, hit a record in first quarter. So really building on that momentum from a fuel efficiency perspective, and there's no better time to have it at fuel prices like this. So long story, lots of puts and takes, but we see a path there.

Okay, great. There's one question in the back. Maybe if you can -- while the mic's going there, I'll ask one more. I want to talk about pricing. If I look in Q1, and I get there's mix involved here, but yields ex fuel up 1% in total, merchandise yields ex fuel flat. I feel like for so long, like pricing was sort of the constant in this industry. And I really feel like since the pandemic, the amount -- price relative to cost has been underwhelming to me in rail.

Like, can we get back to a sort of 3% to 4% type or maybe even more, I don't know, but can we get back to that kind of yields growth again? What needs to happen? I don't know, just it feels like it's been the missing -- the volumes have been -- are positive. Labor productivity you're talking about has been good. Like it feels like price has been sort of the missing link, the missing piece.

Yes. I mean when you go back to pandemic, Scott, you're also talking about going back to where the catalyst of where the truck recession started as well. And you really have to break our business down. Intermodal pricing is highly competitive with truck. So that is the governor ultimately on intermodal price, is what's happening in the truck market.

So that was going down for a while, and then it was -- it's flatlined for maybe the past year, year plus. But there hasn't been any traction. Now finally, we're starting to see that come up. And I think you would acknowledge you saw a little bit of that show up in the fourth quarter and now again a little bit more in the first quarter. So you got to look at that.

Then you got to look at the coal business, which those are index driven. And we, during the pandemic, or leading up to and during the pandemic, we had very significant gross up in energy prices that we all enjoyed. And since then, met coal pricing in particular has been coming down at a steady decline. That's just math. And okay, we think we've probably lapped that now and we've stabilized and maybe there's a path up on coal pricing, especially, not just on the export side, but even on the utility side. In time, with all those utility coal demand, as contracts reprice, there's probably upside there.

So then that leaves you with the balance, which is merchandise. That's the one thing that hasn't changed, to your point, we continue to give very good core pricing in merchandise. There's been no change in that trend line going back a decade. We get solid core pricing in our entire merchandise book of business. It gets dwarfed sometimes in certain years by mix within merchandise.

So that's why when you look at RPU changes, even within merchandise, it may look flat, but it's because core pricing might have been up 3% but mix ate it all the way. So I think the thesis looking forward is a little bit better on the overall book. Mix is always a player. And at some time, mix is going to be helpful as well. Like right now, I think we're seeing some favorable mix.

So I don't like to talk about price in one thing. You really got to break it down into those 3 components and then recognize, even within a commodity group, mix can play a role.

But it sounds -- so intermodal has been -- truck rate's going up, that clearly should be good for intermodal, right? Coal has bottomed and maybe hopefully you're going to start to see a little bit of upside from here. We'll have to see what the indexes are. And merchandise, you're saying you're getting good price and there's mix fluctuations, maybe it was a headwind, but maybe going forward it's a positive.

Maybe. Right.

There was one in the back, and we're getting on time, but please.

Yes. I was just going to ask if there's like a rule of thumb or level that you think about with diesel prices or with fuel surcharges where you -- like the phone starts really ringing off the hook. Like if there's like, I don't know, just sort of a disaggregation line where intermodal really cuts towards your product?

I would kind of say when oil is at $80 a barrel, $85 a barrel, you're in a sweet spot, where I think usually the highway prices are a little bit more supportive of getting back on to rail, yet not so high where it's starting to destruct demand for the consumers. When you start with oil getting closer to $100 a barrel, obviously, it's an even better compare for us highway versus rail, but you have to get worried about what's the broader impact on the consumer.

So that's why where we are today, we're in a little bit of a shaky spot with oil where it is. If it stays here for a prolonged period of time, we have to be worried about demand destruction. We like where it is in terms of intermodal conversion. But long term, we have to keep our eyes out. So I kind of say that $80 to $90 a barrel range has kind of been the sweet spot historically.

All right. I think we do have to wrap it up. Mark, Jason, thanks so much. This was great.

Thank you.

Good morning. It's my pleasure to welcome Norfolk Southern to the conference today. Thank you guys for being here. I'm Fitz Middleton. I'm on the BofA specialist sales team. I look at industrials. Given the pending transaction, I'll be sitting in and hosting the Q&A instead of Ken Hoexter this year.

BofA has the privilege of welcoming Norfolk Southern to the conference for the 22nd year out of the 25 years that Ken has hosted the event. Pleased to have Jason Zampi, CFO; Michael Barr, VP, Treasurer and IR, are both here for their second time; and Luke Nichols IR is here for the fourth time. Here we go. We appreciate the partnership and your participation in the conference over the years.

So Jason, let me turn it over to you maybe for an update on some of the key takeaways you want us to learn from today.

Yes. Thanks for having us here. As you mentioned, we've got a long and great history with Bank of America and coming to this conference. So we're pleased to be here again this year. I'd say we've really got a situation here where we're working very well with our customers to help them grow. And we're obviously right in the middle of a very transformative merger to unlock additional value. So it's an exciting time for us as a company.

I think 3 key takeaways, I would say, is first, we're executing on the plan we've laid out. So that's really focused on safety, service and cost discipline. And you saw that play out during the first quarter. We had, I'd say, kind of mixed demand environment in the first quarter. We had some challenges operationally due to weather and some other things. But it's how we performed during those things. And it's -- it really shows our ability to, again, to execute on that plan. So I think very strong execution there, whether it be safety, service and obviously, costs. So happy with that.

I think the second thing, obviously, is the merger and where we stand on that. So we've resubmitted our application. We think we have a materially stronger application with the STB addressed all of the concerns out there. And we're anxious to get them looking through to the merits of this and feel like the point of this all along throughout this application process has been to have a fact-based, data-driven approach, and we feel like we've done that. So we think we're in a really good place with the application.

And then third, I think just from a value creation standpoint, it's kind of what we call our operating flywheel with safety service and again, costs. So we -- you have to have a really good service product and that earns us the ability to grow. You take safety and reliability, and that enhances the trust and confidence that our customers and regulators have with us. And then on top of that, you add in productivity. And that really just generates this kind of self-reinforcing flywheel that we're seeing. So again, executing on the plan, making strong progress on the merger and then that operational flywheel is what really drives kind of long-term value creation.

Great. Maybe if we follow up and talk about the deal, and the recent refiling with the Service Transportation Board of the merger application with UNP. Can you talk about some of the changes versus the first application, particularly some of the CapEx down shifts, maybe decreasing of the revenue synergy target, thoughts on any of the more obvious changes that were in there?

Yes, sure. So obviously, the big change was implementing the 3 key areas that the STB called out. So that was forward-looking market share data, the TRRA ownership, railroad there in St. Louis, as well as some of the merger appendices. So we feel like we've addressed all of those. And another piece, though, is we've now used 100% of traffic data from Class I railroads. So that's kind of above and beyond what normally happens in these things. And when we put in the initial application, we had some sample data in there. Now we have 100% of the traffic data.

So what that resulted in is some changes, as you might imagine in traffic flows, the diversion model shows maybe a little bit more on the intermodal growth side, a little bit less on the carload side. So the combination of that is really what impacted the revenue synergy side. And then on the CapEx side, again from -- when you look at where that traffic is going to be flowing, you see that you have different needs from an infrastructure perspective. And so maybe a little bit less CapEx spending on things like sidings and stuff like that. But all in, even going from that, that sample of data to the 100% data set, it really did not change the overall thesis for the merger, and in fact, just reinforced what we knew to be true.

Great. And then one of the things that you guys kept the same and committed to was the gateway pricing commitments as they were. Can you talk about some of the benefits of the CGP and why it should be viewed as enough to get the merger through?

Sure. So at its core, the committed gateway pricing is really -- it extends the enhanced benefits to local interline lanes, right? So you take BNSF or CSX, and it allows them the ability to offer an end-to-end rate to a customer. And that obviously increases optionality for the customers and the ease of doing business. So that's a great outcome here. What I would say, too, there's a whole host of pricing and rate mechanisms that exist today. This is incremental to that. So this is additive to what currently exists.

And then I think the other benefit from this is it's kind of aligned with the STB themes and policies. It's a practical solution on the front end versus after the fact, try to remedy some potential issues. So we think that those are all -- you put all that together, it's a pretty powerful provision that we have in the merger agreement here. But what I'd say is also the committed gateway pricing is just one aspect of how we view the benefits from this transaction. It's really about providing better service, better route options for our customers, really ease of doing business with this combined coast-to-coast railroad.

So those are what the real values are and being able to unlock this watershed market that we've talked about. And all of those things are really what enhances optionality and competitiveness for our customers.

Same topic. You and Jim Vena have both talked directly about no need for concessions of any major scale, given the commitments that you're making and that this is an end-to-end merger. What do you think the pushback is to that? And why are you guys confident that no major concessions after all the discussions you've had to do?

Yes, sure. I mean I think it's understandable. You see all the -- maybe the pushback and noise from some of our competitors out there, not unexpected even before we filed the application, there was positions people were taking out there. So again, not unexpected. I think what we're really excited about is moving to this next phase where the STB can focus on the merits of the deal. And we can really get into looking at that, again, reviewing the data, the fact-based set that's on the record here and moving past some of the noise that's out there.

But again, from a concession perspective, we think that this deal on its own provides a ton of value, enhances competition is in the public interest. And that's kind of where we came out from a concession perspective.

Great. If we kind of talk about the system and trends that you guys are seeing, I think volumes quarter-to-date are trending up about 2.8%, that kind of trails CSX at [ 4.6% ]. Is this indication of some share loss, but still positive carloads. Is it a good run rate number for the quarter? How would that lead you to adjust above breakeven volume for the year? Any thoughts there?

Yes. So if you think about first quarter, we were down a little bit from a volume perspective, but it was really lumpy, I would say. So January, we started off pretty strong from a volume perspective. February had a lot of winter weather and you saw volume kind of crater during that period and then a pretty significant rebound in March, and we're seeing that saw that really through April here.

So we're kind of in that 140,000 carloads per week range. I think we've been there now 9 or 10 weeks in a row. So really strong performance on the volume side. And again, speaking to kind of the resiliency of the railroad, we're able to handle that. So I think we're in really good shape there. We kind of see that probably continuing for the remainder of the quarter, and we'll see where the rest of the year shakes out.

Great. And you guys have noticed some enhanced competitive environment, given the merger announcement will have an adverse impact on volumes in the short and maybe medium term. Is that quantifiable at this point?

Yes. So we put that right around 1% of our total 2026 revenue. So we started to see that last year. It's primarily within our -- obviously, our domestic intermodal business, but we kind of quantify it in that 1% range. I will say we've seen -- outside of that, we have seen some pretty strong performance in our domestic intermodal franchise that we're really pleased with here and coming out of the first quarter and into April. So international remains weak, but pretty good progress on the domestic side.

Awesome. And then kind of from an economic backdrop, you guys have talked about that improving something like 8 of 9 commodity areas have had green circles or kind of half green. Where do you think the economy is in that backdrop?

Yes. Maybe not surprisingly, that we take a lot of time thinking about the colors of those circles. So -- but I would say where we are right now is probably cautiously optimistic. I think it's still a little bit mixed bag out there. But I think we're starting to feel -- for sure, feeling better than I did a handful of months ago. If you look at a couple of things. I mean, I think from what you're seeing from an energy price perspective, we think there's some opportunities for modal shift, probably not surprising to anybody, we've seen that in prior cycles when fuel prices become elevated. We see those modal shifts, and we're ready to handle that.

I think the second thing is utility coal, has really been an outperformer for us running well ahead of where we expected. Utility coal was up from a tonnage perspective, over 25% in the first quarter and attribute that to the energy demand that exists out there. So I think 2 bright spots for us there. We're looking at all the same economic indicators, as you guys are, I think 2 things for us to watch out for is, one, what's the break point for the consumer. The fuel prices hit a magnitude and a duration of that, that impacts consumer spending. I mean, the consumer has been very resilient. So we'll see how that shakes out, but that's something to watch.

And then our business is obviously highly tied to the housing market. And unfortunately, we don't see a big turnaround there in the near future. But with what's happening with rates, but definitely something we're looking out for them.

Makes sense. And then if we think kind of about spending, so I think you've set adjusted OpEx to be in the range of $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion for the year?

Right.

Could you just walk us through some of the highs and lows within that target? Is it holding employees flat? Do you need to add back with carload growth, kind of how do you think about cost per employee, fuel exposure, any lag benefits? Is kind of what are the puts and takes within that range?

Sure. So if you think about it from a year-over-year perspective, we kind of talked about this at year-end, but the $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion is really informed by a couple of things. One, we've got some pretty significant inflation coming into this year, more in the 4% range, which is higher than maybe you think in the 2% to 3%. But that's wage inflation, health and welfare benefits, insurance premiums, things like that. So that's a significant headwind for us. The other thing we're experiencing on the cost side, again, just year-over-year compares fewer land sales than we had last year.

Fortunately, we've got a lot of productivity initiatives in the hopper. We're targeting another $150 million in productivity savings, this year, and that's on the back of $500 million over the last 2 years. So that's kind of how we got to that $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion. You take those 3 things and then you kind of slide that based on what we think volume is going to be. Now the uncertainty in the kind of wildcard that's presented itself, obviously, is fuel. And we'll see how that shakes out, but very, very significant increase in our fuel price. If you think about kind of our price at the gallon that's -- excuse me, price we pay at the pump, that's up 45% in March, and it was up another 80% in April year-over-year. So very significant increases there.

So that's something we're watching. I think when we get to the end of the second quarter and report earnings, we'll be able to provide a little bit better range and where we think that's going to come out. Sorry, just thinking about some of the other components. So I think from a headcount perspective, we're down about 1% in the first quarter from where we finished 2025. I think that's a pretty good run rate for the rest of the year, kind of staying flat from that point. We're hiring for attrition in some of our key areas and making sure we have a good conductor trainee pipeline, but kind of holding that flat.

And I think the last part of the question there, just cost per employee. We think about that in the $38,000 per quarter range. So that's as puts and takes, first quarter is usually higher. Moving to the second half of the year, you've got wage inflation that takes effect July 1, but we've got some productivity initiatives. So I think that $38,000 is a good range to think about.

Great. And then maybe we think a little bit about the quarterly cadence. I think historically, you guys improved operating ratio about 250 bps from 1Q to 2Q. So you did 68.7% in Q1, kind of what would lead to underperformance or outperformance versus a normal target? And would it be a fuel lag benefit weather in 1Q -- just kind of what are your thoughts on that?

Yes. Yes, sure. So we think about historical sequential OR improvement from first quarter to second quarter, more in the 200 basis point range. And again, it depends what period of time you look at and everything, but kind of a recent history, we're thinking about 200 basis points. And we flagged that we will achieve that or are on track to achieve that going from first quarter to second quarter this year. So you always have weather in first quarter, you always have step-ups in incentive comp and things like that, and this year is no different.

But what I will say is, even with those fuel headwinds that I talked about, we still feel like we can hit that 200 basis point improvement. So that's a pretty big deal, and we're able to do that through the productivity initiatives that we have in place.

Right. And then on those, I think you've delivered $30 million in productivity in Q1 of this year and reiterated the $150 million plus of efficiencies for '26, which is on top of $500 million over the last 2 years. Kind of thoughts on how much of that remaining cost opportunity is structural? How much is volume dependent? How should we think about that?

Yes. I think we're really proud of what we've accomplished over the last 2 years, like you said, over $500 million of productivity savings. But I would tell you, it's really the initiatives that we have in place are really structural versus volume dependent, and you saw that in 2025. So we had flat volume basically in 2025 yet, we still achieved over $200 million that year, and this year is no different. So the $150 million in productivity initiatives that we have in place this year really. And you think about labor productivity, not just T&E, but on the mechanical and engineering side, fuel efficiency and then the work we're doing in purchase services, materials and on the G&A side as well. So really kind of agnostic to the volume profile. Now that volume comes through. We've got capacity to move it should have good incrementals.

And so then as you think about how that productivity compounds and kind of matures with PSR 2.0. How do you think about NS's long-term operating ratio potential maybe on a stand-alone basis and then a combined basis, if you can talk about both of them?

Yes, sure. So I think the PSR journey is never done, right? And it's something that we're continuing to focus on, and I laid out kind of focusing on safety, service and productivity. And those things together will generate growth and cost savings, and that will improve your operating ratio. Now I will say the focus right now is truly on getting the merger across the finish line here, and that's what our investors have clearly signaled that is important to them. So that is our focus.

And I think when you think about the combined entity from an operating ratio perspective, I mean, we've laid out significant revenue synergies from this combined entity. You asked earlier a couple of small tweaks to those estimates, but really strong revenue growth. And that's what this merger is about, it's about growth. And on top of that, there's $1 billion in cost synergies as well as we combine these 2 entities and gain more efficiency. So I think all in, you put that together, it's a pretty powerful for financial benefit but also an operating ratio story as well.

Right. And then if we think about kind of volume and carload growth lately, chemicals have been robust, I think, kind of up single digits. Is that sustainable? Do you need an industrial turnaround? Is there new partnerships kind of -- is this a U.S. versus the rest of the world when it comes to pet-chems? How do you think about those volumes?

Yes. So you're right, Chemicals was a kind of bright spot for us in the first quarter within our merchandise business. We're really seeing that growth in kind of energy-related markets. So sand, frac sand, NGLs, petroleum products, things like that. And those have really picked up since the conflict in Iran have started. So we'll see how that plays out. But I think just as the impacts of those higher energy prices flow through the global economy, those will probably be sustained for us.

I think overall, though, just taking a step back, putting the macro side, what makes growth sustainable is really a strong service product and a reliable service product that we can provide to our customers. And so we're doing -- making good progress there, and we feel like that will allow us to gain share in any macro background. The other thing that I'd point out, just kind of in this merchandise space, when you think about our industrial development pipeline, have a really strong pipeline. But in 2025, you really saw that kind of stagnate from a standpoint of starting projects.

So there are a lot of things in the hopper, but people kind of sitting on the sidelines standpoint of starting projects. In 2026, kind of towards the end of '25 and now into '26, we're seeing a lot of those projects actually start. And so that's a really good sign for us. And something we're pleased about, and those -- that pipeline will provide a lot of volume growth for us moving into the future.

Curious your thoughts on coal. We get asked this question a lot at -- it's kind of up single digits in 1Q. I think trending double digits in 2Q, kind of how do you think about the drivers of this? And how should we -- is it pushing out retirements? Is this growth increasing sustainable? Do you think it should flip to declines later in '26 domestic versus export. And then kind of same on pricing. How do we think about revenue per carload sequentially and through the year?

Yes. So I'd say I think it's easier to kind of break out the components. I think like I talked about earlier from a utility coal perspective, up significantly in the first quarter. We're seeing that continue here into April. And it's really energy demand from whether it's AI or just kind of what's happening from an inventory rebuild perspective. So I expect that to continue on. We are hearing from some of our customers that their plants are staying open longer than planned. And so that's a good sign there.

I think on the export side, it's a little bit more mixed. We saw that kind of in first quarter flat. Flat performance overall year-over-year. So we're kind of watching the export side as well. But I think really good strong progress on the utility side. I will say anyone that's followed us, you've seen pull can be pretty volatile quarter-to-quarter. So I don't want to call it for the full year, but at least for second quarter, things are looking pretty strong.

From an RPU perspective, I'd look at it, we've seen now 4 to 5 quarters in a row of kind of sequential degradation in price. And that's really the utility and export benchmarks. But what I think we're finally seeing is some stability there. So I'm not ready to call kind of a steep inflection point there, but I think we found some stability. And that's a good side for us as well.

Great. And then you mentioned intermodal in the beginning. Can we just talk on that one for a little bit. So there's increased competitive environment, but there's also elevated fuel prices. Kind of are you seeing any of the secular growth opportunities return in intermodal, and kind of how do you think about competition, whether it's some of the stuff going on in Baltimore and I-95 traffic? And kind of maybe some of the Meridian Big B traffic. What do you think about Intermodal?

Yes. So again, I think intermodal is kind of tale of 2 cities, if you will, on the domestic even with those competitive pressures that we talked about, I think the domestic market is really performing well, and we see potential upside from some modal conversion due to higher fuel prices, and we're seeing that. We're hearing that from customers. On the international side, still a depressed market and really, I think, more of a trade tariff kind of impact there. See that probably continuing. But just as a reminder, we kind of started to see that last year in the July -- June to July timeframe. So back half of this year, you'll see some easier comps on the international side.

I think from a competitive standpoint, our approach is, right. We want to provide the best service product that's out there. I also think our advantage, we have a great intermodal franchise. Fantastic routes, really hitting a lot of the key markets. And it's really capitalizing on that. So that's kind of how we think about it from a competitive perspective.

Great. Does anyone in the room have a question? Okay. I'll keep going.

I think last week, you guys did 145,000 carloads. Peak, I think, is 147,000, kind of what's capacity look like? What are you built to handle? How do you think about it?

Yes. I mean we've, in the past, have moved well in excess of that 147,000. I think what's important for us is sustaining a level over time, like I talked about first quarter, it was kind of lumpy from a volume perspective, that's tough to manage through, right? It's easier when it's obviously more stable. So from a capacity perspective and when you think about that in different fronts, whether it's people having conductors and engineers out there, whether it's infrastructure, whether it's locomotives and equipment, I think we're good on all fronts. Like I said, we're continuing to hire in key markets to balance that attrition to make sure we're able to serve growth.

From an infrastructure perspective, we've done a lot of work over the last several years, specifically a lot down in kind of our 3D corridor down in Alabama, we're now reaping the benefits of those things. And from an equipment perspective, we've got -- we still have locomotives and certain freight cars and storage. So we're kind of -- we're poised for that growth. So the capacity is there to move quite a bit more. And again, like I mentioned, that's all comes through its strong incrementals.

Great. Maybe a little bit on pricing. It's probably the biggest theme we get asked about across all of industrials over the last 2 months. Average revenue per carload sequentially kind of considering fuel increases and mix. How should we think about it up sequentially for 2Q and 3Q? Is that an okay framework?

Yes. So again, maybe, let me separate this a little bit. First, on the fuel side, a good chunk of our business, merchandise and coal is on a 2-month lag from a fuel perspective. So the prices that you saw in kind of March and April are what come through in May and June. So those elevated prices. Now intermodal is more real-timish on a 2-week basis. So I think just if you looked at fuel, I think you'll see an uptick there from an RPU perspective.

Now if you strip out fuel and just think about core pricing, maybe, again, splitting this into different components. From a merchandise perspective, we've done really well from a pricing to the service products out there and are getting, I would say, kind of inflation plus type pricing. So really proud of what we've done there on a core price perspective. Intermodal and coal kind of based on more underlying benchmarks, if you will. So intermodal, kind of more tied to the truck market. But what we're seeing there is maybe some uptick there finally after 4 plus years of rate recession. So hopefully, we see that come back a little bit.

And then I mentioned on the coal RPU side, maybe not a quick recovery, but at least maybe past the bottom and now a little bit more stability from a price perspective. So it kind of helps me to think about it with fuel, without fuel and then amongst those 3 categories.

Helpful. And then maybe a little bit on metrics like velocity and dwell. Maybe a little shy versus last year's numbers. Does that indicate anything? Is there a cost story there? How should we look at that?

Yes. I think, again, we talked a little bit about the weather we had in February. We obviously have weather every year. Last year, we talked about we had, I don't know, 17, 18 named storms that hit us, but I think there were more discrete impacts. The storms that hit us in February are really broad-based and impact our entire network. So -- we kind of had that as the first hit, if you will. As we were coming out of that, we actually had a derailment in a pretty key corridor for us in Pennsylvania. And while fortunately, no injuries and the damage related to that was not that significant from a cost perspective, it did kind of delay things on that corridor.

And so trying to come back from the storms with that on the back of that caused some of the degradation that you call out kind of in speed and dwell. So I'm not expecting any significant impact to costs. There'll be things like you'll see maybe some increase over time in some recrew expense that we have, but to get that back on track to where we need it to be, but no like sustained structural increase in costs.

Great. And then if we focus on CapEx maybe for one, you've targeted $1.9 billion. I think it's down 14% year-over-year. Then there's also maybe a new locomotive order and some refurbs, can you talk about those decisions? And is the right spending level as a percentage of revenue, 16%?

Yes. So like you said, we're at $1.9 billion -- around $1.9 billion for this year. A significant chunk of what we do from a CapEx perspective is really focused on the safety and reliability of the network. So like I said, a very large piece. We put in 500 miles of rail last year, 2 million crossties. We're going to do the same this year, right? It's -- we have to do that every year, and it's important for the safety and reliability of the network. So those things don't change. The way we've been able to bring down the capital spend a little bit is through 2 things.

One, like I mentioned earlier, we're able to now kind of reap the benefits from some of the growth projects that we've had in the past. We don't have the need for as many of those this year. And two, when the network running really well and the kind of operations flywheel that I talked about, you've got better asset utilization and higher velocity, you just don't need as many locomotives and freight cars and that type of thing. So that's kind of how we've got to that $1.9 billion envelope.

From a locomotive perspective, I just mentioned not needing as many locomotives. But what we're doing with the DC to AC conversion refurbs that you call them, we are not adding to the fleet. We're just replacing kind of maintaining that same locomotive count and able to get rid of older, less efficient locomotives. So the modernizations that we've done really very fuel-efficient, highly reliable, more attractive effort, and they're less expensive than buying a brand-new locomotive. So really good story for us there on that front. And again, it's about having a more reliable fleet versus adding to the fleet.

Okay. Great. Helpful. We have a couple of minutes left, maybe close it out with more on the pending transaction. Can you just remind us on the process with the STB from here? I think 30 days to decide if the application is complete and then 250 days for hearings comments, environmental reviews, 90 days for ruling that pushes us to mid '27. Is that a right timeline? And any pushback to that?

Yes. I think obviously, the focus right now is getting this application approved through the process. I think from a longer timeline perspective, the STB has been pretty clear about -- they've got rules in place, and they're going to follow those rules. We saw that very clearly with the first application that we put in and hitting the deadlines that they laid out there. So this application has gone in. They offered people to respond to the application that's happened. And now the combined NS UP response will go back in today to those comments. And hopefully, by the end of the month, we'll know here one way or the other on the acceptance of the application.

I think the good thing is when the application is accepted, what we'll get is a definitive timeline. Right. again, that the STB has kind of laid out that they will commit to follow. And I think that's important for a lot of different stakeholders, most importantly, our employees to kind of know kind of what to expect over the next half. So I think kind of that first half of the year is a good target, but we'll see kind of when we get this final timeline, how it exactly looks.

Great. And then maybe lastly, how should we think about any of some of the public pushback or comments that are out there whether it's from peers or labor kind of -- how would you guide us to think about that?

Yes. I think on the labor front, you see probably 2 camps there. We've got some folks that are maybe not yet supporting the merger and other unions that have that see the value and see what we're doing. So different schools of thoughts there. I think you've got some coalitions that have come together to speak out against this again, not unexpected. And -- and it's all of these voices out there. We obviously listen to all these things and take them seriously.

But at the end of the day, what's important is for the STB to look at the merger application. And I think when they see the fact-based, data-driven approach that we have out on the record and the benefits that this brings, it's clear that this is really -- it's good for customers and good for the country. So we feel pretty confident about the benefits of this.

Great. Appreciate it. Anyone in the room before we wrap up? Okay. Great.

Yes. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much. I appreciate you guys being here.

Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Also note that this call is being recorded on Friday, April 24, 2026. And I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important.

Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section, along with our reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio.

Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis.

Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. With me today are John Orr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer.

Before we get into details, I wanted to start by recognizing our Thoroughbred team. Working together, we successfully navigated another challenging winter with weather events that affected most of our territory, putting real pressure on the network and our volumes in the month of February. But as conditions normalized and our network recovered, we were able to capture the available volume in March and exited the quarter with solid momentum, all while staying focused on what matters most: operating the railroad safely.

Our safety performance continues to excel, which remains our most important work. We're seeing the benefits of the investments we've made in technology, training and standard processes from digital inspection tools to more rigorous operating standards. These efforts are helping us detect and address potential issues earlier and keep our employees, customers and communities we serve safe.

Our FRA reportable accident rate is down yet again, thanks to the systems we have and our leadership. I'm proud of how our people stay disciplined and committed through all the weather challenges and other distractions.

On costs, we remained disciplined. Total adjusted expenses were up just 1% year-over-year despite inflationary pressures, storm costs and sharply higher fuel prices. We earn new business, expanded key relationships and saw customer confidence grow across multiple sectors, reflecting improved execution and trust in our capabilities. We're seeing strength and encouraging results across multiple parts of the business, reflecting focused investments and improved coordination across our teams. Ed will walk through some of our wins and the underlying volume drivers in more detail.

Lastly, stepping back to the broader environment, the macro remains a mix of puts and takes. Customers continue to manage dynamic and shifting supply chains. But our message is simple. Norfolk Southern is well positioned to grow alongside of them. The strength of our network combined with the flexibility we built into our cost structure gives us confidence to navigate whatever the market brings. And with that, I'll turn it over to John to get into the operational details. John?

Good morning, everyone, and thanks, Mark. Throughout 2025, our Norfolk Southern team was focused on growing our team's capabilities, skills and speak up willingness, creating the environment to deeply embed our safety and service maturity and capabilities. Now for the full quarter behind us in 2026, we are realizing measurable gains from those successive efforts. We are advancing and layering progressive PSR 2.0 structural changes to build more resilience and efficiencies across the railway, develop generational railway leaders and provide our customers with the best possible service plan. As Mark noted, extreme and network-wide winter weather in the first quarter tested the network. I'm very proud of the entire enterprise in the way we anticipated, prepared and responded to deliver for our customers.

The extraordinary commitment of more than 19,000 rail orders across our franchise was clear in the service and volume execution coming out of the system-wide storms. Thank you to all my fellow rail orders.

The entire team delivered both daily and storm backlog demand and drove post-pandemic daily GTM volume records, made possible by our operations and commercial teams.

Turning to Slide 5. At Norfolk Southern, Safety is the core value to which all of our operating decisions are made. Our continued investment in safety is producing results while building a stronger, more durable safety culture. In the quarter, our FRA personal injury ratio was 1.10. This is consistent with full year 2025 performance. Our FRA accident ratio was 1.43. This reflects a 37% improvement year-over-year in the first quarter. Our FRA mainline accident ratio was 0.26. For the second consecutive year, Norfolk Southern continues to lead the way for Class I railroads in mainline incident reliability. This progress is not isolated, it is also mirrored in a reduction of non-FRA reportable accidents. These improvements reflect the strategic impact of our intentional coordination of field-level technology coupled with execution across back office, work scope process refinement and field conversion engagement. Combined, we are creating reliable network value by engineering out risk from operations wherever our teams work.

This holistic approach to safety improvement is now embedded in how we plan, execute and manage the railway every day. While we are all proud and encouraged by our safety improvements, we are driven by a relentless drive for continuous improvement. Our enterprise is committed to putting in the work. We know there's more work to do. We are strengthening our stop work authority, reinforcing a speak-up culture and relentlessly addressing root cause analysis to prevent block crossing and other incidents.

Turning to Slide 6. Throughout the first quarter, the network demonstrated resilience in the variable demand environment we faced. Our focus remains on improving our train speed while maintaining balanced discipline around energy management and service levels, a core operational priority.

While shipments were modestly lower year-over-year, we moved 1.1% more gross ton miles, reflecting stronger train productivity and better asset utilization across the network. Terminals well improved year-over-year, coupled with continuous focus on execution of the plan. This supports gains in car miles per day. We have been intentional about protecting service and operating the network at a lower cost structure. That discipline is reflected in an 8.6% fewer recrews, improved locomotive reliability and continued reductions in unscheduled train stops. Improved crew scheduling and greater crew availability are supporting stronger crew productivity across the network and the better aligned, qualified T&E crew base, which is down about 6% year-over-year. And we continue to strategically recruit and renew our workforce in markets where we anticipate growth. Reliability drives improved productivity in cruise, locomotive and fuel efficiency. Taken together, these results demonstrate we are controlling what we can control, managing costs, improving efficiencies and positioning the network to respond to the evolving market conditions.

Turning to Slide 7. At the core of PSR 2.0 is a self-reinforcing operating system, a flywheel where disciplined execution compounds over time. At Norfolk Southern, we know when we run the plan, reduce recrews and improve network velocity, we create stability in the operation. Stability matters to our people and to our customers. It allows us to deliver our service and utilize assets more effectively, improve locomotive and field productivity and operate with better energy efficiencies.

Operational gains have manifested into the continued evolution of our service plan and its execution. They feed directly back into better schedules, better planning and more consistent execution. We now have a connected system where every improvement strengthens the next. That compounding effect is how we intentionally build a more resilient railroad steadily over time.

Our war rooms continue to translate this discipline into measurable results. The mechanical room has improved detection quality in our wheel integrity systems while delivering confirmed defect identification that directly improve safety and reliability. This is a clear example of technology process and field execution working together at scale. At the same time, our need for speed war room is embedding advanced analytics directly into daily operating decision-making. By pairing data science with frontline execution, we are improving plan quality, accelerating decisions and strengthening the performance across our network.

Disciplined execution across the organization is delivering results. In the first quarter, we achieved a fuel efficiency record, strengthening our competitive position in a high fuel price environment while protecting margins. More importantly, it reflects the repeatability of this operating system. Taken together, our PSR 2.0 transformation and operating systems position us to continue to outperform our original cost reduction commitments and deliver sustained progress across safety, service and financial performance.

With that, I'll turn it to you, Ed.

Thanks a lot, John, and good morning, everybody. Let's move to Slide 9. We closed out the first quarter with significant volume momentum, and this is offsetting a volatile February where severe winter weather impacted our customer car loadings for several weeks. Overall, volume finished down 1%, primarily due to challenging intermodal market conditions as well as merger-related losses. However, revenue ended the quarter flat year-over-year and RPU was up 2%, with solid core merchandise pricing and some favorable high-level mix, which were somewhat overshadowed by some puts and takes within the individual business groups, particularly within coal.

Within merchandise, volume and revenue increased 1% from a year ago, and this was driven by continued share gains in our chemicals and our automotive markets. RPU less fuel was flat year-over-year within the segment as strong core pricing was offset by mix interactions due to sustained growth of lower-rated commodities within our chemicals franchise that we've talked about for a couple of quarters now.

In our intermodal business, volumes decreased 4%, reflecting difficult comparisons related to tariff front-running in 2025 as well as impacts from the winter storms in the quarter and ongoing merger-related losses from prior quarters. Overall, intermodal revenue declined 1% and revenue less fuel decreased 2% due to these volume impacts while improved pricing and positive mix within the segment drove ARPU higher by 3% and RPU less fuel higher by 2%.

Looking at coal, volume increased substantially as higher electricity demand, stockpile replenishment and a supportive regulatory environment powered our utility segment. Now this strength was partially offset by reduced volume in domestic met coal. And so while total coal volume increased 9%, revenue declined 2% as mix headwinds from utility growth and continued overhang of export pricing drove ARPU down by 9%.

Let's go to Slide 10. Here, we highlight several dynamic factors influencing our market outlook, including the conflict in Iran, which has obviously driven energy prices sharply upward in the near term. Our fuel surcharge revenue will be the most immediate impact as an offset to fuel expense. And additionally, we're aggressively pursuing volume and revenue opportunities in a variety of energy-related markets while also monitoring potential impacts to overall consumer demand.

Looking at merchandise, we have a subdued, but positive outlook for vehicle production due to near-term economic uncertainty on the part of consumers. Manufacturing activity remains mixed with output forecasted to expand modestly amid the shifting economic landscape. Energy prices and global supply chains will be significant wildcards in the months ahead due to the conflict in Iran. And depending on the duration of supply chain disruptions, we could see near-term opportunities in markets like natural gas liquids, export plastics and potentially even crude oil.

Looking to our intermodal markets. International volumes are going to remain soft due to continued tariff volatility and trade pressures. On the other hand, retailers have been maintaining lean inventories in response to this macro uncertainty for which a visual restocking offers some support from baseline freight activity. The truck market has turned relatively positive with dry van rates trending upward in the first quarter of '26 and capacity continues to rightsize while demand is firming. Taken together, we have an optimistic view of intermodal, although we're tempering that optimism somewhat due to increased competitor activity following the merger announcement.

Let's turn to coal, where a combination of global factors is supporting pricing across both metallurgical and thermal seaborne markets. Now most notably, the conflict in Iran is impacting global LNG supply chains, opening the global market to consider alternatives such as U.S. sourced thermal coal. The Utility outlook remains positive as growing domestic electricity demand and inventory restocking should continue to support Norfolk Southern coal volumes.

Okay. Let's move to Slide 11, where I'm excited to introduce an innovative new short line and transload partnership, which is subject to standard regulatory approval with Jaguar Transport Holdings. Unlike traditional short-line transactions across the industry, which have been focused on finding efficiencies and leveraging lower density lines, our new partnership focuses on growth in a high-density switching corridor located in Doraville, Georgia. Our new partnership, which includes operation of both an industrial short line and our transload terminal, will deliver exceptional local service and responsive capacity to customers in the growing Metro Atlanta market.

Now here's what I want everyone to take away. This new partnership is just the latest example of our larger growth strategy in action. We're focused on building and executing innovative deal structures that deliver new capabilities and exceptional value for our customers. Look for more innovative solutions and new capabilities in the months ahead as we continue to execute on our strategy for growth.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Jason Zampi to review our financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start with a reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I'll speak to today on Slide 13. We incurred $52 million in merger-related expenses during the quarter, while total costs related to the Eastern Ohio incident were $10 million. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was 68.7% and EPS was $2.65 per share.

Moving to Slide 14, you'll find the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year. From a year-over-year perspective, the operating ratio increased 80 basis points. Inflation and fuel price headwinds drove an approximate 280-basis-point increase. However, we were able to mitigate a large part of that increase through productivity and higher revenue per unit.

Taking a closer look at our quarter on Slide 15, overall costs were up 1% as we were able to offset an estimated 5% headwind from inflationary pressures. Specifically, fuel price alone was $31 million higher than last year and over $40 million higher than our expectations, a phenomenon that really accelerated in the later part of March and has continued here into the second quarter.

We have continued to deliver on our productivity initiatives with fuel efficiency and labor productivity delivering over $30 million in savings. Partially offsetting those gains we had some volumetric increases that drove purchase services and rents higher in the quarter.

So to summarize our financial results on Slide 16, while first quarter costs were only up 1% and in line with our cost guidance for 2026, the lack of revenue growth combined to drive a modest EPS reduction. While we overcame typical operating ratio seasonality in Q1, we are constantly striving to improve. We continue to refine our focus to unearth other opportunities, and you heard John talk about some of those initiatives as we work towards the $150-plus million of efficiencies planned for this year on top of the over $500 million in productivity we generated over the last 2 years.

Fuel is obviously going to be a wildcard for the remainder of the year, and we anticipate it to be a headwind in the second quarter. But despite that, we expect to achieve typical margin seasonality from 1Q to 2Q.

We continue to move forward. John and team are continuing to drive productivity while maintaining a safe railroad with consistent and predictable service levels and Ed and his team are pursuing high-quality growth opportunities across the entire book. Overall, we're executing to the plan we laid out, focusing on safety and service within a reasonable cost outlook while progressing through our merger application with UP.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Mark to wrap it up.

Okay. Thank you, Jason. You all just heard that we are laser-focused on 3 fundamentals: First, safety. We continue to make progress through better tools, better processes and a culture that treats safety as a value, not a metric. Second is service. Our customers are seeing our resilience coming out of the winter weather and getting back to consistent, reliable performance even as volumes increase. And third, costs. We're maintaining tight control, driving productivity and aligning our expense base with demand as we fight to win volume. Overall, we see a promising story emerging where we can leverage any reasonable volume expansion the market presents with our commitment to control costs, giving us confidence in our ability to drive attractive and profitable growth.

Now turning to guidance. Last quarter, we provided an adjusted operating cost envelope of $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion for 2026, and I'm proud of how the NS team has handled all the challenges in Q1 to remain on track for our guide, and I remain confident in our cost control playbook. Now while the underlying cost structure remains intact, fuel prices are obviously putting upward pressure on the cost outlook.

As you heard from Jason, the price surge in March alone resulted in expenses that were $40 million higher than our expectations. While we are sensitive to the impact of conflict and inflating energy markets are having on people's lives, today, it is unclear on how long fuel prices will remain inflated and by how much over the remainder of the year. In light of this, we are maintaining our current cost guidance while acknowledging the near-term volatility and uncertainty on one of our key cost inputs. Our team has worked hard to be transparent with all of you. We will continue to monitor the situation as we progress through Q2 and gain more confidence on where fuel will settle, and we will update you accordingly.

And finally, just as a brief update on the merger, we remain on track to refile the application by the end of the month. This revised application will be even stronger in articulating the benefits of creating the nation's first single-line transcontinental railroad. And with that, let's open the call to questions.

[Operator Instructions] First, we will hear from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

Maybe 1 point of clarification and then the question. I guess, Jason, you mentioned normal OR seasonality 1Q to 2Q. Just kind of curious what you see that normal seasonality as being just to clarify. And then Ed, you talked a little bit about competitive activity, I think, particularly in Intermodal as it relates to the merger. I guess as you think about that, have we seen most of that happen already? Is that something that maybe still has yet to play out? And is it more than intermodal? Or is it really more sort of contained within Intermodal?

Chris, it's Jason. Let me start with the OR question. Just a reminder, first about some of the headwinds that we've got in our plan. We've talked about inflation and some of those year-over-year pressures in that 4% range. We've got lower land sales. Specifically, you may recall, we had a $35 million land sale in the second quarter last year that we don't expect this year. We've got to absorb those revenue losses from the competitive merger responses. And now obviously, we have to deal with these fuel headwinds that are going to continue into the second quarter. So that said, you put all those together, all those headwinds, we're really still expecting to be in that normal kind of sequential OR improvement. We think about that at about 200 basis points, and that's really due to all the productivity initiatives that we've got going on.

And an uptick in revenue from first quarter to second quarter...

And this is Ed. To your second question there. Yes, it's really, we think primarily an intermodal story. And it's playing out the way that we've anticipated so far. And frankly, we're doing everything we can to make sure that we're earning everything we can from both the road and from other modes.

Next question will be from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

Ed, I have a question. intermodal pricing is arguably somewhat cyclical tied to truck pricing. Coal pricing is volatile. It feels like merchandise pricing has been like the constant, and I see merchandise RPU ex fuel flat and so maybe you'll say it's mix, but just some thoughts I would have thought or hoped we'd see some better merchandise pricing?

And then Mark, just -- you mentioned quickly the merger, just applications coming next week, you've had months now to gather feedback. Anything that gives you more confidence in approval? Any feedback that gives you concern? Just any high-level thoughts.

Ed, why don't you go ahead.

Sure. I'll probably disappoint you because I'm going to say it's mix. First of all, we've had a good quarter and a very strong track record on the core price here. RPU, of course, is not price. When we see our merchandise book, frankly, I think we're close to a record this quarter for RPU less fuel, it's really about growth in some of the lower-rated chemicals commodities, stuff like frac sand and NGLs, where we've done a really good job of earning new business there. And at the same time, we continue to take price very aggressively where we can. And I would say that for the most part, I'm really satisfied with where we've landed on core price and adding incremental revenue through some of those low rated commodities has been a good thing for us.

Yes. Thanks, Ed. And look, with regard to the merger, I think being out on the road and seeing how this has played out these past handful of months since we submitted the initial application, I'm feeling a lot better as we talk to customers and understand the concerns, as customers are listening to the opposition and some of the steer tactics, and we get a chance to clarify with facts, I believe we have a really good story. The new application is going to confirm what we said in the original application on the logic of doing this deal and the benefits that single-line transcontinental railroad will bring to the country and to our shippers. In fact, we're going to have a much stronger set of data that actually makes the case even stronger. So we feel pretty good about it and I think, right now, it's just about trying to get on the clock and by getting that application in on the 30th, the clock will start running. So I feel better, Scott, than I did even 5 months ago when I felt really good.

Next question will be from Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan.

Maybe just to clarify with Jason, can you give us the fuel and weather-related costs into the quarter? I don't think we heard the specific call out here directly. And just Ed, maybe going back to the '26 market outlook, much of the different I guess, segments here moved a bit higher vehicle manufacturing warehouse in particular, truck makes sense, but maybe you can give a little bit more context as to what you're seeing and feeling in there that gives you the confidence to move those up a notch on your rating scale and maybe how that's expected to play out throughout the rest of the year?

Brian, first part of your question. So thinking about fuel specifically, versus prior year was up $31 million just from price, but the really big impact that we're talking about is kind of that difference compared to what we expected. And just in the month of March alone, that was up over $40 million. So the price we paid per gallon in March was up 45% over last year, and we really see that same phenomenon kind of happening again here in April. So kind of splitting that up between prior year and then what our expectation was. I'd tell you on storm costs. And John, you can give a little color on this, but that was about million to $15 million in the quarter of costs. And John, you give a little background on that.

Yes. Let's just go to fuel for a second because it's not just the price story, it's the consumption story, and we set a consumption record that is compounding its value in the fuel efficiency cost levers that we've been pulling through our precision fuel operations all of last year and this year. With the help of finance, operations, IT, everybody, we've got an integrated fuel management system that is giving us value in both how we purchase it, how we distribute it and of course, how we consume it in our -- through our energy management on board. So those are some things that are in a high-cost environment give us those double coupon values that we can enjoy.

And as far as the storms are concerned, they were very concentrated. Unfortunately, they're across the whole Eastern Seaboard from north to south. And most of that, we're able to work through very quickly, but in a concentrated way. So the money you see there impacted us and were the nice thing for our services, we're able to rebound and push through for the balance of the quarter.

And this is Ed. You were asking about where we have optimism or where the markets are that we think have opportunities. I'll kind of just go around the horn and repeat someone has said on the prepared remarks and try to get in a little bit more detail. Start with intermodal, clearly, there's a reason to be optimistic about domestic Intermodal, domestic non-premium. We've seen growth there despite some of those competitive headwinds that we talked about. And I think there's more opportunity to come. When you think about higher fuel prices and what that does to our competitors on the road, it makes Intermodal more compelling naturally. And with the good service product that we're able to offer, I think we have a compelling case to make there.

International side, I think there's a lot of trade uncertainty still out there. And frankly, when you're comping against the pull forward that happened last year, that's going to be challenged. If I go to coal, we continue to be constructive on the utility side of the business. I think restocking will continue. And I think electricity demand over the medium term at least is going to inflect upward. And so we feel good about that piece. Met side -- or excuse me, on the export side, I think the U.S. coals are finding new opportunities overseas because of all the all the disruption from the conflict as well as commodity price constraints -- well, commodity prices and constraints on sourcing from some of those things. So we'll see how that plays out.

On the industrial side, I think I mentioned in the prepared remarks that we're exploring actively opportunities that are showing up in places like NGLs, export plastics as well as possibly even some of the petroleum products that we'll want to move in current environment. And generally, we feel pretty good about manufacturing. There are some real signs of life out there, whether you're looking at the economic factors or even listening to various stories. We have over more -- we have, gosh, 400 or so projects in our industrial development pipeline. We're actually starting to see that pipeline begin to move. Last year, it was really held pretty tight, but we've had 12 projects come online in Q1 here and that will be worth about 70,000 loads when they're at full rand. And for the full year, we'd like to see a few dozen more of those come across the finish line, and we think we can.

Next question will be from Jason Seidl at TD Cowen.

Wanted to talk a little bit on the Intermodal side. I mean, obviously, there's some competitive dynamics going on impacting the business. But one of the largest trucking companies indicated that they're already having inquiries from clients about peak season planning. I wanted to know where you stood with your discussions with customers on that? And then maybe a little bit on the new short line partnership initiative. Is this a one-off? Or do you see, if this gets approved, replicating this in other regions? And if so, where?

I appreciate the questions. They are good ones. Again, I'm bullish on domestic non-premium Intermodal for the rest of the year, at least for the foreseeable future from a combination of factors, first one being, we've seen the supply of over-the-road drivers be constrained. I think that's going to continue to happen. I think I said it on an earlier call that we really need to see demand rather than supply be the thing that pushes this forward. And I think we're starting to see that. You look at the price of on-highway diesel and what trucks are having to pay for that. Intermodal is going to be a compelling value proposition for a lot of customers, but it's only compelling we have a good service product, and that's what John and I are really focused on how do we deliver that value for customers. So I feel pretty good about that piece.

In terms of our new partnership with Jaguar, I meant what I said. It's an innovative deal that I think is going to deliver exceptional value for customers. And if we can make it work, and I am very confident that we can, we're going to look to replicate this sort of deal elsewhere.

Next question will be from Jonathan Chappell at Evercore ISI.

John, I wanted to ask you about 2 specific cost items and how we think about them going from here. You mentioned the fuel consumption down 6% year-over-year, but also down sequentially. I can't find another time where your fuel consumption was down 4Q to 1Q, especially given weather. So is that the new kind of base we should think about going forward, maybe not 6% year-over-year improvement, but continue to march lower from here? And then also on headcount, you're in this tight little range all year last year, about 19.3 to 19.4, stepped down about 300 in 1Q. What happened? Why is headcount down? And again, is this going to be a tight range where we should be about down 300 every quarter for the rest of the year?

Thanks for your questions. And on our fuel productivity, well, I'd like to take all the credit for such a sequential improvement, it is improving sequentially, but there are some accounting adjustments within that fuel number that give us a small benefit, but sequentially, we're improving, and that's really driven by treating fuel as a major cost lever and precision fueling, how we're managing that and how we're driving consumption, improving locomotive reliability and fuel efficiencies. As we said before, it's a journey, and the program will stretch over several years and it involves integrating more tech process refinement, both in the field and here at [ 650 ], and it's integral in our strategy. So well, it's never going to be a straight line and the volatility in pricing is going to have its own aspect. Our desire is to continue to march towards the most progressive fuel efficiencies we can get.

So that's aligned with our locomotive strategies. It's aligned with our conversions from DC to AC and even found within how we restructure our zero-based plan model and continue to have a relevant plan rather than a historic plan.

And as far as labor productivity is concerned, we're benefiting from fewer recrews. We've restructured our starts last year, our zero-based plan affected approximately 200 starts -- train starts and train revisions. This year, we have another pipeline of similar scale, and we'll continue to create predictable schedules. And that helps because as we restructure starts, well, it's being driven by volume and workload and held in place by zero-based plan, it's really focused on lowering held away, better using crew accuracy, lineups for crew rest and crew cycles and those was manifest into a more productive workforce. And our qualified count is really about not chasing the curve, it's about focus on retention, the accuracy of our new hire pipeline and our training and onboarding to better position us to absorb growth with the best existing resources.

So our pipeline is always active. We're recruiting the best people we can find, being very selective and giving them the benefit of a very robust and precise training program. Lots of work to do there, but we're exercising labor productivity and workload so that we can maintain our service structure and give our customers the best experience we can.

I guess I would just add, we're really not just hiring to some aggregate number. We've got some 90 different crew bases across our network where people have to be qualified to operate in those specific districts. So we have to monitor the demographics of each of those crew bases. When we expect to see retirements come and get ahead of those curves because it takes about 6 months to hire somebody, train somebody, qualify them and expecting some attrition to happen during that process as well, so we got to do that for 90 different crew bases. Now some -- we've got cushion, others were in deficit because they're in locations where employment is full and a very difficult place to hire. So there's a lot of work that goes in to make sure that what productivities we're going to be driving across the network so that allows us to absorb attrition versus when will volume come. So it's a real delicate balance to determine the level of hiring, for which location 6 months in the future in a very uncertain demand environment. And I think right now, we're doing well, but I will tell you, it's probably the the single biggest debate we have internally is the level of hiring we need to do based on the market outlook.

Next question is from David Vernon of Bernstein.

Sorry, problem with mute. So I guess, Ed, as you think about the growth prospects for export thermal if that were to kick in, can you kind of help us understand kind of what the range of possible outcomes is there from a volume and also from a yield perspective, would that be additive to ARPU -- negative to ARPU? How do we think about the potential for a pickup in export coal affecting the revenue outlook for you guys?

Yes. Export thermal would be helpful to our ARPU mix. And the first quarter got hurt by winter weather. It was just -- it was hard to get out of the ground, hard to move it and hard to dump it. But I think we're going to see that rebound, particularly if the conflict in the Middle East continues there's going to be more markets open up to U.S. coal. So yes, I'm optimistic about it, and it will be helpful.

Next question will be from Richa Harnain at Deutsche Bank.

I wanted to talk about costs, 1% cost increases by 5% inflation. Maybe you can talk about initiatives that you're focused on to keep that cost trajectory going. You gave us a lot on headcount and stuff and fuel efficiency. But maybe talk about some of the other buckets where you're seeing the most success what hasn't been done that you think there's more potential for? That's on the cost side. And then, Ed, I would love to hear, I think you said you feel really good about manufacturing picking up, and you've heard some anecdotes from your customers. I know you talked about the success you're winning on projects and things, but I'd love to hear maybe more broadly what your sense on the macro backdrop and what hand that's delivering to you?

Yes, I'll start on the cost side. You point out the I think, pretty good cost control we had here in the first quarter, up 1% with 5% headwinds from inflation and fuel. And it's really driven by a couple of things. And we have a really good track record that we've shown over the last 2 years of getting about $500 million in productivity, and we've got a lot of projects and initiatives in the hopper to hit that $150 million plus.

For the first quarter specifically, and then I'll turn it over to John to kind of talk about what we're working on the remainder of the year. just from fuel efficiency alone, we last year improved 5% the year before that 3%, now first quarter, we're hitting an all-time first quarter record. So really strong performance there. And that -- we will continue down that path. And that labor productivity continues to be one of our biggest components where we really benefited quite a bit over the last 2 years. And as we've talked about in the past, not just T&E productivity, but really labor productivity across the board.

Yes. Jason, you hit on a disciplined approach to this. and we're committed to it. We've adjusted our budgets accordingly. But it's across all streams. Productivity, obviously, we started in T&E, our zero-based planning through 2025 and version 3 that we're undertaking in 2026 is giving us a benefit on crew starts with a focus on continuing to create our own capacity through weight and train length that give us the opportunity to really make best use of our infrastructure. And from the T&E, there are incidental costs that come out of that with running a more resilient railway, and leveraging of our portals with fewer train starts, more mechanical resilience, better locomotive capability. So all of those [indiscernible] flow through to purchase services and others. Big focus on our next generation of purchase service and enterprise resource management and the discipline around those major purchases and fuel is going to continue to be a big driver of that. But I'm really proud of what the team is doing on safety, significantly lower incidents and oxidants even above and below the FRA reporting threshold. That's giving us the ability to really drive the plan, have accountability where our cars are, have more accuracy on when our trains arrive and depart. That gets us lower equipment rents that gets us into better locomotive turns, better locomotive utilization and there's significant value in those things.

So it is really working the fundamentals with projects that are coming online and really driving big benefits. It's small wins and big ones put together. They are going to really create the flywheel that we've got that's creating the improvement.

[Operator Instructions] Next will be Jordan Alliger at Goldman Sachs. Jordan.

Just wanted to come back to sort of -- I know you've talked a lot about the intermodal service, that's a key focal point. And I was looking at your network update slide, and it looks like the intermodal service composite has been sort of like 85%, which is off from the high of low 90s. So I guess, is that weather related? Is it temporary? How do you address that? And in your view, do you need to be above 90% to start getting market share back?

We'll let talk about market share. But if you've heard me speak on these calls, I'm never pleased about any particular metric. But I am pleased that sequentially, we're pacing slightly ahead of where we were last year at this time. And it's not just the average, it's really getting down to the lane, getting down into the customer, the important commitments that we've made to our customers and their product view and their sorting view and the end-to-end capability that we're building in them. So I would love to be a higher number. I'm striving to be a higher number. But sequentially, I'm very pleased that we're seeing that improvement. And my job is to give Ed every opportunity to walk into any customer with good service in his back pocket to negotiate is our market share.

Thanks, John. And look, I think we will have a better number, and I know you're working on it. But look, you nailed it, John, I mean, you said that we've focused at the lane level. There are some lanes that have a lot of potential, some lanes that have some potential. And where we have a lot of potential and we have very good data on that, we're very focused on delivering an exceptional service product. And that's what John and I talk about every single day. That doesn't necessarily manifest itself in an average, but I can tell you right now that we are laser-focused on those lanes and those opportunities where we have a lot of potential to take traffic off the highway and deliver a very good service product for them. So thank you.

Tom Wadewitz at UBS.

So Mark, I want to refer back to the fourth quarter call. I think you were kind of maybe somewhat fresh off the share shift in Intermodal. And you had some fairly aggressive comments, I think, on just competing in the market and you're going to compete hard in the market. What do you think the competitive dynamic is like among rails in the East? It seems like there are kind of puts and takes, maybe you've got a little growth in chemicals, autos, maybe a little late rail share, I'm not sure, and then you got -- they've got some intermodal. But how do you think about that? Is it pretty stable?

And then I think on the -- I guess, on the international and domestic, is there a share shift in international? Or that's just like kind of completely like-for-like customer? And I think, Ed, you talked about the just the weakness in international being maybe just demand-driven, but not share shift. So a couple of thoughts on competitive dynamic and then just shared international intermodal.

Sure, Tom. Thanks. Good question. And look, obviously, following the merger, you saw a flurry of new alliances taking place with our Eastern peer and Western peer and some of the Canadian railroads and that has obviously had some level of impact on us. I mean it's enhanced competition, frankly, just from the mere announcement of this merger. So we talked about some of the losses that we've had and that we're going to continue to fight like heck to retain our share and fight in other areas to gain to offset some of that. And that's what the team has been doing. They've been doing a great job, I think, competing. Look, I think you have to step back. This North American rail network is running pretty damn well. All the railroads are operating well and they're all offering very good competitive products, which is really great because we are an integrated supply chain and we cheer on the other railroads to have good service because we all want to be -- we all interchange with each other. Half of our volume interchanges with another railroad. So we don't want anybody to be in a bad service situation. So it's not just us, we want everybody to be good, and they are all good right now.

But when it comes to the competitive offering, I think the product that John and the operations team has put out there has been really good. It's been really resilient. And I think we're doing a good job on the commercial side as well being more responsive and working to solve problems with our customers. So I feel really good about our competitive position right now, I do, in pretty much all the areas. I think the challenge we have on the international side, there's a lot of uncertainty going back to tariffs of last year. There has -- there's been probably some inventory depletion that's taken place and it hasn't seemed to really fully started to restock yet. So international has been relatively weak. Not sure when that's going to turn around. Domestic on the other hand, for other dynamics, I think given the cost profile with what fuel is doing to truckers, we feel pretty good about being able to taking some share off the highway. But Ed, why don't you talk a little bit more?

Sure. I think you kind of nailed it. We believe that the product we're delivering is very competitive in the marketplace. And you're right, Mark. We want all of our rail competitors to be very strong because oftentimes it's hard to get customers to discriminate between ourselves and other railroads. We're all just one big railroad. And that's true in many cases. So we want strong rail competition. We're really focused on the highway. The competitive landscape continues to be very competitive. And frankly, higher fuel prices are probably helping us deliver additional value for our customers across the board, particularly on the domestic Intermodal side. And we've seen a little bit of share shift, as you alluded to. Some of it's a competitive response, some of it's just more book diversification. And we continue to work on how we can improve our position. I'm really proud of the team and what they've been able to do.

Next question will be from Walter Spracklin of RBC Capital Markets.

My question is for Ed, taking a little more high level on the freight recession. We're hearing a lot of commentary from your counterparts in trucking that is outright saying the recession -- this recession is coming to an end. But your peers in railroads seem to be a little bit more conservative in terms of making that call. Is this just a supply-side thing where the new rigs have driven better pricing for trucks, and that's what's causing that more positive view? Or I know the trucks have talked a little bit about higher demand in some of the industrial verticals. Just curious if you're seeing any green shoots on the demand side outside of truck pricing or just your own pricing that is suggesting that the freight recession might be finally coming to a bit of an end here?

Really good question. And I think I'm probably talking to the same folks you are when it comes to trucks on the supply side. There's a few uncertainties out there in a few parts of the equation that haven't been solved yet. The first one being what's going on with housing and interest rates and inflation. And those are 3 big factors that I think really need to resolve themselves before we can declare anything over, so to speak. At the same time, we see the IPI come up. We've seen manufacturing for, I think, 3 straight months now, be above water. We see some strength in the auto industry, both in terms of demand as well as supply. So there are some green shoots, and we are cautiously optimistic about certain segments. But I remain vigilant on those 3 factors that I think really need to come around before we could say we're out of the woods.

Yes. I think to call an end of the freight recession may be a bit premature. But I think for us to be able to start taking share from highway, fuel prices are going to help that. So that's a little bit of the optimism you hear. And then some of the green shoots we see in industrial production, which usually has a 6-month lead time, it gives us a little bit of optimism that maybe there's something they're brewing. And I think, Ed, you would say that when it comes to manufacturing, we're not necessarily seeing it yet except for some of the components that go into manufacturing. Those are areas like plastics and some metal components, we're starting to see some growth there. So we're not calling an end to the freight recession, but we're saying there's green shoots. So we'll keep an eye on it.

Next is Brandon Oglenski at Barclays.

Sorry, Mark, you got one more from me. I'll keep it pretty short here. Jason, can you just help us and maybe already address this, but the average sequential OR change that you guys would view in 2Q? And maybe just at a higher level, I mean, you guys have been working towards like more safe outcomes and everything I get it, but the operating ratio has been moving maybe in the wrong direction. Should we be thinking, though, if that freight market is turning that there's a lot of like potential for incremental margin here, too?

Yes, absolutely. No doubt about that. We've got the capacity to move all this volume. John and the team have done a great job from a service perspective and making sure we're ready to handle it. We've got the resources in place. And then to your point, because of that capacity, when this comes through, it's a really good incrementals.

I think you just wanted to hear the sequential margin improvement, you would think a couple of points.

Yes. Yes. About 200 basis points of sequential OR benefit from first quarter to going into the second quarter.

Thanks a lot, Brandon. And look, I think just to kind of recap a little bit here. We told you at the beginning of the year that we were focused on preserving safety, maintaining service and controlling costs while we were going to fight for every dollar of quality revenue we could. And we did exactly that in the first quarter. Revenue being flat later than we hoped, but we are more optimistic on the top line as we enter the second quarter because there are some signs of life emerging in the market. Now that said, this is a very dynamic world with an awful lot of cross currents. So we've just got to keep an eye on that. Let's keep an eye on those weekly volumes, and that will give you some indication of how things are shaping up. But we got a tight grip on cost right now and real good momentum on productivity and efficiency.

So we're going to carefully balance all of our resources, and so that we're able to move the volume when it comes while we continue on this never-ending drive for productivity and efficiency.

And regarding the merger, we're going to submit our revised application here on the 30th. Like I said before, the rationale is the same, but the depth and the quality of the data in the application considerably strengthens our case. And look, when you step back and look at it, our customers, our supply chains, they're increasingly national and global, but our U.S. freight rail network is fragmented. So a single-line transcontinental network is going to simplify service, reduce interchange complexity, that's going to allow freight to move more efficiently, more safely and more reliably from origin to destination. That's what this is about. It really is going to deliver a very compelling proposition for more customers to choose rail over highway. And ultimately, I think that's good for the country, and it's good for everybody.

So thanks all for your participation in today's call and stay safe out there. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good weekend.

Okay. So we're going to get started here in the afternoon track here for transports. Again, Brian Ossenbeck covering the space for JPMorgan. Really excited to have Norfolk Southern here. Mark George, President, CEO; Jason Zampi, CFO; Luke Nichols in the audience. Clearly there's a lot to get to in terms of just the structure of the industry and how it might change over time. Clearly, there's a transaction in the market. But I wanted to start a little bit more fundamental.

You guys are still out there running the business every day. Clearly, tough winter, dwell times and parts of the network look a little bit elevated. So maybe we can just talk about how the network is running in the first quarter and just go from there. And thanks again for being here.

Thanks, Brian. We're happy to be here with you. And I'm glad to be talking about fundamentals because we do spend most of our time running the business. Even though it might seem to many of you that we're spending all of our time trying to get this merger across the finish line.

We started the year actually really strong in January. Volumes we're pretty happy with coming out of the gate. But when the winter hit us that, I guess, was the fourth week in January, that final week in January. It hit us hard in the East. Unlike the West, we got pummeled all over the network with three successive storms and deep freezes on top of it. So yes, it definitely had an impact on our fluidity. It did create some increased dwell times and it reduced our train speeds and reduced our service metrics. But just like we saw last winter, we came bouncing right back at the end of these storms. So we're in a good spot right now.

I'm really happy with the resiliency that we're demonstrating on the network. I will tell you that in February that the storm impact and the impact on our network definitely hurt us from a volume perspective. So we were running ahead of schedule first few weeks. We went deep into a hole in February compared to our expectations. But I would tell you here in March, we've been coming back ahead of our expectations in March. So we're kind of -- we're feeling pretty good about coming out of the stores.

And the only other thing I'd add about the storms, if you think about last year, we talked about like 17 or 18 storms that hit us in the first quarter, but those were like much more regional or localized. These two storms that hit us really to last handful of days in January, first handful of days in February were really, really widespread. So very, very impactful to the network. But even saying that, I think we bounced back pretty quickly.

Yes, you don't see that much ice in Atlanta or Memphis or any place like that. So we've heard from others, some of the rough cost ideas of how much this might impact the network on a year-over-year basis. I don't know if you're at a point where you can share any of that? Or is it material to how you experienced versus last year?

Yes. I mean there's definitely incremental costs, cleanup costs. You have a lot of contractors out there, clearing trees and helping us bring the network back. So there's incremental cost for sure, probably $0.04 or $0.05 of cost when you say.

Mark, you mentioned the volumes were looking pretty good, and they were definitely coming in at a pretty good pace. Of course, weather had something to do with that, but you don't necessarily have an official like market view or target for the year, but like just where are things better than what you expected in terms of volume? And why was that? Was it service? Was it conversion?

You were talking about the first quarter?

Yes, the first quarter in general, as they progress into...

Like we said, it's been lumpy, strong January, weak February from the storms. March has come back well. I would just tell you the overall markets, and Jason, you're going to jump in here, but utility coal, it's been good. It's been real good. Last year, it was good. Data centers help. Nat gas prices, we'll see where those kind of go to. We can talk about the war later. I'm sure you're going to ask about that. We're feeling pretty good about that.

And honestly, I think our Industrial Products business has been -- we had a really good year last year with Industrial Products. We saw some good volume growth, and that's continued strong here in the first quarter as well. And intermodal has been weak. We all know what's going on in the domestic side with regard to some of the share shift that's happened on the domestic side. But international, which is kind of a proxy for imports, has been really soft. Everybody is seeing that all imports. What do you think, Jason?

Yes. I mean just to put a little finer point on. I think intermodal quarter-to-date, we're down about 6% volume-wise versus where we were like Mark said, truly, that's the international story that kind of everybody is feeling there.

And then coal, I think, that's been not only a good year-over-year story, but just versus expectation. I mean utility coal volume has really been strong.

The only other piece I'd add to what Mark said, in addition to electricity demand and the high natural gas prices, you also have probably a little bit more favorable regulatory environment. We don't really see any closures on our system and any major closures in the near future. So obviously, new coal-fired plants coming on, but I think you're seeing some delays in closures of existing plants.

Right. Were some of those expected to happen this year as you entered? Or they just kind of in perpetual restatement or...

Just expansion, just continue to move out.

Right.

I think you heard a lot of those announcements last year where they were kind of a boarding plans to decommission coal power plants. So that's good. That's held. And you're hearing more chatter when I talk to some of the utilities, more chatter about recommissioning some plants that may have been decommissioned. So again, the war may also accelerate some of that depending on how long that lasts.

For sure, we'll get to that in a second, but coal being a bright spot, you want to focus a little bit more on so you don't get that opportunity. Is there anything on the Warrior Coal partnership you guys shared a little bit about last quarter, like how that's ramping up? What brought that about? And as we think about the competitive losses.

You've also mentioned like, are there other ones that we should think about in terms of wins? Because I think CMA CGM was a new service launch. So like what else is in the hopper in terms of additional opportunities that you're already working on or potentially could be seeing pretty soon?

So Warrior, we had been working on for about 2 years, working very close with them to develop a solution for the new mine that they were looking to open where they had alternatives, including barge, which was fairly convenient for them. But we came and worked with them very closely on a rail solution that would have involved -- that involves them investing a fair amount of money for conveyor system and us investing a fair amount of money to create more capacity on our line to go down to the Port of Mobile.

So we both invested that money. And now we're looking -- we've already started the service and it's going well. It's extremely high-quality coal, met coal, extremely high quality. And we think this can ramp up to, what, 6 million tons a year. So we're really excited about it.

And again, it's a really good partnership that we have with them, and we're really proud of the investment. Like I said, this has been going on this discussion on developing a solution for over 2 years.

Yes, you cited CMA another, again, what kind of solution can we create and deliver for you? So we've done that. It's kind of a truck-like solution that we've created there. We're working on others. We've had other big wins in auto, and I'm not going to get into details of some of the other negotiations we're deep into, but the team is working really hard.

And I think what I want to do is maybe take a second and explain One of the things about a year ago, I talked to our Commercial Officer, Ed Elkins, about the fact that this industry, maybe we need to think a little bit different about our commercial organization and our structure and the way we do things. And I'd like to see us maybe take a look at more specialized sales folks that are on specific incentive plans like you see in most other industries, and separate that functionality from other marketing folks.

So today, people's jobs or in the past, I should say people's jobs were kind of co-mingled doing a little bit of sales, a little bit of relationships, a little bit of pricing, a little bit of marketing. Let's take a look at a more bifurcated structure with specialists with a sales organization that has incentives that can help drive more top line growth. So for the past year, we've been building this out, and we are now live with a new structure. And we feel pretty excited about where this could lead in terms of propelling us at a faster rate than we've seen in the past.

But we can't just keep doing the same things we've been doing and expecting a better outcome. We've got to try something different. And hats off to Ed for embracing that and driving that. And his VPs, they've done a spectacular job leading the organization through that change. A lot of people, hundreds of people's job descriptions were changed. Their compensation structure has changed. And I feel like we're going to start seeing the benefits of that soon.

You mentioned two wins, one against truck and one against barge like, yes, usually, that doesn't really happen. So are these service driven? I mean, the relationship you mentioned as well. But...

Oh, yes, they're also service-driven because let's face it. We're in a position of strength, which is another reason why this was a good time to do the merger. But it's also a good time that we're able to demonstrate to our customers.

Look, you can trust us. Look at how reliable we are, look at how resilient we were after the hurricanes, after the winter storms of 2025 and they're seeing it. So now they trust us. We have a strong operations team and strong disciplines. And honestly, we're bringing the operations folks into these discussions with our customers. They're vested in it. So our Chief Operating Officer, our Head of Transportation, they're in the meetings with the customers and they're vested in it. So we're approaching things a little bit different now as more of a team.

What we did allude to the conflict in the Gulf. And clearly, there's a couple of different factors that would play out across the rail networks. Maybe in the short term, like what's -- how do you how you size up the impact on fuel because obviously, it went up quite a bit, we're now chasing it with the reset?

And then secondly, aside from the obvious potential for impacting consumer demand and sentiment like are there any end markets that are particularly exposed? I don't know, maybe there's some NGLs that can be exported somewhere else like frac sand maybe picks up, like not looking necessarily for a silver lining, but just like the broader impact higher energy prices for longer?

Yes. So look, I think it's been 2 weeks pretty much of volatility in oil that we've seen. And we still got another 2 weeks before we close out the quarter, right? So we know that fuel is already going to have a very significant impact on our expense. And when you think about it, we burn about 1 million gallons of diesel fuel a day. That's 30 million gallons a month. So you can kind of do your own math. If the rates go up by $1 from where our expectations were, that's a $30 million headwind. If it goes up by $0.50, it's a $15 million for the quarter because of the 1 month in March.

Now we do have -- obviously, it's a pass-through mechanism with our surcharge program. And there, you have basically a couple of weeks lag before you'll start to see the surcharge take effect in intermodal and a couple of months lag before you start to see it take effect in Industrial Products. So really, you'll start to see the surcharge flow through here in the second quarter and with full effect in the third quarter. But we don't know what the curve is going to be on oil prices. Just in these 2 weeks, it's been pretty spiky and volatile. But what would you gauge the range for -- if you were going to guide, Jason?

Yes. I'd say on the expense side, it's where I think, Mark, your frame of reference here is great rule of thumb, kind of probably $20 million to $30 million of expense headwind in the first quarter here. And then hopefully, that -- as Mark said, that kind of gets covered with the fuel surcharge revenue that picks up in the second quarter.

And then so as I think about it over the course of the year, we don't know how long this lasts. -- okay? But let's just say it lasts for a while. And the Straight of Hormuz kind of stays in fluid. Natural gas becomes a little bit of a of an issue coming out of there, what does that do to U.S. nat gas prices? You start seeing more export there. We move nat gas. But on top of it, when nat gas is high, it's pretty good usually for coal. In our coal franchise, our utility franchise. You'll see the utilities burn more coal. So that's not a bad thing for the business volumes.

On top of that, I mean, fuel stays high that puts a little pressure on trucking doesn't it? And so on the intermodal space, it starts to maybe put pressure on truck rates, which is a pretty good thing for us. We've been pretty depressed for a while. We'd love to see some evacuation of capacity in trucking, maybe this helps accelerate the evacuation of some of the smaller players who can't sustain the fuel spikes. So we think that's another potential good news item for us on the intermodal side.

So you play this out, you can see a lot of good. But depending on how long this lasts, obviously, high fuel prices can have an adverse impact on the consumer. Ultimately, it will lead to inflation. We don't know what it does to demand. And if there's demand destruction that ultimately impacts an offsetting counterweight to our volumes in the future. So you get all those things you kind of got to put in the mix master.

Okay, would you add anything?

Yes, I was just going to say, I mean, you kind of saw that exact same experience back in 2022 with the Russian-Ukraine conflict, that 6-month spike in prices that really started to impact the economy. But obviously, a lot of other things going on at that time that are very different than now. So I just kind of have to wait to see how that shakes out.

One thing on the fuel side, Norfolk, in my time covering the company is historically been viewed as like less efficient in terms of fuel for a number of different reasons. But I think last year, it's really materially changed and improved. So that didn't go unnoticed by us in particular, but like what really drove such a big gain? And is there still more room for improvement now that you've kind of broken through that at least perceived threshold?

I'll start. I think first thing we've been talking about it for years since I came 6 years ago, we've been investing more and more in modernizing our locomotive fleet from DC technology to AC technology, which is a significant -- has significant advantages in terms of fuel efficiency.

So as we penetrated from what was below 30% AC in our fleet to now in our active fleet, what over 70%.

Yes. Yes. And we just finished our 1,000th locomotive that we converted DC to AC.

So that's paying the dividends that we talked about when we were making those investments. So that's a big driver. But on top of it, I think you've got to give a lot of credit to our operations folks where this is an obsession. So they are -- there's a lot of other little disciplines that they're doing, managing HPT and trying to drive every last drop of fuel productivity without compromising speed and some of the other tricks that you can do to optimize it in the short term.

I will say trying to get to a fuel efficiency of a 1.0 5 years ago, I heard every story in the book about how impossible that was by our ops teams back then. We have a unique network, we can never get to that even though the other guy was there, close to there. We have too much rise and fall. We have too much curvature. Obviously, we have an adverse locomotive mix, which we did resolve, but we would never be able to get all the way down to 1.0, not even close. Well, here we are. So it's really good to see very gratifying.

Yes. I mean we finished the year last 2025 at 1.03, 5% improvement over the prior year, and we've got more improvement baked into the plan this year.

And it's been frustrating because that great fuel efficiency we had last year, right? It's kind of wasted when fuel prices are so low. So now when fuel prices spike like this, we get the advantage of that great fuel efficiency.

There you go. Well, Jason, you've been talking about in the industry has talked about more inflation at the start of the year, which is probably not too surprising, but maybe for some a little bit more than expected. One of the areas I want to ask you about is just for the merger review and it seems like maintaining good excellence services kind of pre-req.

So the thought is you have to maintain like a higher level of staffing to put more buffer and resiliency in the network. But I don't know if that's necessarily true or not. I mean I don't think we can even see the headcount from the STB because they're quasi shutdown right now. But would you agree with that you're running with a little bit heavier than normal to kind of keep that buffer for the next year or so?

For sure, during this period, safety is always critically important, and we'll continue to be in service. We have to maintain the extremely high level regardless of the right? I mean we need that. We -- our customers are demanding that. So -- but that is -- those are two critical things for us. I think if you think about pure headcount, the way we're really looking at it is we're planning to be kind of flat to down with last year. We're we have some hiring that we need to do in certain locations on the T&E side, but it's really for attrition, not for growth. We've got a lot of capacity to grow at our current levels.

And then we don't talk about it a lot. We talk about the T&E productivity. But if you look at our salaried workforce over the last 2 years, we're down below double digits. In that workforce. And that's again, really trying to drive efficiency and productivity throughout the organization. But the bigger, I think, levers kind of on the T&E side, it's really just hiring for attrition and trying to maintain this consistent service product. And when the volume comes, we're ready to handle it. We've got a lot of latent capacity on the network.

Yes. I think you'll probably see it like last year, a little bit of leakage on the T&E side. And while volumes may be in kind of that flattish range, you'll probably see net leakage a little bit that really translates into the productivity that product we have.

I wouldn't say we're deliberately trying to keep a buffer on the network. I think generally, we drive more efficiency and productivity every year so we can absorb a little bit more attrition. And when volumes come, then you probably need to be adding a little bit more. But every railroad is going to keep a little bit of buffer to make sure that you're resilient and [ Jim ] even talks about that with at UP. Despite how low his operating ratio is with all that length of haul advantage they have and scale advantage, they talk about that, too. I mean that's just smart railroading. And you've got to be able to recover when you have a pump in the night.

But -- and the key is really just keeping that trainee pipeline going. You can't -- it's something that we found out couple of years ago, the hard way to cut that off, it takes a very, very long time to rebuild that back up.

Right. That's a good point. Mark, just in terms of the merger itself, you've been talking to Jim and team for a while now. Just be curious to hear your thoughts like at this stage, what have you learned different this may be a little bit more exciting or opportunities that you didn't quite fully appreciate it when this conversation was first starting.

I think what's been kind of refreshing and interesting is when you look at the cultures. I mean, we're obviously two very different railroads that came up with different histories we are a roll-up of, gosh, probably 100 different railroads over the past 200 years, and Norfolk Southern was born in 1982 with the combination of Norfolk and Western and the Southern Railway Company that had very different cultures, and they came together under the Thoroughbred brand and very effectively, where Union Pacific was created in basically 1862 by Lincoln with the vision to become a transcontinental railroad. And obviously, we're looking to try to fulfill that dream.

But when you start to bring the teams together and you start to -- there's limits to what we can do right now, because we're not going to cross lines and done jumping in all of that. But we can start to benchmark a little and start to work on, obviously, the application together. And then we work on integration planning together, not integration work, but integration planning. And you start to see that at the core, they're railroaders on both companies.

And you got a great Southern culture at Norfolk Southern, you've got a great Midwestern culture. Those are two great cultures that our country has of people who are considerate, they're kind, they're respectful of one another, and they're working on trying to truly benchmark objectively what the best from each place is.

So that's been kind of encouraging, and I just had a call this to get an update on kind of where the integration planning is you run it with us, Jason, things are progressing really well. So I'm encouraged by that. I really am is how well the teams are working.

And I come from -- obviously, spent 30 years in a different industry, more cutthroat industry, very acquisitive. We did a lot of M&A. I did a lot of personal M&A. And a lot of times, you're buying competitors at a hostile view you and kind of businesses from adjacent industries and trying to integrate those companies has been a challenge.

This is different this is railroaders, and we're just bringing together and clicking the Lego set together to create something that covers the country compared to some of the stuff I've seen in the past and other Heck, I spent more than 6 months of my career in Korea, trying to integrate an acquisition from LG, the giant, who -- this was after the agent financial crisis 1998 wanted nothing to do with being merged with a western company and trying to carve out talent from that mothership who didn't really want to leave the mothership to come be part of this big western conglomerate was painful.

And -- so I'm just encouraged because I come from a different vantage point that I've seen what hard is. I've seen how challenging integrations can be or marriages can be, and this is something that I think is almost like a Lego set.

So a big part of the Lego set coming together, a big reason for part of the thesis at least, is truckload conversion over time and as you know, in the past, it's not really how it's worked out in the industry for a bunch of different reasons, some of which we already talked about. But I guess, how would -- and we've seen that with CPKC, like they've fallen short of their goal as well. So like how is this time different? And I guess, do we really need this new Lego set to really drive this type of growth for the industry overall and obviously, for this combination?

I've spent a better part of the year thinking -- actually, since I joined the industry 5 years ago, trying to understand why we can't grow as an industry. And what is the unique obstacle. And for the early part, all I heard was just you need better service, consistent service and then customers will come to you. Well it's true we hadn't always provided that and we haven't always been reliable. But when we started to provide it, you get a little bit that come back to you, but you realize that it's not coming at you in waves. It really isn't that there's something else there.

When you start to talk to customers instead of just your staff to understand why, they start giving you the real answers, which is just truck is just so much easier. It's so much more convenient.

And yes, I know I got to pay 10%, 15% more, but I can go nonstop service, and I can have visibility of my shipment throughout the journey, where with you guys, you have to interchange it with somebody else, I don't have visibility, and it's -- I lose time in the middle, and it's just painful. And so when you start to understand that and then you look, and I've kind of done a lot of analysis on this. Would you look and you say, "Okay. So over the past 20 years or so, U.S. railroad volumes are down double digit", okay? Canadian railroads are not. One has grown, the others grown modestly. And aside from having a transcontinental railroad in Canada and the pleasure of coming in and competing in the U.S. as well and in one case, going all the way down to Mexico. What else is different?

Well, the U.S., we've got these artificial barriers that were created in 2000, when we consolidated the industries Post Staggers Act from 80 to 2,000, we kind of frozen time all that consolidation, which, by the way, spurred tremendous growth in this industry from 1980 through 2000, as we were consolidating it spurred growth and a revival of health of the U.S. railroads because they were all failing. They were -- they had bad safety records, and they were financially failing.

You allow that consolidation to have benefit from the economies of scale, volumes went up, rates actually went down, okay? And then we snap the line because integrations got screwed up by the railroads. And in 2000, the regulators understandably said, all right, no more, moratorium in place, and then they rewrote those rules. And now we're frozen in time with two in the East, two in the West. And I'm telling you that watershed in the middle that interference that's been created on the Mississippi River is the reason why I think it's the biggest impediment for why we can't grow. It's the obstacle. And that's what I hear from customers, too. It's not just instinct. So that's why I think that this is different.

CPKC truckload conversion Look, I don't know the details. I don't think it's an apples-to-apples comparison. I mean the -- it's largely their north-south they've got different dynamics at play for sure. What we're talking about intra watershed, if you're trying to move product 100 miles east of the Mississippi to 100 miles west of the Mississippi, rail is not even in the thought process. Because you're going to have an interchange it's going to take 48 hours of extra time and those costs are going to be significant. Now you break that down and you create this fluidity of single-line that CPKC talked about. Customers are 2 to 3x more likely to use single line service over just traditional rail as it is today. So that's why I'm so convicted on this.

So I was at the TPM conference a couple of weeks ago. One interesting thing I heard was this perception at least at the this merger would go through that the West Coast ports would be net beneficiaries. I don't -- I guess, because UP is the technically the acquirer here, but like that seemed a little off to me, but I think it was maybe just people not knowing exactly where the freight would land and who would serve which ports. So is that something -- I mean, there's so many stakeholders involved in this transaction. But how do you think about the ports and maybe in terms of reaching the watershed, you get they're easier from one side to the other and it just more options. But it's another stakeholder group to manage.

Yes. I would trust your instincts, Brian, because they're pretty good. I think the ports in general are going to benefit all the ports in general are going to benefit. So whether it's New York and New Jersey that we serve, down to Virginia, down to Savannah, to Charleston to Jacksonville, all of those ports are going to benefit from having deeper access to the West, okay?

And it's one of the things Jim and I talked about early on was this is not some desire to take out the East Coast by owning an East Coast railroad. The railroads aren't the reason why steamship lines choose ports, okay? The freight is going to find the most frictionless way to move. And we're just going to provide better optionality, deeper access into the nation from both sides. And frankly, okay, give us an option to now start bringing the U.S. freight that's currently going up to Canada ports, back to the U.S. So let's not forget that. There's a fair amount of freight that's being imported to the U.S. that comes via the Canadian ports. They have single line service and then they drop it down into the U.S. So this is another area of opportunity, whether it's on the East Coast or on the West Coast.

How do you think technology? I mean, the rail industry isn't really known for being tech forward, maybe it's putting it kindly, but can technology really play -- it kind of make a differentiating role here in the integration if it were to go forward because we still have air brakes from the 1800s for good reason, but I think there's probably some room for this to improve. So could this be a catalyst for greater technology adoption.

Yes. I mean I think you're right. I think when you think of a railroad, you don't think of cutting-edge technology, but I think there's a lot of things that we've done specifically. You think about these -- our digital portals that we have where trains are going through at full speed, and we're taking thousands of pictures a second in identifying defects in that train or things that need to be fixed. It's truly -- it is cutting edge, what we're doing, the algorithms that we've developed there, I think that's best in the industry there. So I think that's an example.

I know Mark is passionate about that. He's seen has gone out and visited all these locations. And I think there's other areas where we're using AI and other spaces in the business. So I think it's -- again, I know that's the perception, but I think that's changing in what we do. I also think that both entities when you kind of move to the merger, I think we're both sophisticated technology organizations, and we've both been through different upgrades and things in the past. And I think those experiences that we've had are going to help us when we do integrate and as we start working through in our integration planning, taking all those experiences that we've had in putting specific to this to make sure that this goes as smoothly as possible.

So those -- the portals are really remarkable. I mean the concept has been around for a while, but taking photos of moving trains have been around for a while. What we're using are ultra high-speed cameras with stadium lighting that's getting images of trains at full speed with incredible resolution. And then we've written AI or data scientists have written algorithms that are able to take a standard image, this is what it should look like and find exceptions in those images and highlighted immediately sends an alert before the trains even out of the portal sends an alert to our wayside desk, who then validates that this is not a false positive that, yes, there's a missing cotter pin here, and there's a dragging brake line and this and that.

And then we use our judgment as to, okay, that can wait until the next stop. It's not a critical issue. Or this issue, we got to stop that train right away. And it's really remarkable. Our data scientists have written 85 different algorithms. The number keeps climbing as they get new ideas. They work really tightly. These aren't just data scientists sitting in a room. They're sitting in a room with mechanical experts who are telling them, it would be great if we could see this. And so these guys and gals are learning the industry and they're working hand in glove. And if you come to Atlanta again, we'll show you the boardroom and these guys will display the exactly what they're doing. It's really, really neat stuff.

And that's why when you look at our accident rate, single biggest driver why our accident rate has plummeted. And our mainline accident rate leads the industry 2 years in a row now, it's pretty exciting stuff.

That said, I'm more excited about what AI is going to be able to do for us in the future. I mean you can think about using AI to really help us optimize our train plans, right? Help us figure out how to get out when you have issues from weather or whatever in your out of balance how to help us find solutions, there are judgments being made distributed throughout this organization every day to try to resolve unique circumstances, but not everyone has the training to use the right judgment. And you have a fair amount of turnover, so that legacy knowledge is really important to kind of capture. And so if you can start capturing that using AI and have quicker, faster real-time solutions, you can do exciting things, I believe.

And I think that's why -- another reason why I do think growth in this industry is between the merger and the advanced use of technology, we can start providing meaningful advances. And I think it's critical because we're also fighting against a trucking industry that is advancing using technology including autonomous vehicles, right? So we have to have some level of modal equity here, let us use this technology to advance us, let us merge because we're competing against trucking who is unencumbered by those restrictions.

We'll be talking to one of them later today.

All right. I ask them about it.

We'll do. Well, I'll take you up on that war room visit to see the pictures. But for now, we have to wrap it there. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. I appreciate you guys coming.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Also note that this call is being recorded on Thursday, January 29, 2026.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important.

Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section, along with a reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio. Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis. Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Good morning, and thanks for joining. With me today are John Orr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampey, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get into the numbers, I want to recognize our Thorough Bread team. 2025 was a demanding year in every sense, and our people have met it with resilience, focus and commitment.

They kept serving customers, improving our railroad, and they did it while tuning out the noise and concentrating on what matters most. Look, Q4 played out in an environment where volume was clearly softer than anyone had predicted. But even so, we controlled the controllables. Costs landed exactly in line with the guidance we provided last quarter, reflecting disciplined execution across the company. And while there's been heavy external attention around the merger, I'm really proud that the team maintained its focus on the business, prioritizing safety, dependable service and strong cost control. Now looking back at the full year, 2025 was dizzying.

It started with a challenging winter followed by persistent tariff uncertainty and then competitive dynamics tied to the announced merger. In the back half, the macro softened further and freight flows shifted. But through it all, our operating foundation held. Safety, our most important work, continued to advance and service was consistent and reliable. We expanded our digital train inspection program, so now more than 3/4 of our traffic each month is scanned by portal technology. We had 0 reportable mainline derailments in the fourth quarter.

Let me repeat that, 0 reportable mainline derailments in the quarter. Our investments in our one-of-a-kind digital inspection technology, our enhanced processes as well as investments we've made in our people are collectively paying dividends. John will share more detail, but based on current data, 2025 stands as our best year in more than a decade when it comes to train accident rates. That progress comes from better technology tools, rigorous standards and a culture that treats safety as a value, not a statistic.

A year ago, I spoke about our desire to adopt a total quality management mindset at the railroad. And in our results, we are now seeing evidence of what we call total quality railroading. On cost and productivity, we did what we said we would do. And in several areas, we did better. We moved 3% more GTMs in 2025 with 4% fewer employees. That's 7% productivity. Our network is humming. And in 2025, we delivered steady efficiency gains with improved fluidity, asset utilization and day-to-day execution that our customers can feel. These aren't one-off wins, but they're the product of sustained discipline and a team that knows how to execute. With that, I'll turn it over to the rest of our leadership team to walk through the quarter in more detail. John, let's start with you.

Good morning, and thanks, Mark. I want to repeat Mark's opening comments, recognizing the outstanding railroaders across all of Norfolk Southern. Today, I will highlight their resilience, discipline and committed leadership that produced the transformational results that I'll share with you today. 2025 was a defining year for operations. We strengthened the core of the franchise, delivered measurable improvements in safety and service and advanced the structural changes required under PSR 2.0 to build a more resilient and efficient railroad. Despite macroeconomic volatility, weather-related disruptions and the operational transitions required by the zero-based plan, the team executed with discipline and intention.

The progress achieved in 2025 reflects the maturing operational culture, one grounded in accountability, transparency and intentional leadership and positioned us to enter 2026 with stronger fundamentals, improved cost discipline and a more reliable network for our customers. Turning to Slide 5, safety as an operating system. In 2025, we closed the year with exceptional safety performance. As we enter '26, operations strategy is clear: a relentless commitment to our core value of safety, a relentless focus on service and decisive actions to operate with cost discipline, positioning Norfolk Southern to compete and win. The data points on this slide represent a structurally safer, more resilient railroad, poised, deliver consistent and reliable performance. Our [indiscernible] reportable injury ratio improved 15% to 1.0, and reportable accidents improved 31% to $2.19, reflecting meaningful sustained progress that underscores the effectiveness of our transformation. We closed the year with a Capstone and tremendous momentum, delivering a quarter with 0 reportable mainline derailments, finishing the year with an industry-leading 0.43 ratio.

For the quarter, our mainline accident rate dropped to 0.13%, a 71% improvement year-over-year. Taken together, these results are balanced and intentional. We are developing generational railroaders through the Thoroughbred Academy, placing people in the right roles with the right workload and reinforcing organizational clarity.

[indiscernible] Authority is respected and safety accountability is synchronized at every level. Turning to Slide 6. Disciplined, scheduled, operations. Our PSR 2.0 transformation has been rapid, multidimensional and disciplined. It is an operating model designed to simultaneously deliver safety, service and productivity. In 2025, we focused on delivering high-quality service and reducing costs in response to variability. One of our most effective productivity levers, Australian operations, increasing train size while lowering the horsepower used to move those trains.

Throughout this effort, we are intentional about protecting service performance and keeping the network operating at a low cost structure. This strategy delivered meaningful results Train load increased 4%. Horsepower per ton decreased nearly 10%. Fuel efficiency improved 4% and GTMs per crew start rose 2.5%. [indiscernible] have matured into a core competency, improving over-the-road performance and tackling complex mechanical and need for speed challenges. Year-over-year, unscheduled stops declined 31% and through zero-based plan migrations. Q4 '24 versus Q4 '25, we reduced qualified T&E head count by 7% and 6% for the full year. Let's go to the ballast line for a minute. Our new wheel integrity system introduced just last quarter, has already proven its value, pinpointing a critical external vendor casting flaw on a wheel set that had been in service for less than a week. The new system internally developed by NS coupled with our relentless root cause investigation with stakeholders, confirmed there were 7 additional brand-new wheel sets across North America with the same manufacturing defect. Our findings and the collective actions of stakeholders led to an immediate industry-wide recall of these defects across North America. This is a powerful example of how Norfolk Southern's advanced digital capabilities, help us solve real problems with scale, speed and accountability.

From an infrastructure point of view, Mega [ work blocks ] continue to elevate productivity. In 2025, we delivered our $2.2 billion capital programs on time and on budget. Network reliability derived from our PSR 2.0 flywheel, has allowed us to reduce our 2026 capital envelope by a further 14%, bringing our 2026 capital budget down to approximately $1.9 billion, delivering a 2-year $450 million planned capital reduction, while supporting a safe and reliable network ready for future growth.

Turning to Slide 7, continuous measurable improvement. Our team delivered a clear and compelling results, even after raising our cost takeout commitment to $200 million during the year, we outperformed that higher target, delivering $216 million in full year savings. As we have said before, our team is never satisfied. As you can see in the chart, we exceeded our 2025 cost takeout targets, and we are once again raising our 2026 cost takeout savings commitment from $100 million to $150 million bringing our 3-year cumulative total cost takeout to approximately $650 million. This underscores the strength of our PSR 2.0 transformation and our committed leadership to deliver.

Turning to 2026. We are intensifying efforts to lower dwell for both cars and locomotives. We will apply our new zero-based terminal methodology to terminals with outsized consumption of core resources and assets. By challenging and strengthening processes, our BT will instill factory management mindset, empowering terminal teams to operate their yards like small businesses. Supporting this shift are our clarity camps, which will equip frontline supervisors to think like owners, understanding how their decisions influence cost, how they drive profitability and how to do so while maintaining industry-leading safety performance. They will gain a deeper appreciation for the cost of every asset and help build a bottom-up culture of disciplined cost control. I'm proud of how our team performed in 2025. They embrace change, delivered results and strengthened the foundation of this railroad. We have talent. We have 19,000 railroaders who deliver safety with intention, where discipline drives performance where accountability builds trust and where culture fuels pride. Our people are propelling our PSR 2.0 transformation, shift by shift, mile by mile with intention and clarity.

Now I will pass the mic to Ed.

Thanks, John. Let's move to Slide 9. Overall, this quarter presented challenges for both volume and for revenue. As you can see on the slide, merchandise led the way, although our success was tempered by challenging market conditions, within intermodal with persistently weak export coal markets. Overall volume for the fourth quarter was down 4%, driving a 2% reduction in total revenue. The volume impacts were partially offset by positive mix with RPU increasing 2% year-over-year. Now within merchandise, volume increased 1% from a year ago, driven by auto and our chemicals markets. Merchandise revenue less fuel grew 2% year-over-year, reflecting strength in both volume and price, supported by our strong service product that John mentioned.

RPU less fuel grew 1% year-over-year within the segment as negative mix offset core pricing, most notably mix within the chemicals franchise. In our intermodal business, shifting market conditions during the quarter drove a 7% decline in volume. RPU was up slightly at 1% as we continue to compete in an unexceptional pricing environment, leading to a 6% decline in revenue.

Let's look at coal. Volume was up as increased electricity demand, favorable natural gas prices and regulatory support gave strength to our utility markets which was partially offset by reduced volume in export. So while volume was up 1%, revenue was down 11% as lower seaborne coal prices drove RPU less fuel down by 12%.

If you'll turn with me now to Slide 10, let's review the full year. Walking left or right on the waterfall chart, we achieved an outstanding year in our merchandise business, growing revenue less fuel by $287 million or 4% through volume growth and pricing discipline. To underscore the strength, we delivered record annual revenue and record revenue, excluding fuel across each of the underlying merchandise business groups for the full year 2025.

Now I want to drill into this one just a bit. We delivered a record year for our automotive franchise, setting a record for total revenue and revenue less fuel. And this performance was enabled by strong train performance and car order fill thanks to our operations group as well as focused efforts by our customer logistics group to reduce on terminal dwell. The key result of these combined efforts was a 4% year-over-year improvement in equipment cycle times and substantially greater terminal fluidity, allowing us to take advantage of the favorable market conditions and deliver the record revenues that I just noted.

A really nice job by everyone and Bob and our customers took note gaining confidence in our service throughout the year. Back to the numbers. Intermodal revenue finished flat as we weathered trade volatility throughout the year and second half share losses due to merger-related competitor activity. Seaborne coal market weakness throughout the year drove a $108 million year-over-year decline even as utility coal volumes increased in 2025. Finally, volatile fuel surcharge revenue represented $134 million of drag for the year. These factors combined to produce a modest increase to overall volume and revenue. Moving to Slide 11, we have our market outlook.

Like last quarter, we continue to navigate an uncertain economic environment. For our merchandise markets, we expect a mixed outlook for vehicle production due to affordability challenges and the fading EV incentives. Overall manufacturing activity remains mixed with output forecast to expand modestly amid ongoing economic uncertainty. Elevated natural gas fracking and drilling activity in the Marcellus Utica is contributing to stronger demand across noncrude chemical energy sectors, driving increased engagement and business development of both new and existing customers. Looking to our intermodal markets, import volumes are expected to remain soft due to continued tariff volatility and evolving trade pressures.

Warehousing capacity is increasing as companies deplete inventory backlogs and truck capacity remains oversupplied. All these factors plus an enhanced competitive environment in response to our merger announcement, shape our restrained view for intermodal. Seaborne coal prices have remained pressured with significant uncertainty surrounding export trade, but we expect that utility demand to remain elevated due to continued strong demand for electricity generation in our service area, along with supportive natural gas pricing. All right. Let's quickly turn to Slide 12, while we're on the topic of coal. We're proud to be partners with Warrior Met Coal in servicing their new Blue Creek facility in Alabama.

Back in 2024, we noted that the mine was in development, and we're equally proud now to have attended the formal ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month. As the mining operations, the belts and the rail load-out are now fully operational, we are pleased to be ramping up rail service and delivering high-quality metallurgical coal to markets around the world. As always, we want to thank all of our customers for their continued partnership and their business.

The entire [indiscernible] is aligned around delivering the service that our customers need every day, building trust as a vital partner in their supply chains. And with that, I'll hand it over to Jason to review our financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start with a reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I will speak to today on Slide 14. Total costs attributable to the Eastern Ohio incident were $29 million, which included $24 million of recoveries under our property insurance policies. In addition, we recorded $65 million in merger-related costs consisting primarily of legal and professional services and employee retention accruals. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was 65.3%.

And from an EPS perspective, we earned $3.22 per share. Moving to Slide 15. You'll find the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year and last quarter. Both comparisons reflecting a degradation in the operating ratio due to the top line headwinds as Ed just discussed. The drivers of the revenue decline are similar to what we discussed last quarter. And additionally, as we previously guided, we absorbed a full quarter's worth of impact from competitor responses to the merger in the fourth quarter. Expenses were favorable by 1% in both periods, primarily due to 1 large land sale in the quarter that benefited operating expenses by $85 million. Those year-over-year expense variances are laid out on Slide 16. Overall, we had guided to quarterly expenses of $2 billion to $2.1 billion, and absent the large land sale that we weren't counting on closing in the quarter, we were right within that range.

Notably, inflationary pressures we have experienced throughout 2025 in wages, materials and depreciation continued to be headwinds in the quarter. That, coupled with timing of certain expense activity drove increases primarily within purchased services and materials. Nonetheless, we continue to focus on the controllables, delivering significant improvements in fuel efficiency and continued strong labor productivity.

Lastly, I'd point out we did have some recoveries in the quarter associated with storm damage incurred throughout the year. All in, while there were some puts and takes in the quarter, we are pleased with how our team handled a dynamic environment. Turning to full year results on Slide 17. You'll note favorable performance across all metrics compared to last year. However, not in the way we originally intended. A year ago, we were projecting 3% revenue growth, which didn't materialize, but we did control the controllables. .

We had good cost discipline and exceeded our original productivity targets, as John just discussed, by over $65 million. In addition, while the timing of large land sales are hard to predict, the actions we took to monetize these underutilized assets during the third and fourth quarters helped to mitigate the operating income shortfall from the weak macro. The fourth quarter and full year also benefited from the resolution of a state tax issue, which increased net income and EPS by $50 million and $0.22, respectively.

Overall, the bottom line grew by 5% compared to last year. Finally, moving to cash flow on Slide 18. The we generated $2.2 billion in free cash flow, an increase of almost $500 million over the prior year. In addition, our free cash flow conversion was very strong with the highest conversion rate since 2021. As we had guided to, we spent $2.2 billion on our capital plan, a 7.5% decrease from 2024. Going forward, we are planning for a $1.9 billion CapEx spend in 2026 with continued focus on the safety and resiliency of our network.

I'll hand it back to Mark to wrap it up.

Okay. Thanks, Jason. Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a clear view of how we are approaching the road ahead. With the amount of change and uncertainty around us, given the demand environment and, of course, the pending merger, we are keeping our team focused on simple priorities for 2026. We will prioritize safety. We've got to keep our employees and our communities safe. We must continue to deliver consistent and reliable service. and we will control costs by driving productivity across the network, all while we fight for every dollar of quality revenue that is available.

While we are seeing long-awaited stabilization in truck pricing, the impacts of shifting tariff policies remain uncertain, and many customers continue to adjust to fluid conditions. So the macro backdrop remains hard to read, but we are staying sharply focused on the fundamentals. For the year ahead, we expect our cost base to be in the range of $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion, with an ability to accommodate a variety of volume growth scenarios within this cost envelope.

We are also reducing capital spending by nearly $300 million to $1.9 billion, reflecting a prudent approach in this environment, while still supporting the reliability and safety of the network. Now let me close with a brief update on the merger. As you heard from Jim on Tuesday, we are working closely with UP to include the additional information requested by the STB and submit an augmented application, taking the necessary time to ensure that it's thorough. We remain committed to working constructively with all stakeholders throughout the regulatory review. We continue to firmly believe in the benefits of creating the nation's first TransCon rail network, one that connects to the United States from East to West and gives shippers a more competitive single-line rail option to ship across and within the watershed.

Growth has alluded the U.S. rails, and I strongly believe that this merger is a necessary catalyst to grow, helping us recapture freight from the highway while supporting the reindustrialization of our country and strengthening our supply chains while offering better opportunities for employees across a unified network. We will have a more efficient, flexible and reliable railroad, providing single-line access to more than 100 ports connecting to global markets and 10 gateways to markets in Canada and Mexico.

So to wrap, as we move into 2026, the priorities for our team are clear: focus on the preservation of safety, protect the excellent service that our customers count on maintained tight control of our cost structure and compete hard for quality revenue. That's how we will continue delivering value both at Norfolk Southern today and as part of a stronger future Transcontinental network.

So thanks for your time and your continued confidence in our team. We'll open it up to questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question will be from Tom Wadewitz at UBS.

I wanted to ask you a bit about the -- how you're thinking about volume. You gave us the expense guide. I just want to see if you could kind of point us to an area for volume and revenue? And also, I guess, within that, how are you thinking about, I guess, the strategy on volume? Obviously, you took a bit of a hit from the shift in some of the JB Hunt business over to CSX. I'm just wondering, and it's a weak overall freight backdrop, right? So I'm wondering, do you get more aggressive in your focus on growing volume or those efforts? Or do you kind of say, look, we'll just kind of deliver good service and we'll see what the market does, kind of take what the market brings to us.

Tom, thanks a lot for the question. And look, like I mentioned, it's a tough demand environment out there. It's actually pretty hard to predict. As we go into 2026, just you have to understand, we're also swallowing about one point of revenue headwind from the enhanced competition that already exists out there and some of the losses that we've had because of that new competitive environment. we feel really good coming off of 25% based on our performance and merchandise where we grew healthy, and we also took share. Obviously, Intermodal was the battleground for us where we face some real challenges. So it's a little bit hard to say, and I'll hand it to Ed to give you his perspective. But right now, we're really focused on just maintaining our cost within the guidance range that we gave you, where we can accommodate a variety of different volume scenarios.

And so we can handle growth up to several points. And frankly, whatever revenue we get, it's going to come with really strong incrementals because we've got the capacity. But Ed, why don't you build on that?

Sure. And thank you, Tom, for the question. Look, we know what we have to do in '26. We got a great record on safety right now, and our services is where we want it to be, and that's what our customers have really come to depend on. And so we're going to fight for revenue for every dollar, both in terms of share as well as pricing. And frankly, I expect to continue the momentum that we've had in merchandise, particularly around our price model. .

Now that's going to be offset probably by intermodal, which still looks sluggish when you think about all the trucks that are still out there on the highway and the enhanced competition that Mark mentioned. And frankly, we don't see a lot of support from coal going forward, at least in the near term in terms of price. So '25 is a volatile year and November and December, in particular, we really had a loss of momentum across the industry, I would argue, in terms of volume and demand. So it's really hard to predict where '26 is going to land. But again, as Mark said, we know we got a 1% headwind to start with. And we think softness is probably going to continue in the first half at least. We're going to wait and see what happens, but we are ready.

Next question will be from Brandon Oglenski at Barclays. .

Mark, maybe you want to reply to some of your competitors because we had a call last night where maybe the view was that this merger really doesn't enhance rail-to-rail competition maybe customers aren't really asking for it. So maybe you want to provide a little bit of insight from your perspective?

Sure, Brandon. Look, the railroads came out, the competing railroads came out pretty early on opposed to this before we even filed an application, okay? Before we could even lay out the case, there was a little bit of a panic reaction. And let's face it. They're all taking position that they believe will benefit their own business. I understand it, but it's not really -- however, it's couched, it's not really positions that are based on customer interest or benefiting the industry. I feel when you look at it, there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of scare tactics that are out there, and those are being circulated by the other railroads, and we're addressing those. .

But when it comes to prices, as an example, those are based on market principles, not simply the elimination of arbitrary geographic barriers that exist like the Mississippi River. Remember, the customers aren't losing options. BNSF, they're still competing in the West with the combined railroad. CSX is still competing in the East against the combined railroad. They all say alliances work just as well as a merger, but then they've -- so they're quickly going up with each other in various alliances and they took business from us. It's enhancing competition. No doubt about it. So their arguments are deeply inconsistent. Ultimately, they know that to compete with seamless single line service, they've got to compete harder, including likely lowering their prices. And that's what customers should be excited about. And frankly, that's what scares the other railroads. And that's why you hear such a backlash about this merger.

I would argue we're on the side of mobility here because we're giving customers more options than they have today. And the customers I speak with, they know it. They -- really, they're rolling their eyes at a lot of the noise that they're hearing from the others. They actually want deeper access into the watershed via rail to new and unserved markets or underserved markets, so they can move the freight onto the railroad from the costlier highway solutions. So that's basically it from my perspective.

Next question will be from Jason Seidl of Cowen.

Sticking on the sort of the competitive nature. Do you guys still think that there's going to be a little bit of bleed of freight to some of that competitive environment that exists in the marketplace as we move throughout the year and sort of what steps are you taking to sort of stem the tide? And then maybe if -- as a quick follow-up, the $300 million reduction in CapEx, can you talk about where it comes from?

Sure. Yes. I mean more bleeding, I would say, we've got to lap the impact of what happened in the September time frame. And as we lap that, we're looking at, like I said, a full point of headwind. Could there be more? Well, I mean, like I mentioned, we are in a new enhanced competitive environment. And we're fighting back. We've offered new services. And will the other railroads compete harder? Probably. But right now, what we've got line of sight to is about 1% of revenue headwind. But I've kind of told the team, we're going to fight like hell for quality revenue here. So we want to get attractive carloads, and we want to try to optimize our revenue line as best as we can. We're not sitting back and take body blows. So we're going to fight like how we're, like I said, offering new products at the same time. So Ed, do you want to add on to that a little bit?

Yes. Not much to add. You think about products like our new Louisville service in conjunction with UP as well as what we just announced of an Air Massachusetts, which will enhance the competitive landscape in England. That's just 2 examples of what we're doing to fight back. There's more in the pipeline and we'll have those out as soon as we're ready. Frankly, Mark hit it, of what we know it's about 1 point of headwind. Customers, as Mark said, they're going to choose the options that make the most sense for them economically, and that's what we're focused on.

Jason, do you want to talk about CapEx?

Yes. Yes. So, Jason, thanks for the question. I think just to be clear, our capital spending as it's always been and as we will continue to as we move forward is really focused on the safety and resilience of our network that I talked about. We've also done a lot of work over the last couple of years to build the foundation for growth. You've heard us talk about that in strategic areas like the 3 down in Alabama to support the Warrior Coal partnership as an example. So we're now benefiting from a lot of those investments. .

Specific to the reduction in capital that you've seen not only over the last year, but our projection for 2026. It's really the result of asset efficiency and the gains we've made from a network fluidity perspective. It's really allowed us to pull back on some of the equipment spending as we're turning our assets more quickly. John, I think maybe some color on locomotives and the capacity that we've created.

Yes, Jason, I couldn't say it any better than you did. It starts with our productivity. We're sweating every asset accountability for the consumption of our resources. And the value we've generated over the last, call it, 2 years, is really paying dividends in that. So we're able to protect all of the core investments to harden the network from an engineering perspective, harden and moderns our technology structure, and then take some reinvestments in our growth and our capacity so that we're able to grow, be poised for growth for Ed without having to do those capacity projects. And as we've committed to, as always, as our business pipeline comes to fruition, we'll make those smart strategic and very tactical investments from a capital perspective, very, very specifically. So we have no regrets approach to things, and we're going to sweat every asset.

Next question will be from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

I was hoping maybe you could unpack the OpEx guidance, maybe help us walk from, I guess, the roughly $8 billion in 2025 to where you see it going in 2026. And I know it's difficult to predict the top line from a volume perspective given the macro and competitive forces. But I guess, do you see a path to year-over-year earnings growth? I guess the OpEx number gives us a little bit of context of what the potential earnout of the business could be? I'm just kind of curious how you think about year-over-year earnings growth in that context.

Jason? .

Yes. Let me start with the OpEx side. So when I look at this, Chris, I'd really put the expense drivers into 3 buckets. So first, we've got some outsized inflation. You think about, I think, the latest forecast I saw was about 2.6%, 2.7%. We're expecting inflation more in the 4% range. So we've got things like our wage inflation. We had a 4% increase last July that's coming in still into the first half of this year and another 3.75% as we move into the back half. Our health and welfare rates are up over 12%. We've got insurance premium increases. So you put all those things together...

25% insurance premium increase. .

That's right. That's right. And so you put all that together, and that's about a 4% increase in inflation. In addition, from a land sale perspective, we're expecting some more normalized land sales. We had 2 large ones that we called out in the third and fourth quarters. But even without those, we had some smaller sales that totaled about $70 million in 2025. And next year, we're really back to that $30 million to $40 million run rate. So that's another headwind. Finally, the third bucket is productivity. So we talked about another $150 million of productivity that we're going after here, and that's on the back of $500 million that we've already achieved over 2 years, almost hitting our full 3-year guide within that 2-year time frame. So you put all those 3 things together. And then I think when you think about the range, it's really based on a range of various volume outcomes that Mark talked about that we're really ready to handle in any scenario.

Yes. So I mean in the end of the day, we got higher inflation than obviously, any of us want. So we've tasked ourselves with going after more productivity than we originally had in the line of sight, but there's still some leakage that grow the OpEx line.

Next question will be from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

So Mark, anything from the STB process or rejection of the application. Anything in there actually concern you as it relates to sort of ultimate merger approval odds. And then just separately, Mark, I've heard you now say fight for business 5x, including, I think, 1 fight like hell. I haven't really heard that language before. What does this ultimately mean from a pricing standpoint? Do we need to think about what are we seeing with price right now? Do we need to think about price just differently right now given this backdrop?

All right. I'll start with the first point. Obviously, the turnback from the STB was not what we wanted, but all the precedent and history shows that this is what typically happens. It's hard to get this right the first time around. Nobody really does. When an application of 7,000 pages and marked in complete, you feel kind of bumped about it, but we shouldn't we shouldn't be too too surprised.

And so the beauty is they've given us the path to completeness. We know exactly what we need to do, and we're working on it. And as kind of Jim mentioned on Tuesday, we'll -- we're going to get it in and we're going to get it in right. We're going to -- we're working hard together to make sure that it's thorough. And at the end of the day, the STB has made it very, very clear they are not reviewing. They did not review this based on the merits. They reviewed it based on completeness. So don't read anything else into it other than it was incomplete. So they've given us the answer key to completeness we'll get it done. So we're not too worried about that.

Yes, look, when I say fight for business, it's a rallying pride of this organization to go out and continue what we did as an example in merchandise where we had an excellent year last year. We grew our merchandise business, and we grew yields. So we're really proud that we have that double coupon and it's a rallying cry. We're going to remain disciplined. We actually had very, very good yield performance in the areas under our control. pricing -- core pricing was really good, and the volume growth was really good in merchandise and auto.

It was kind of overwhelmed and offset by the challenges that we had in seaborne coal pricing as well as fuel. So that kind of neutralized what you see a little bit on that great top line performance we had in merch and auto, in particular. So that's kind of what I mean and I wouldn't read anything into it. There's -- we need quality revenue. And you heard me say that too. So we're not going to do anything other than what we've been doing this past year, which is to fight like hell to offer new products and create a compelling environment for customers to come on to our railroad.

It will fight for every revenue dollar. .

Yes. Quality revenue dollar.

Yes.

Next question will be from Bascom Majors at Susquehanna.

Just a follow up on the fight like hell commentary. Can you talk about where you see maybe more tactical opportunities where there are some potential wins in the merchandise portfolio that hits those quality revenue thresholds. And on the other side, the enhanced competition sort of leakage from some of the competitive actions you've talked a lot and sized up the J.B. Hunt thing. Is there anything else you think might be on the horizon that can move the needle in 2026 there?

Ed, why don't you talk about that? .

Sure. I'll start back at the beginning of your question, which was what do we think we can grow. We had really good tailwind behind us in our automotive markets as well as some of our discrete chemical markets throughout the year. That includes nonpetroleum chemicals as well as some of our energy markets and waste markets. We think about automotive in a couple of different ways. One is we serve more direct auto origins than I think just about anybody. And because of the network and the way it's running right now, which I talked about during the prepared remarks, we were able to take everything that our auto partners can throw at us in terms of volume. And that is a real testament to fluidity of the network. And as John mentioned, sweating every asset, that's what gave our partners in the industry, the confidence to deliver that volume to us because they know we can handle it, and that confidence increased throughout the year.

So I look at those markets and that kind of performance as a place where we're going to be able to continue to capitalize. We'll see what Intermodal does. We're 4.5 years into freight recession. And at some point, it's going to end if demand comes back and we're ready for that, too. And frankly, the utility markets, we think, for coal are going to be strong this year, like they were last year. Seaborne is going to be a tough 5 dose, another 5. So that's where we see the opportunities.

Next question will be from Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan.

Just a quick follow-up for Jason or Mark, how much retention expense do you have in your OpEx guide, maybe you can give us a little bit of color on how that's going, given some of the challenges you're talking about here? And then maybe for John, obviously, the STB has talked about some form of reciprocal switching. You've got the experience of your career in Canada. How do you think that would be applied? Or how will the impact be if it was applied as written in an Eastern network? What would you think would be some of the challenges that could come from that? And do you think you have to deal with this with or without M&A.

Jason, why don't you start?

Yes, Brian, on the retention dollars, so that's in our merger-related cost line item, which is excluded from a non-GAAP perspective. So the guide we gave you of $8.2 billion to $8.4 billion is excluding those amounts. .

John, do you want to talk a little bit?

Well, I think the proposed rule-making is really indicative of customers being dissatisfied with service in general in certain locations. And the good news is that we're building the case of great service and the focus we're putting on our franchise, the commitment we've made to our customers to deliver outsized service performance and value really moots the whole argument associated with that proposed rule making. They've got great service, there's no reason to want to go somewhere else. And it's a little different than in Canada, where you have 2 transcontinental railroads that don't give the options that customers have here in the U.S. So I'd say it's early. It's proposed rule-making. And I think there are 2 different distinct options. And from an Eastern Railway and really for the sector, our job is to perform with exceptional reliability with enough resilience to carry the planned and the emerging volumes that come with it. and to have the overall commitment to this -- to the ecosystem that we support. That's what PSR 2.0 does, and we're really proud of how we performed. My job is to give no customer any reason to want to talk to at about going somewhere else or anything else like that. So we're really, really pleased with the competitive service product we put out there. We always want to be better. Mark, is you guys hear the word fight a few times you get excited. We hear it every day here. And he's tenacious, on safety and service, and that's what we're all about. And that's why we have 19,000 committed railroaders with absolute clarity on what makes this company work, service and safety.

Next question will be from David Vernon at Bernstein.

I'm sorry. Moving on to Richa Hernan at Deutsche Bank.

So basically, what I wanted to talk about was, Mark, you said your cost target, the cost study you laid out is ready to absorb a variety of different revenue scenarios, including higher ones. Back of the envelope math for us suggests you need to grow revenues by like a pretty significant amount, call it, maybe mid-single digits to not see a deterioration in OR. Just is that correct? And is there a reasonable scenario you think that could get you there? And then just on that, if you are getting some revenue tailwinds, should we assume higher personnel expense or like you said, you've been doing a really good job on productivity. I think head count was down 4%, volume up 3%. Should we assume head count kind of can stay where it is if you potentially pick up extra revenue?

Yes. I'll let Jason talk to this. But I think when you look at the low end of our range, it's, I think, basically a 1.8% growth. So in spite of all of those inflation numbers that we gave you and other headwinds, the productivity really offsets a lot of it and leaves us with 1.8% growth. So that's where we kind of see a more moderate revenue outlook. And as you grow revenue, you might have some volumetric costs that bring you higher into that cost range. Now from a head count perspective, I think what you're going to continue to see is us continue to drip down a bit, especially if the volume isn't there. I mean we have to continue hiring our trainees, our conductor trainees to replenish the pool because we do have a fair amount of attrition, but there will still be net attrition. And I think we put that model out there in 2025. You saw incredible productivity. I think GTMs were up 3% and head count was down 4%. And that 7% productivity right there. We expect you're going to see similar type of results here in 2026. But Jason, what else you want to add?

Yes. No, I think you hit it well, Mark. I think the key here were the guide to expenses controlling what we can control. And specific to your head count question, just a little more color there. We've held head count relatively steady during 2025 around that 19,350 employees, quarterly average, a bit lower than we were projecting for 2025. And as Mark said, will it track down a little bit, kind of flat to down for 2026, but really trying to maintain that trainee base. .

And the one thing that we've always reinforced as well is the overall productivity and decreasing the overall cost associated with employee and the workload that they have. And so as we make the system work better, we reduced recrews by our technology and the implications of running a tighter network. That translates into less overall wages by less retention, less taxes, less just cost of disruption. That feeds itself into the productivity we associate with locomotives. They're not sitting idle longer. They're not wasting fuel. All of those things go hand in hand. So the 1 indication on productivity head count really drives, or is driven by dozens and dozens of metrics that trade on their own, a lot of small wins, some outsized wins that all come into the cost reduction program that we've got, so we can manage expense to workload.

Next question will be from Walter Spracklin at RBC Capital Markets.

I just wanted to understand the productivity gains that you flagged, I think it was [ $260 ] million in total. Land sales, was that -- I know you did north of $150 million [indiscernible]. Was that in the productivity number. And then just following up on the truck competitive lane on the pricing side, truck competitive lanes, we've heard about capacity taken out of the truck market now on some of the regulations and higher prices. So is that having any positive impact on your efforts toward truck to rail conversion as truck prices move higher and their capacity lower?

Yes. This is Jason. I'll start with your -- the productivity question. So we had, as you mentioned, about $150 million in kind of outsized land sales, third and fourth quarter. that is excluded from the $216 million in productivity that we earned during the year.

Yes. And talking about truck competitive lanes and competition from the highway. Look, all those factors are going to help over time, whether it's a reduction in the available driver pool or the amount of trucks that are out there on the road themselves. But to be clear, in my career at least, I've never seen a recovery that was supply side led. It has to be demand led. And that's where I think we're really going to be looking hard to see what the U.S. consumer does and what the market can offer us. .

Next question will be from David Vernon at Bernstein.

So Ed, with the coal outlook, I wonder if you can help us understand kind of what's happening on the pricing side right now. Obviously, on the net side. I understand it's challenged, but are rates still declining? Or are they stable? And we're just -- just have to get through the comps. And it feels like it looks like when I go and check like Australian benchmarks in the global market, pricing has actually recovered a little bit there. And I'm wondering if you can help us understand maybe why that's decoupling from the U.S. market a little bit?

Sure. Well, it wouldn't be an earnings call if we didn't get a coal pricing question. So thank you for that. We've seen that benchmark price slide throughout the year. pretty consistently. But you're right. We've seen a little uptick here in January in the benchmark price. And that's given us some encouragement. But when I look at the forwards, it's still declining for at least the first half of the year, and we'll see what happens in the second half. In terms of decoupling, I'm not sure it's a pretty thinly traded market, frankly, on a global basis, even. And there's a lot of weakness both on domestic side for met coal and frankly, on the global side. We're ready to handle it. And as we talked about with Warrior. We got -- we have a fantastic new coal mine that's now pumping out coal for the global markets, and that's exciting. As those markets recover, we're going to be in a really good place. But I don't see it at least in the first half.

I think there's probably some geopolitics at play to where Australia is largely supplying kind of now.

Yes, not us.

Right. So I think some of who procures from who can sort of create a little disconnect in the markets. .

Look, to recap recap 2025, just to put it all in perspective, I think we delivered extremely solid productivity, $216 million of productivity, and that follows $292 million that we delivered in 2024. But this year, in particular, we moved 3% more GTMs with 4% fewer employees, that 7% head count productivity. T&E productivity actually improved 9%. We drove 21% reduction in recrews. And on top of that, we delivered 5% fuel efficiency in the year, which is what we budgeted for that I thought was going to be a stretch and probably, we wouldn't get there all the way, but we did. We delivered 5% and we pretty much got 4% to 5% each quarter of the year. So really great performance there. We improved our locomotive productivity by 10%. And we kept a lid on our OpEx by really offsetting inflation with this incremental productivity.

And then on top of that, we grew merchandise and our merchandise share with healthy core pricing. So really pleased with that. And we did it all while delivering outstanding service throughout the year and really excellent safety performance, as John detailed in his prepared remarks earlier. We've got industry-leading accident rates right now and mainline derailment rates. So really proud of what we did. And we did this all while we negotiated a transformational merger for the industry and began the heavy lift of a whole application process. So we didn't get distracted by that. We still delivered on that.

The challenge in '25 was just simply revenue was flat. We had flat carloads and the negative fuel and seaborne coal pricing offset that good core pricing we had in merchandise as well as we had some favorable mix that got offset. So that's kind of 2025 in a nutshell. And again, for 2026, we aim to keep the priority on safety, service, responsible cost control that don't compromise safety or service, and fighting for quality revenue. So we guided you to a cost envelope, the demand environment, it's the wildcard, but we can handle whatever demand comes our way.

And I can tell you whatever revenue growth we do get, it's going to drop through at attractive incrementals, given the capacity that we have. And I'll just leave you with this. Several of us are going to be working quite hard through the year to try to get this merger across the finish line with the STB process, but we will protect the vast majority of our business leaders from distraction so we can continue to execute on a daily basis to bring these 2 well-run railroads together. So thank you very much for the participation today, and please all stay safe.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we ask that you please disconnect your lines. Enjoy the rest of your day.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Norfolk Southern's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important.

Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section, along with a reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio. Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis.

Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today are John Orr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer. We delivered another quarter that demonstrates the team's ability to deliver a quality railroad.

Throughout the year, we have highlighted our continued commitment to focus on what we can control, running a safe, efficient network, improving processes, delivering solutions for our customers' most pressing needs and supporting our people. That remains the approach today of our 20,000 thoroughbreds who deserve thanks and credit for our performance. On safety, our train accident and employee injury rates continue to improve. That's the result of disciplined execution and continued emphasis on training. Safety is a core value, and we will never compromise on it.

On service, our network is running well. Terminal dwell and car velocity remains stable, and we once again saw fuel efficiency gains, attaining a new quarterly record. These improvements are integral to delivering reliable, high-quality service for our customers and they position us to sustain performance over the long term. Safety and service together form the foundation of our ability to serve customers at the highest level. And what truly powers this progress is our people. Across the railroad, the Thoroughbred team shows up every day with focus and determination. We are committed to building the next generation of railroaders because careers in rail continue to be among the best in the country. As we noted at recent conferences, the third quarter volume surges forecasted by partners didn't materialize as expected and the truck market remains oversupplied. Ed will detail this.

So while revenues were short of where we expected, the continued success on productivity was evident in the quarter. We also had a large land sale at the end of the quarter that helped neutralize other adverse impacts that Jason will cover. While not big in Q3, we started to see some of the revenue erosion from competitor reactions to the merger announcement. We expect the impact to grow in the fourth quarter and continue to be a challenge over the near and medium term.

As we make progress toward getting approval for the proposed merger with Union Pacific, our focus remains squarely on ensuring momentum on safety and service. while executing on our strategy and delivering for our customers. We've got a lot to be optimistic about. We're on a good path, and we're doing what we can on the controllable side to prepare for growth. I'm proud of the progress we've made, and I'm even more excited about what's ahead.

With that, I'll turn it over to John and the rest of our leadership team to walk through the quarter in more detail. John?

Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to Slide 5. I want to recognize the deliberate transformation Norfolk Southern has delivered in safety, service and cost structure from 2024 and throughout 2025. This progress reflects a culture of accountability and disciplined execution, powered by generational leadership investments that position us for long-term success. We're creating a network that is safer, more reliable and more efficient, shaping the future of rail and setting the standard for what rail service can and should be.

Our PSR 2.0 transformation is delivering measurable outcomes that matter to every customer and stakeholder. For example, Amtrack host delays across Norfolk Southern improved 26% year-over-year, underscoring our progress and unwavering commitment to precision, reliability and the standards that define Notebook Southern.

In Q4, we're going live with Clarity camps, the next cornerstone of the Thoroughbred Academy. The curriculum elevates PSR 2.0 business excellence. And importantly, as we transform safety and service standards were simultaneously delivering productivity gains, creating a clear and steady direction across the organization. All these efforts are aligned to our broader commitment to deliver meaningful expense controls while operating a reliable and more resilient railroad. Relative to 2024 full year results, our year-to-date safety figures demonstrate FRA personal injury ratio has improved 7.8% and our train accident ratio has improved 27.7%.

Our team will never be satisfied with our safety results. We always strive to improve on our best performance. That's why my team and I are spending more time in the field this quarter, staying close to the work, staying close to our people and staying focused on what drives results.

Turning to Slide 6. We achieved stronger service and volume growth this quarter while operating with fewer assets and resources. That discipline is clearly reflected in our financial outcomes. GTMs increased 4% year-over-year, which were accurately delivered with 6% fewer qualified T&E. Our revolving zero-based train service plan continues to drive cost control, precision and productivity. Key highlights include a 19% reduction in [indiscernible] a 12% decrease in intermodal trend starts since the beginning of the year, alongside of sequential improvement in intermodal service composite and a 5.5% merchandise carload growth.

Turning to Slide 7. These results reflect decisive actions to balance quality service and efficiency. We're on track to exceed our expense reduction and broader financial commitments, and we're not stopping there. The team is stretching for more. raising our efficiency targets to a 2026 cumulative goal in the range of $600 million. Operational metrics confirm the effectiveness of our field management strategy. which delivered an all-time quarterly record of $1.01, a 5% year-over-year gain. This reflects both immediate savings and a durable path to greater efficiencies. Sequentially, train speed rose 3%, allowing us to store more locomotives while running a leaner, more reliable fleet.

Turning to Slide 8. Rapid deployment of next level field technology is part of a broader strategy to transform inspection, reliability and overall performance. In the photos, you can see a new state-of-the-art wheel integrity system being installed near Burns Harbor, 1 of our busiest quarters. We're advancing machine vision at speed across our network. In the quarter, we deployed a new inspection portal in Virginia, bringing the total now to 8. We positively identified over 40 wheel integrity defects. And we've launched 6 new algorithms with 9 more already in development. The data from these field technologies feed our war room that are staffed with craft employees, managers and senior executives facilitating real-time problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration. We're leveraging digital tools, operational analytics and ecosystem level coordination to elevate our capabilities and operation and safety excellence.

Wayside stops are down 6.7% year-over-year and 36% year-to-date, even as we expect 5% more axles daily. This quarter reflects that our operational fundamentals are sound and are supporting a strong service offering. This is made possible by the commitment and resilience of our railroaders across the entire enterprise. At Norfolk Southern, results matter, and our people continue to deliver with confidence and momentum. With that, I'll turn it to you, Ed.

Thanks much, John. Now let's go to Slide 10, where you'll see that we achieved 2% year-over-year growth in both revenue and RPU in the quarter. We see several dynamics at play in the business portfolio. We have strength within our merchandise markets, partially offset by meaningful declines in export coal markets. We see reduced fuel surcharge revenue and softer-than-expected intermodal volumes.

Overall, our volume for the third quarter finished flat despite gross ton mile growth of 4%. Let's look inside of merchandise. Volume grew 6% from a year ago, driven by our auto, chemical and metals and construction markets. Revenue less fuel grew 7%, which underscores our pricing discipline and our volume performance. However, we had mixed headwinds from growth in commodities such as natural gas liquids, sand and scrap metal, which diluted our overall RPU performance. In Intermodal, we're navigating the complexity of ongoing trade and tariff uncertainty persistently abundant highway truck capacity and outside factors, including competitor responses to our merger announcement, which caused volumes to decrease 2%. Intermodal revenue less fuel and RPU less fuel both grew, reflecting the overall stable pricing environment right now.

Now here, I have to note that year-over-year RPU comparisons benefited from an abnormally high volume of empty shipments ahead of the East Coast port disruptions last year. Let's turn to coal, where weakening seaborne coal prices drove RPU less fuel lower by 7% and and this was the most significant revenue headwind for the quarter. We enjoyed stronger demand in our Utility segment, but it didn't offset the sustained weakness in export. This interaction has been playing out throughout the year, and we expect it to persist.

Let's go to Slide 11 and talk about the market outlook. Like the third quarter, we continue to navigate a dynamic economic environment, along with competitive cross currents. For our merchandise markets, we forecast vehicle production will be challenged in part due to recent disruptions at a key material supplier to our customers. We expect this will have a meaningful impact to production at several NS-served automotive plants in the fourth quarter. At the same time, overall manufacturing activity remains mixed with output expected to grow despite the backdrop of trade and tariff uncertainty. Strong fracking activity in the Marcellus Utica Basin is supporting demand and NGLs and sand in our merchandise markets. Looking into our intermodal markets, we expect softer import demand in the near term. This reflects the impact of tariff volatility and growing trade pressures.

Warehousing capacity remains tight as inventory levels expanded at the beginning of the year ahead of tariffs and truck capacity remains oversupplied. Coal prices have remained pressured with significant uncertainty surrounding export trade. And at the same time, we're expecting utility demand to see continued support from growing electricity demand and lower existing coal stockpiles. Now these dynamics should be considered against the backdrop of our recently announced merger, which has intensified competitor activity across the industry. And as a result, we anticipate volume pressure, particularly in our Intermodal segment. and so we're maintaining a cautious outlook for the remainder of 2025.

Lastly, as always, we want to thank our customers for their continued partnership and business the entire NS team is aligned around delivering the service that our customers need every day, building trust as a vital partner in their supply chains. Now with that, I'll hand it over to Jason to review our financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start with the reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I will speak to today on Slide 13. The Total costs attributable to the Eastern Ohio incident were $13 million, which included $16 million of recoveries under our property insurance policies. In addition, we recognized the $12 million restructuring charge in the quarter as we continue to rationalize our technology projects.

Finally, we also recorded $15 million in merger-related costs, consisting primarily of legal and professional services as well as employee retention accruals. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was $63.3. From a bottom line perspective, we earned $3.30 per share.

Moving to Slide 14, you'll find the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year and last quarter both comparisons reflecting a 10 basis point improvement in the operating ratio and the sequential comparison basically even with the current quarter.

On a year-over-year basis, Revenue was up, as I just discussed, but we were expecting approximately $75 million more revenue as we had guided to within the second quarter materials continued macro headwinds, a surge that never materialized and competitor responses from the merger announcement that started to really ramp up at the end of the quarter, all were barriers to the attainment of that expectation.

Expenses were up 2% on a 4% increase in GTMs, but there are a lot of puts and takes within OpEx, and those year-over-year expense drivers are laid out on Slide 15. You'll note that the quarter benefited from higher land sales, which were $65 million more than last year. In fact, the entire variance was driven by 1 large sale that closed at the very end of the quarter.

Another quarter of strong productivity gains also helped to mitigate both inflationary and volumetric pressures in addition to the absence of benefits recorded last year in the form of cancellation of stock awards and fuel recoveries. I'd also point out that claims expense was elevated in the quarter despite the outstanding progress we're delivering on our safety initiatives as we react to unfavorable developments on claims from several years ago, in addition to claims inflation on a few incidents that we have experienced this year.

So as I think about our 63.3 operating ratio for the quarter, Clearly, that was aided by outsized land sales. However, we were short on revenue from our latest guidance, and we dealt with higher claims expense than what we had been experiencing. And as we move into the fourth quarter, Revenue will continue to be challenged, but we are focused on what we can control, and we expect to maintain our cost structure in the $2 billion to $2.1 billion range. I'll hand it back to Mark to wrap it up.

Thanks, Jason. As you can see, there were a lot of moving parts in the quarter, but as a thoroughbred team, we are successfully controlling the controllables. Looking ahead, macro environment remains uncertain and we acknowledge that over the next several quarters, unpredictable demand and unique competitive dynamics will create some abnormal fluctuations in our top line. We are not standing still. Our recent Louisville announcement will create attractive volume growth as it builds out. Additionally, once the merger closes, we can provide attractive solutions for our customers unlocking faster, more reliable service, streamlined shipping experiences and expanded access across a unified coast-to-coast rail network.

These improvements will strengthen our value proposition and help drive long-term growth in our combined railroad through highway conversion. While the regulatory review process is ongoing, we remain laser-focused on maintaining strong safety performance, while running a fast and resilient network. That is delivering great service that our customers have now come to expect from us. Meanwhile, we will continue to maintain a sharp focus on optimizing our cost structure. As you saw in John's section, we are making excellent progress on the productivity front and are raising our 2025 efficiency target to roughly $200 million, and this follows the nearly $300 million we achieved in 2024. I am really proud of our team for the work they've done on this. And while revenue in this environment is proving difficult to guide, you can expect that our fourth quarter costs in absolute dollars will be in the $2.0 billion to $2.1 billion range.

So with that, let's open the call to questions.

Operator? .

[Operator Instructions] First, we will hear from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

So Ed, if I heard right, I think you said a 2-point drag in Q3 from some business losses related to the merger. And it sounds like it gets worse going forward? Is this just intermodal? Are you seeing in any other places? And ultimately, how much business do you think is at risk until we see merger closing?

We saw that start to really manifest itself toward the tail end of the quarter, call it, September-ish. And so it's going to manifest itself to wrap around it year-over-year. It's a minority of -- certainly a minority of the business, and it's really focused geographically to this point. in the Southeast. We're working really hard to do 2 things: Number one, to make sure that we're providing a fantastic service for everybody that wants to use us. And number two, we're really leveraging the network that we have, the route structure and the terminal structure to bring freight back to Norfolk Southern that may have left for whatever reason. And so I'm pretty confident that, yes, while this is going to be a headwind for a while going forward, over the next couple of bid cycles, you'll see it start to iterate itself back toward what I would call the high-value, low-cost solution, which is Norfolk Southern for the beneficial cargo owners.

And that's independent of a merger, Scott.

And then maybe just, Jason, I think that the $2 billion to $2.1 billion of cost, it's a relatively wide range on a quarterly basis. Any sort of more help in terms of where you think we could be in that range in Q4. I don't know, is maybe the right way to think about it, excluding the gains was a 65.5% OR in Q3. Do you think that gets worse in Q4? Just any thoughts there?

So when I think about the expense profile going from third quarter to fourth quarter, as you mentioned, you've got to kind of normalize for those outsized land sales that we had in the third quarter. And then historically, as we move from third to fourth quarter, if you look at the 5-year average, expenses are up about 1.5%. And that's kind of really what brings us into that $2 billion to $2.1 billion range. So kind of moving with that seasonality.

A couple of drivers that I'd point you to. We've talked about headcount in the past, guided you to the fourth quarter 2024 exit rate, which is about $19,500. We're a little bit below that in third quarter. So that should step up a little bit as we move into the fourth. Depreciation expense always steps up as we move into the fourth quarter just as we get more capital work done and get those projects in service. And then finally, we've talked a bit before about what we've done on the technology front, and we've really gone to that managed services model. So you'll see some higher purchase services expense in the fourth quarter that are being driven by that. eventually, you should see that come out of comp [indiscernible], but it will definitely be a driver in the fourth quarter.

Next question will be from Brandon Oglenski at Barclays.

Maybe this is for Mark or John, but when you guys think about managing the cost structure in this environment where maybe there's some share loss and obviously, some headwinds just given the trade environment especially as you look out further, if the deal gets approved, then maybe you want to maintain some excess capacity as well. So how do you balance these differing needs as you look out over the near term and medium term?

Yes. Great question, Brandon. I think you're right. We've got to be really careful how we address this. I mean as you see, we have been trading down a bit and driving some productivity with regard to moving 4% more GTMs this quarter, while we saw headcount kind of drift down 3%. So that's a 7% spread. We're really really happy with that outcome, and we're seeing actually better service and better safety performance while we do it. So we're going to be really careful here. And I think, John, maybe you can talk a little bit about the next step of cost reduction. But the other element I'd point you to, Brandon, we continue to focus on fuel efficiency, where we had a 5% gain year-over-year in fuel efficiency from all the initiatives that John has put in place. So we continue to get these mid-single-digit improvements in fuel efficiency. So labor productivity, fuel efficiency. We've been attacking purchase services, although we are making a deliberate shift to outsource some stuff in IT that will yield benefits in comp [indiscernible]. So that's why it's a little bit of an odd a little bit of an odd quarter because you do see 0 volume growth on the carload side, but there is actually GTM growth so that does require resources. And also remember, 18% growth in autos, 18% growth in auto this quarter year-over-year, huge growth. And that, of course, has some incremental volumetric costs that come with it that you'd see manifest in equipment rents. So those are the kind of things where it's a complex P&L. We're going to be really mindful of really trying to drive those areas for productivity and efficiency while not undermining our ability to move volume.

[indiscernible] chime in, please. Yes. Mark, you're speaking like an operating -- Chief Operating Officer with all the detail gives me the chance to talk a little high level. So I appreciate that. Let's just start with the fundamentals. We're moving more volume with more yield on our trains slightly heavier trains with less crews and more overall fluidity. So using that train speed that we're generating to reduce our locomotive fleet increase our car miles per day, decrease the number of cars it takes to create a load and doing all those fundamental things that show through to the customer and give the chance to sell aggressively in whatever market he's in at the time. So those fundamentals are very sound. We are -- we have restructured a number of things, including how we manage fuel, which is showing through in sequential fuel improvement and flowing through to the bottom line. But it doesn't stop there. We've restructured how we hire people speed and the quality to which they enter the workforce. So that gives us the opportunity to be more responsive, even longer lead resources and assets. So we're ready for those things. And we'll continue to improve locomotive fluidity by revamping our train service plan I'll just say that our zero-based plan version 3 has just come out. And year-to-date, we've reduced our interval crew starts by 14%. Our shipments per crew start have improved by 11% and we've simplified our lean offerings and are blocking complexity. And as a result, we're really energizing how we service that product. and delivering it with more resilience and capability. So that's what gives me confidence that we're going to not only stretch ourselves this year and the remainder of the year in that overall cost takeout in that financial improvement from an operating perspective and an overall enterprise perspective, but even continuing that momentum into 2026 and stretching ourselves in the range of $600 million cumulative takeout. So it's going to be hard work, which is in our DNA, and we're ready for it.

Next question will be from Jonathan Chappell at Evercore ISI.

Ed, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that the coal RPU was one of the single biggest impacts on revenue. And you also said you expect the headwinds to persist. If we look at export benchmarks and even your [indiscernible] last week, made it seem like the coal RPU pressure would stop at least sequentially, maybe you're referring to year-over-year. Can you give us any sense to how much that may continue to step down from the third quarter level? And when do you think that, that headwind may begin to stabilize?

I think you got that right. And thanks for the question, so I can clarify. I think the export benchmark is something like 175 right now. And I don't necessarily anticipate any material degradation from that. So on a sequential basis, maybe go sideways, which on a year-over-year basis, is still double-digit down. Same is true on the utility side for export. Probably going sideways, but still on a year-over-year basis, double-digit down. And I think that's going to persist certainly through the quarter and maybe into early next year before it hopefully starts to climb out. There's a lot of uncertainty around export coal when it comes to both the met and utility side. who's going to get it or who's going to take it and where it will come from. So we're keeping a really close eye on that.

Great. So that revenue headwind than mostly volume, we should stop looking for RPU deterioration overall?

Yes. Year-over-year ARPU deterioration will continue. Sequentially, it should be pretty stable. And this quarter, we did start to see volume degradation as a result of the poor pricing environment.

Next question will be from Tom Wadewitz at UBS.

Wanted to ask a little more on the topic of the competitive responses. I guess the kind of name that comes out and seems the most prominent in Intermodal would be J.B. Hunt. And I just want to get a sense if you could Help us think about to the extent that BN is going to exert some control here and push more business over to CSX. How much of the business do you think should be sticky to Norfolk? I recall back quite a long time ago, you had some corridor initiatives that I think are differentiated like the [indiscernible], just lines that maybe CSX isn't going to serve markets as well. So I just want to see if you have some high-level thoughts on what can make business with JB or intermodal, in general, sticky in terms of network differences? And how much kind of risk is there of kind of [indiscernible] forcing some business over to CSX?

So I think we talked about it before that more than half of our business with J.B. Hunt originates and terminates here in the East. And we continue to provide a really excellent service product to them, and we feel comfortable and confident with that. retaining that business. I think for the balance and particularly in certain geographies, perhaps in the Southeast, that's really what's at risk right now that they can go in and talk about. But I just want to reemphasize that one thing. About 2 decades ago, we started investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build out our intermodal franchise. We built out that premier corridor in the Crescent Corridor, we built terminals, and we have an unrivaled intermodal franchise in the East. And it's a franchise that people want to be on because it provides the fastest route for the major markets. And with a terminal footprint where customers want it to be. So with time, cargo owners are going to want that business back on the NS and we are going to work aggressively to help them get that cargo back on the. So Ed, please chime in.

Well, gosh, I think you pre summarized it, but let me say this. There are a number of key lanes where Norfolk Southern offers exceptional value for customers that really can't be replicated anywhere. There's -- I would say this from experience, there's a reason why we have the second largest intermodal franchise in North America is because of the superior route structure that we've built out that Mark just referenced. And also a terminal network that gets you with your freight, landed closer to the consumer than any other network out there. So there's lots of things that can happen in terms of pushing freight around that, what I would call, be unnatural. But over time, we're very confident. John and I are that we put our heads together, make sure our service is exceptional. The way it is now. We continue to partner with the riots we're going to be in good shape.

But I guess one component of that as well is just that CSX has had this major construction project and debottlenecking with their Howard Street Tunnel. And so that makes them a lot more efficient north, south along the east. Is that like is that a significant competitive impact? Or do you think that's not -- that's kind of a impact on a modest portion of your domestic?

I can't really comment on that project for them. I hope it makes them a lot more competitive with truck.

Next question will be from Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan.

First, just a quick follow-up maybe for Ed. I think you mentioned that business and we're talking about here, it would come back to the network even without mergers. Maybe you can just elaborate exactly what would have to change if it's better service or competing more on price? And then just maybe for -- on the upside for John, when you think about fuel efficiency, I mean we've always heard it was going to be a challenge at Norfolk because of length of haul and mix and a bunch of other things, wait but it looks like you've clearly broken through. Is that something you feel like you can get to sort of best-in-class levels with your peers? Some more thoughts on that would be helpful.

All right. I'll go first before I forget the question. When I think about the service from the West Coast into the Southeast, I think about UP and NS utilizing the Meridian Speedway as the fastest shortest route between those 2 regions, period. There's not a better ride out there when it comes to that kind of freight for intermodal. So that's one thing. The second thing is the exceptional amount of terminal capacity that we have and expertise to back it up, both in the Carolinas, Florida as well as in Georgia. That's just going to be a force multiplier and has been. So we're confident that over time, cargo owners are going to make the right decision about where their freight routed. I'll hand it off to you, John.

Well, I'm glad you're noting the hard work the team has done on fuel. And I won't comment on what the order the possible may have been thought through back then, but I'll tell you right now, and as we go forward, it's a big part of a strategy that includes all of our strategic sourcing and logistics approach, including the assessment of distribution, the use and consumption of the product like fuel. And the current efficiency represents a significant dollar value. And if you look at the Mosaic of measures that we present to you all, we're balancing speed, locomotive productivity, the fuel burn. And we're looking at it, not how fast can we go just to get faster and to get to point A to point B quicker, we will, if that means we can use a crew at the end of that trip to use them within the yard and save money somewhere else. But as we work through fuel consumption, we want to make sure that how we manage our fuel resources is aligned to what our train service plan is. And we're always looking at that service plan. we're taking more detailed approach on each element of it. what resources we need, how much fuel we need to move the tonnage, how soon we need to get to a customer. So on a product level view, we're satisfying the contractual obligations and elevating our service metrics and how they face the customer. And we're taking that -- the nice thing is we're taking that approach in mechanical, how we service our locomotives, how we maintain our parts inventory how we're putting stress on our engineering team through Ed Boyle and his great leadership and managing ties, plates, rail, ballast, all of those things. So across all of those things, whether it's fuel and operational resources, we're taking a really hardline approach on it. So I think we've got room to grow on fuel. I don't have any end in sight to the value we can create managing all of those components. But I can tell you, it's the tip of the iceberg as we move forward against all our enterprise resources.

And I would just add one other thing, Brian, is when I look back years ago when I came in, we had roughly high teens percent of our locomotive fleet that was AC. And through those investments that we've been making every year systematically to upgrade our locomotive fleet from DC to AC, we're now approaching 80% AC. So that is definitely helping provide more runway for the future that John is extracting using the methods that he's talking about. So that definitely is a driver as well, right?

Yes. And that gives us the just run just look at 2019, which was one of the bellwether years from a financial and service perspective. And right now, we're running year-to-date 23% less horsepower per ton. When you have that discipline in managing locomotives, the utilization of your power, your crews, you're reducing your stops, you're creating more fluidity it shows up in fuel and shows up in so many other P&L items. So you're right, Mark, those investments, those wise investments are paying dividends.

But the discipline you're bringing now for the things you're just talking about is really what's accelerating benefits and providing more runway into the future. So congratulations on that.

[Operator Instructions] Next, we will hear from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

I guess I wanted to sort of ask about what you think is possible from an OR improvement perspective, particularly as we're thinking about 2026. So you came into this year, I think there was a revenue target around 3% with 150 basis points of productivity. And then 50 basis points of OR. Obviously, the revenue side has been more challenging because of volume. We'll see how much OR you get this year. But I guess maybe the question as we go into next year, how much sort of OR opportunity do you think there is that you can control and maybe how much is more revenue dependent? So obviously, it's an uncertain environment out there. I want to get a sense of out of the $600 million of productivity, how much do you think can be translated from an operating ratio perspective as we think about next year?

Chris, thanks for the question. Look, I think what we're going to do, which is very similar to what we're doing this year is we're going to focus really hard on the controllables, in particular, those elements on the cost side. So we're going to maintain a lot of discipline on our employment levels and try to drive labor productivity for sure. We're going to focus on the fuel efficiency and every single line item in the P&L that we can control. Obviously, we get things like claims that surprise us -- and Jason has talked a little bit about that and can talk to you some more about that, some of the social inflation we're seeing. But there's a lot we can control, and that's where we're going to put our focus. On the revenue, obviously, we've got some headwinds. And mathematically, that's going to probably put some short-term pressure on the OR that we're going to have to deal with. But Ed and his team are doing a great job fighting every way they can to preserve every single unit that's out there and try to grow every single unit with the value offering that we have, thanks to the great service John is providing. So we're going to do that. But I think at the end of the day, the OR is going to be an output of the those 2 elements. Jason, do you want to add anything?

Yes. I would just say it's really -- if you look at our kind of our cost profile over the last couple of years and think about the inflation that we've taken on and the volumetric expenses, really, and thanks to what John and the team have done from a productivity standpoint, harvesting almost $500 million of productivity. That's what's enabled us to kind of keep that cost profile flat over these last couple of years. So I think you hit it right on, Mark, as we move into next year. I did just want to for a second talk about claims because you had mentioned it, Mark. But John, you can maybe jump in and talk a little bit more about what you guys are accomplishing from a safety perspective, which I think is really remarkable progress. But on the cost side, claims is always very volatile, and we see that quarter-to-quarter. But what we're seeing right now is the resolution of some older claims. And while the frequency is going down, we're experiencing higher cost per incident to close out those claims. So over recent years and quarters, we've seen pressure on that claims line. as both the insurance rates increase, but also we're facing the same type of social inflation that you're seeing across the transportation sector. But John, maybe a little color on what you guys are doing to mitigate the number of incidents.

Yes. And we've said it. Our safety from an injury and accident perspective are taking on a really strong momentum, and we're continuing to invest in our safety camps I've mentioned it before on these calls, our [indiscernible] has got a component of safety and safety leadership. We've processed over 2,500 leaders through that program who have now had a more capable way of approaching our workforce, building the environment and skills that are necessary. And you couple that with the investments we've made in technology and a great story. We had a broken wheel derail with a train that had come on us for 1 mile. And we -- as a leadership team said, there's got to be a better way. And very rapidly through the work we do with Georgia Tech and our portal systems, we created a wheel detection device that gives us -- identifies wheel integrity on all of our trains that pass through those portals. It was so effective that we made a suit case version, a mobile version, and we're putting it into the ingress and egress of our hump yards and other high-density corridors to give us a good view to insulate ourselves from something that is not ours. Most of it is on foreign cars. And it's been really effective so far, we've -- I would say using my own language that we prevented over 40 games by the detection that we've had with these wheel inspection devices that didn't exist a year ago. That ability to take ideas understand the business, convert them into actionable items and then put them into field use at scale is a testament to the commitment we've got on safety and how we can really influence line items that you're talking about and solve them at the root cause.

And Chris, I just want to come back to one other thing as we look to '26. So obviously, we're going to work on controlling the controllables on the cost side. But paramount importance in 2026 is for us as an enterprise to continue this quest toward improving and preserving a very safe railroad. We cannot have a mismatch. Similar to that, we have to maintain outstanding service for our customers. We cannot step back from that. Those are the 2 most important things. We're going to control costs. But those 2 things are paramount importance. And I would say the other thing is really the preservation of employment and retention because we have to go into this merger with talent to ensure that it succeeds. So that's where our focus is. And like I said, we're going to fight like hell for every unit and every dollar that's out there. But let's not lose focus on the the safety and service elements, which are high, high priorities for us.

Next question is from [indiscernible] at Deutsche Bank.

So sorry to beat a dead horse, but I also wanted to talk about the revenue erosion you expect from competitor reaction. First, I wanted to confirm that this was ring-fenced to intermodal. And then I guess what is really hindering your ability to compete? I know you enhanced your partnership with UNP in the interim, for example, Mark, you just reminded us today about the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in intermodal over the past 2 decades to make for a very strong product. So I guess I'm just confused on why you would be challenged just because you're pursuing a merger? And then is your competitor winning on price? Or is it something else? I mean that it's not Howard Street. So maybe just elaborate a little bit more there.

That's a great question, Ed?

Sure. Well, let me start with your first question, which is, yes, it is confined to intermodal and specifically to domestic nonpremium intermodal. And I can't talk about or address why other entities contracts may or may not allow for certain things to occur. But I can tell you that we're competing vigorously both from a price perspective in a market that's been down for 40 months, but also from a service perspective. And John and I are laser-focused on the route coming out of L.A. across Freeport, Meridian Speedway and into the Southeast. And we have a great team operating our 2 terminals in Atlanta, our one terminal in Charlotte, our other terminal in Greensboro and the one in Jacksonville that are not only poised to handle the freight we're getting today, but can accept more, frankly. So that's the landscape. And again, like I said, I think over the next couple of bid cycles as those beneficial cargo owners look at the value that they're receiving from the service that they are getting from whoever they're getting from we're going to offer a very compelling case for them to come back to a network that makes the most sense for them. John, do you have anything to add there?

I would just emphasize that our customer-facing composite standards are extremely high. We're committed to delivering them. And we've got resources, we've got assets, and we've got a corridor that's poised and ready for growth. And we're going to deliver regardless

For every customer that is able to use Norfolk Southern. We're open for business.

And look, again, I'll get back to the fact that when we control the relationship entirely with our customer base in our region, we're doing great. But when it's an interline arrangement and the contract may not be specifically through us, that's where we're seeing some of these challenges. So this is really kind of interline only. That's where it's -- that's where we're seeing it.

Next question will be from David Vernon at Bernstein.

I guess, Ed, sticking on this topic, can you put a finer number on kind of what the quarterly run rate should be down, assuming nothing else changed in the business from where we're exiting kind of 3Q, just to help us kind of better understand what's in that model. And it sounds like you're saying you guys can go market that against that service and maybe get some of traffic over time. What's the risk that this gets worse, right? I mean it sounds like you're saying you're going to go back and try to go directly to BCOs presumably with another IMC to pull back some of that volume. Is there -- do you get worried at all that maybe there's another shoe to drop as far as kind of the volume that's been lost.

[indiscernible] But I would say this, we're working really close with all of our partners, including ones that may be affected with this to make sure that we're offering exceptional value for them in places where we can do that. And there are places across our network that I would argue we offer services that really no other railroad can replicate. Quantifying it's probably a little bit difficult. You saw what the effect kind of was really on a portion of order. So we'll see from here. And again, it's not like we're in a super healthy truck freight environment where there's a lot of lift right now. So the whole world is struggling when it comes to freight, this is one other -- one more headwind applied to the portfolio, but we're very confident in the service -- we should reiterate.

In the third quarter, it wasn't the majority of the challenge in intermodal. It was on the margins -- this will build in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. And that's where it will take us, like you said, a couple of good cycles, we should end up getting it back. But we're going to feel the pain here in the next handful of quarters.

Next question will be from Stephanie Moore Jefferies.

Maybe talking a bit about your plans currently or your strategy to mitigate potentially any integration risk that we should see with the integration of the 2 networks. Clearly, you've made tremendous efforts from a service standpoint over the last several years and UNP as we all saw earlier today, also at a really strong point. So wanted to just talk again hear your view how to early on mitigate any of that integration risk or network disruption that could come as a result of the merger.

Yes. I think that's 1 thing, Jim and I are very, very aligned and clear on is that we cannot afford to have any integration pickup or challenge. So we're going to take our time and do this the right way. We're going to learn from the lessons of the past, and we're going to study that carefully. And we're going to kind of do a lot of benchmarking and leverage the talent we have on both teams to start planning when that's appropriate and observing what it is we can do from a systems perspective and then even from a technical perspective. We're going to do this very, very deliberately. It's an ultra high priority for us when we do bring these companies together to ensure that the integration is done right. John?

Yes. Mark, I've been through these potential mergers before, and I'll let those results speak for themselves, but merger or new merger leadership matters. And since early 2004 and throughout 2025, this team has successfully delivered our PSR 2.0 transformation, which has been building the momentum and producing irrefutable value. And we've had to navigate complexity ambiguity and even adversity. It works in all business environments, and we're going to continue to invest in our generational leaders elevate our service. We're going to continue to stress the plan. remove waste and deliver more volume with fewer people, fewer locomotives, fewer cars and less fuel. So really, it comes down to the fundamentals. As I said in my prepared remarks, the fundamentals are sound. And from that stability lends the opportunity for the development of an integration land?

Yes. I think, again, it gets back to my response to Chris. We've got to go into this merger, both of us really operating well. And that will certainly ensure a good foundation for integration. And right now, we're both in strong positions and the way our safety and our service metrics are yielding and that is important to maintain because once we come together, we're coming together from a foundation of strength, we can integrate a lot easier.

Next question will be from Bascome Majors at Susquehanna.

As you think about the competitive response what conviction do you have that some of what's happening in intermodal doesn't bleed into the carload side of the business? And maybe aligned with that 3 months in post announcement, like what conversations are you having with your large industrial carload customers? And do those skew optimistic or cautious?

I would categorize it in a couple of different ways. Number one, we have built a firm runway of success there when it comes to our carload service. And of course, that's the number one thing that our customers are looking for on that side. They want that conveyor belt that moves at the same speed all the time with little variation. And John and his team have done a really good job of building that resiliency back into it. Number two, and I think this is kind of turn horn, but I can't help [indiscernible] we're known for being a relationship business. We are a relationship company, and we've built strong partnerships across the board with our big industrial customers. They know us. We know them. And I can say hi to them on this call. We -- they know us and they know the way that we do business, and I will tell you that they are curious, of course, to learn more about what's going to happen in the future, but they're confident that with us being a part of the equation that they're in good hands, so to speak. Now in terms of any other erosion, it's a competitive landscape. We'll see what happens. We're competing every day to try to get more so as everyone else. We'll see where that part goes. But I think that combination of relationships and good service is a very good defense for us.

Next question will be from Jordan Alliger at Goldman Sachs. .

You gave some good color around the coal yields intermodal. But maybe thinking through sort of like total yields or revenue per carload as we look out to the fourth quarter, maybe talk about some of the puts and takes overall, whether it be core price, mix, et cetera?

I appreciate it. I'm very pleased with where we've landed with our price plan this year so far, and I fully expect that to continue for the rest of the year. So our pricing plan is intact. And I would say that we're in good shape there, particularly versus inflation. When I look at the mix piece, we're going to see more utility. We'll probably see a little bit less on the export side. And you got erosion in the RPU for the coal piece because of that seaborne price. That's going to be a little bit of a mixed headwind. On the merchandise side, we've already highlighted that natural gas liquids and even some metals markets in terms of scrap, that's diluted the RPU sum. But I will tell you that probably the the biggest challenge we're going to have from where we've come from might be on the automotive side where we've seen that one big supplier to one of our big customers have an issue. And so we expect that there'll be a little bit of wind taken out of the automotive side, so to speak, when it comes to the volume piece, and that's to go along with everything else. Hope that helps.

And at this time, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mark George.

Okay, everyone. Really appreciate you dialing in this evening. Just to summarize, we're running a really good railroad right now despite the uncertain macro environment that's ahead and obviously the increasing competitive pressures. So our top line may be volatile going forward, but we are absolutely committed to safety, to service and maintaining our cost structure, and we are going to fight like hell over every available unit and dollar rest assured. There's a lot of opportunity on the horizon with our proposed merger with UP, and that's going to yield huge benefits to our customers as well as our country.

So we thank you for your time this evening, and take care.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Norfolk Southern's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And I would like to turn the conference over to Luke Nichols, Senior Director, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements relate to future events or future performance of Norfolk Southern Corporation, which are subject to risks and uncertainties and may differ materially from actual results. Please refer to our annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC for a full discussion of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important.

Our presentation slides are available at norfolksouthern.com in the Investors section, along with a reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures, including adjusted or non-GAAP operating ratio. Please note that all references to our prospective operating ratio during today's call are being provided on an adjusted basis.

Turning to Slide 3. I'll now turn the call over to Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark George.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today are John Orr, our Chief Operating Officer; Ed Elkins, our Chief Commercial Officer; and Jason Zampi, our Chief Financial Officer. We delivered another quarter that demonstrates the team's ability to deliver a quality railroad.

Throughout the year, we have highlighted our continued commitment to focus on what we can control, running a safe, efficient network, improving processes, delivering solutions for our customers' most pressing needs and supporting our people. That remains the approach today of our 20,000 thoroughbreds who deserve thanks and credit for our performance. On safety, our train accident and employee injury rates continue to improve. That's the result of disciplined execution and continued emphasis on training. Safety is a core value, and we will never compromise on it.

On service, our network is running well. Terminal dwell and car velocity remains stable, and we once again saw fuel efficiency gains, attaining a new quarterly record. These improvements are integral to delivering reliable, high-quality service for our customers and they position us to sustain performance over the long term. Safety and service together form the foundation of our ability to serve customers at the highest level. And what truly powers this progress is our people. Across the railroad, the Thoroughbred team shows up every day with focus and determination. We are committed to building the next generation of railroaders because careers in rail continue to be among the best in the country. As we noted at recent conferences, the third quarter volume surges forecasted by partners didn't materialize as expected and the truck market remains oversupplied. Ed will detail this.

So while revenues were short of where we expected, the continued success on productivity was evident in the quarter. We also had a large land sale at the end of the quarter that helped neutralize other adverse impacts that Jason will cover. While not big in Q3, we started to see some of the revenue erosion from competitor reactions to the merger announcement. We expect the impact to grow in the fourth quarter and continue to be a challenge over the near and medium term.

As we make progress toward getting approval for the proposed merger with Union Pacific, our focus remains squarely on ensuring momentum on safety and service. while executing on our strategy and delivering for our customers. We've got a lot to be optimistic about. We're on a good path, and we're doing what we can on the controllable side to prepare for growth. I'm proud of the progress we've made, and I'm even more excited about what's ahead.

With that, I'll turn it over to John and the rest of our leadership team to walk through the quarter in more detail. John?

Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to Slide 5. I want to recognize the deliberate transformation Norfolk Southern has delivered in safety, service and cost structure from 2024 and throughout 2025. This progress reflects a culture of accountability and disciplined execution, powered by generational leadership investments that position us for long-term success. We're creating a network that is safer, more reliable and more efficient, shaping the future of rail and setting the standard for what rail service can and should be.

Our PSR 2.0 transformation is delivering measurable outcomes that matter to every customer and stakeholder. For example, Amtrack host delays across Norfolk Southern improved 26% year-over-year, underscoring our progress and unwavering commitment to precision, reliability and the standards that define Notebook Southern.

In Q4, we're going live with Clarity camps, the next cornerstone of the Thoroughbred Academy. The curriculum elevates PSR 2.0 business excellence. And importantly, as we transform safety and service standards were simultaneously delivering productivity gains, creating a clear and steady direction across the organization. All these efforts are aligned to our broader commitment to deliver meaningful expense controls while operating a reliable and more resilient railroad. Relative to 2024 full year results, our year-to-date safety figures demonstrate FRA personal injury ratio has improved 7.8% and our train accident ratio has improved 27.7%.

Our team will never be satisfied with our safety results. We always strive to improve on our best performance. That's why my team and I are spending more time in the field this quarter, staying close to the work, staying close to our people and staying focused on what drives results.

Turning to Slide 6. We achieved stronger service and volume growth this quarter while operating with fewer assets and resources. That discipline is clearly reflected in our financial outcomes. GTMs increased 4% year-over-year, which were accurately delivered with 6% fewer qualified T&E. Our revolving zero-based train service plan continues to drive cost control, precision and productivity. Key highlights include a 19% reduction in [indiscernible] a 12% decrease in intermodal trend starts since the beginning of the year, alongside of sequential improvement in intermodal service composite and a 5.5% merchandise carload growth.

Turning to Slide 7. These results reflect decisive actions to balance quality service and efficiency. We're on track to exceed our expense reduction and broader financial commitments, and we're not stopping there. The team is stretching for more. raising our efficiency targets to a 2026 cumulative goal in the range of $600 million. Operational metrics confirm the effectiveness of our field management strategy. which delivered an all-time quarterly record of $1.01, a 5% year-over-year gain. This reflects both immediate savings and a durable path to greater efficiencies. Sequentially, train speed rose 3%, allowing us to store more locomotives while running a leaner, more reliable fleet.

Turning to Slide 8. Rapid deployment of next level field technology is part of a broader strategy to transform inspection, reliability and overall performance. In the photos, you can see a new state-of-the-art wheel integrity system being installed near Burns Harbor, 1 of our busiest quarters. We're advancing machine vision at speed across our network. In the quarter, we deployed a new inspection portal in Virginia, bringing the total now to 8. We positively identified over 40 wheel integrity defects. And we've launched 6 new algorithms with 9 more already in development. The data from these field technologies feed our war room that are staffed with craft employees, managers and senior executives facilitating real-time problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration. We're leveraging digital tools, operational analytics and ecosystem level coordination to elevate our capabilities and operation and safety excellence.

Wayside stops are down 6.7% year-over-year and 36% year-to-date, even as we expect 5% more axles daily. This quarter reflects that our operational fundamentals are sound and are supporting a strong service offering. This is made possible by the commitment and resilience of our railroaders across the entire enterprise. At Norfolk Southern, results matter, and our people continue to deliver with confidence and momentum. With that, I'll turn it to you, Ed.

Thanks much, John. Now let's go to Slide 10, where you'll see that we achieved 2% year-over-year growth in both revenue and RPU in the quarter. We see several dynamics at play in the business portfolio. We have strength within our merchandise markets, partially offset by meaningful declines in export coal markets. We see reduced fuel surcharge revenue and softer-than-expected intermodal volumes.

Overall, our volume for the third quarter finished flat despite gross ton mile growth of 4%. Let's look inside of merchandise. Volume grew 6% from a year ago, driven by our auto, chemical and metals and construction markets. Revenue less fuel grew 7%, which underscores our pricing discipline and our volume performance. However, we had mixed headwinds from growth in commodities such as natural gas liquids, sand and scrap metal, which diluted our overall RPU performance. In Intermodal, we're navigating the complexity of ongoing trade and tariff uncertainty persistently abundant highway truck capacity and outside factors, including competitor responses to our merger announcement, which caused volumes to decrease 2%. Intermodal revenue less fuel and RPU less fuel both grew, reflecting the overall stable pricing environment right now.

Now here, I have to note that year-over-year RPU comparisons benefited from an abnormally high volume of empty shipments ahead of the East Coast port disruptions last year. Let's turn to coal, where weakening seaborne coal prices drove RPU less fuel lower by 7% and and this was the most significant revenue headwind for the quarter. We enjoyed stronger demand in our Utility segment, but it didn't offset the sustained weakness in export. This interaction has been playing out throughout the year, and we expect it to persist.

Let's go to Slide 11 and talk about the market outlook. Like the third quarter, we continue to navigate a dynamic economic environment, along with competitive cross currents. For our merchandise markets, we forecast vehicle production will be challenged in part due to recent disruptions at a key material supplier to our customers. We expect this will have a meaningful impact to production at several NS-served automotive plants in the fourth quarter. At the same time, overall manufacturing activity remains mixed with output expected to grow despite the backdrop of trade and tariff uncertainty. Strong fracking activity in the Marcellus Utica Basin is supporting demand and NGLs and sand in our merchandise markets. Looking into our intermodal markets, we expect softer import demand in the near term. This reflects the impact of tariff volatility and growing trade pressures.

Warehousing capacity remains tight as inventory levels expanded at the beginning of the year ahead of tariffs and truck capacity remains oversupplied. Coal prices have remained pressured with significant uncertainty surrounding export trade. And at the same time, we're expecting utility demand to see continued support from growing electricity demand and lower existing coal stockpiles. Now these dynamics should be considered against the backdrop of our recently announced merger, which has intensified competitor activity across the industry. And as a result, we anticipate volume pressure, particularly in our Intermodal segment. and so we're maintaining a cautious outlook for the remainder of 2025.

Lastly, as always, we want to thank our customers for their continued partnership and business the entire NS team is aligned around delivering the service that our customers need every day, building trust as a vital partner in their supply chains. Now with that, I'll hand it over to Jason to review our financial results.

Thanks, Ed. I'll start with the reconciliation of our GAAP results to the adjusted numbers that I will speak to today on Slide 13. The Total costs attributable to the Eastern Ohio incident were $13 million, which included $16 million of recoveries under our property insurance policies. In addition, we recognized the $12 million restructuring charge in the quarter as we continue to rationalize our technology projects.

Finally, we also recorded $15 million in merger-related costs, consisting primarily of legal and professional services as well as employee retention accruals. Adjusting for these items, the operating ratio for the quarter was $63.3. From a bottom line perspective, we earned $3.30 per share.

Moving to Slide 14, you'll find the comparison of our adjusted results versus last year and last quarter both comparisons reflecting a 10 basis point improvement in the operating ratio and the sequential comparison basically even with the current quarter.

On a year-over-year basis, Revenue was up, as I just discussed, but we were expecting approximately $75 million more revenue as we had guided to within the second quarter materials continued macro headwinds, a surge that never materialized and competitor responses from the merger announcement that started to really ramp up at the end of the quarter, all were barriers to the attainment of that expectation.

Expenses were up 2% on a 4% increase in GTMs, but there are a lot of puts and takes within OpEx, and those year-over-year expense drivers are laid out on Slide 15. You'll note that the quarter benefited from higher land sales, which were $65 million more than last year. In fact, the entire variance was driven by 1 large sale that closed at the very end of the quarter.

Another quarter of strong productivity gains also helped to mitigate both inflationary and volumetric pressures in addition to the absence of benefits recorded last year in the form of cancellation of stock awards and fuel recoveries. I'd also point out that claims expense was elevated in the quarter despite the outstanding progress we're delivering on our safety initiatives as we react to unfavorable developments on claims from several years ago, in addition to claims inflation on a few incidents that we have experienced this year.

So as I think about our 63.3 operating ratio for the quarter, Clearly, that was aided by outsized land sales. However, we were short on revenue from our latest guidance, and we dealt with higher claims expense than what we had been experiencing. And as we move into the fourth quarter, Revenue will continue to be challenged, but we are focused on what we can control, and we expect to maintain our cost structure in the $2 billion to $2.1 billion range. I'll hand it back to Mark to wrap it up.

Thanks, Jason. As you can see, there were a lot of moving parts in the quarter, but as a thoroughbred team, we are successfully controlling the controllables. Looking ahead, macro environment remains uncertain and we acknowledge that over the next several quarters, unpredictable demand and unique competitive dynamics will create some abnormal fluctuations in our top line. We are not standing still. Our recent Louisville announcement will create attractive volume growth as it builds out. Additionally, once the merger closes, we can provide attractive solutions for our customers unlocking faster, more reliable service, streamlined shipping experiences and expanded access across a unified coast-to-coast rail network.

These improvements will strengthen our value proposition and help drive long-term growth in our combined railroad through highway conversion. While the regulatory review process is ongoing, we remain laser-focused on maintaining strong safety performance, while running a fast and resilient network. That is delivering great service that our customers have now come to expect from us. Meanwhile, we will continue to maintain a sharp focus on optimizing our cost structure. As you saw in John's section, we are making excellent progress on the productivity front and are raising our 2025 efficiency target to roughly $200 million, and this follows the nearly $300 million we achieved in 2024. I am really proud of our team for the work they've done on this. And while revenue in this environment is proving difficult to guide, you can expect that our fourth quarter costs in absolute dollars will be in the $2.0 billion to $2.1 billion range.

So with that, let's open the call to questions.

Operator? .

[Operator Instructions] First, we will hear from Scott Group at Wolfe Research.

So Ed, if I heard right, I think you said a 2-point drag in Q3 from some business losses related to the merger. And it sounds like it gets worse going forward? Is this just intermodal? Are you seeing in any other places? And ultimately, how much business do you think is at risk until we see merger closing?

We saw that start to really manifest itself toward the tail end of the quarter, call it, September-ish. And so it's going to manifest itself to wrap around it year-over-year. It's a minority of -- certainly a minority of the business, and it's really focused geographically to this point. in the Southeast. We're working really hard to do 2 things: Number one, to make sure that we're providing a fantastic service for everybody that wants to use us. And number two, we're really leveraging the network that we have, the route structure and the terminal structure to bring freight back to Norfolk Southern that may have left for whatever reason. And so I'm pretty confident that, yes, while this is going to be a headwind for a while going forward, over the next couple of bid cycles, you'll see it start to iterate itself back toward what I would call the high-value, low-cost solution, which is Norfolk Southern for the beneficial cargo owners.

And that's independent of a merger, Scott.

And then maybe just, Jason, I think that the $2 billion to $2.1 billion of cost, it's a relatively wide range on a quarterly basis. Any sort of more help in terms of where you think we could be in that range in Q4. I don't know, is maybe the right way to think about it, excluding the gains was a 65.5% OR in Q3. Do you think that gets worse in Q4? Just any thoughts there?

So when I think about the expense profile going from third quarter to fourth quarter, as you mentioned, you've got to kind of normalize for those outsized land sales that we had in the third quarter. And then historically, as we move from third to fourth quarter, if you look at the 5-year average, expenses are up about 1.5%. And that's kind of really what brings us into that $2 billion to $2.1 billion range. So kind of moving with that seasonality.

A couple of drivers that I'd point you to. We've talked about headcount in the past, guided you to the fourth quarter 2024 exit rate, which is about $19,500. We're a little bit below that in third quarter. So that should step up a little bit as we move into the fourth. Depreciation expense always steps up as we move into the fourth quarter just as we get more capital work done and get those projects in service. And then finally, we've talked a bit before about what we've done on the technology front, and we've really gone to that managed services model. So you'll see some higher purchase services expense in the fourth quarter that are being driven by that. eventually, you should see that come out of comp [indiscernible], but it will definitely be a driver in the fourth quarter.

Next question will be from Brandon Oglenski at Barclays.

Maybe this is for Mark or John, but when you guys think about managing the cost structure in this environment where maybe there's some share loss and obviously, some headwinds just given the trade environment especially as you look out further, if the deal gets approved, then maybe you want to maintain some excess capacity as well. So how do you balance these differing needs as you look out over the near term and medium term?

Yes. Great question, Brandon. I think you're right. We've got to be really careful how we address this. I mean as you see, we have been trading down a bit and driving some productivity with regard to moving 4% more GTMs this quarter, while we saw headcount kind of drift down 3%. So that's a 7% spread. We're really really happy with that outcome, and we're seeing actually better service and better safety performance while we do it. So we're going to be really careful here. And I think, John, maybe you can talk a little bit about the next step of cost reduction. But the other element I'd point you to, Brandon, we continue to focus on fuel efficiency, where we had a 5% gain year-over-year in fuel efficiency from all the initiatives that John has put in place. So we continue to get these mid-single-digit improvements in fuel efficiency. So labor productivity, fuel efficiency. We've been attacking purchase services, although we are making a deliberate shift to outsource some stuff in IT that will yield benefits in comp [indiscernible]. So that's why it's a little bit of an odd a little bit of an odd quarter because you do see 0 volume growth on the carload side, but there is actually GTM growth so that does require resources. And also remember, 18% growth in autos, 18% growth in auto this quarter year-over-year, huge growth. And that, of course, has some incremental volumetric costs that come with it that you'd see manifest in equipment rents. So those are the kind of things where it's a complex P&L. We're going to be really mindful of really trying to drive those areas for productivity and efficiency while not undermining our ability to move volume.

[indiscernible] chime in, please. Yes. Mark, you're speaking like an operating -- Chief Operating Officer with all the detail gives me the chance to talk a little high level. So I appreciate that. Let's just start with the fundamentals. We're moving more volume with more yield on our trains slightly heavier trains with less crews and more overall fluidity. So using that train speed that we're generating to reduce our locomotive fleet increase our car miles per day, decrease the number of cars it takes to create a load and doing all those fundamental things that show through to the customer and give the chance to sell aggressively in whatever market he's in at the time. So those fundamentals are very sound. We are -- we have restructured a number of things, including how we manage fuel, which is showing through in sequential fuel improvement and flowing through to the bottom line. But it doesn't stop there. We've restructured how we hire people speed and the quality to which they enter the workforce. So that gives us the opportunity to be more responsive, even longer lead resources and assets. So we're ready for those things. And we'll continue to improve locomotive fluidity by revamping our train service plan I'll just say that our zero-based plan version 3 has just come out. And year-to-date, we've reduced our interval crew starts by 14%. Our shipments per crew start have improved by 11% and we've simplified our lean offerings and are blocking complexity. And as a result, we're really energizing how we service that product. and delivering it with more resilience and capability. So that's what gives me confidence that we're going to not only stretch ourselves this year and the remainder of the year in that overall cost takeout in that financial improvement from an operating perspective and an overall enterprise perspective, but even continuing that momentum into 2026 and stretching ourselves in the range of $600 million cumulative takeout. So it's going to be hard work, which is in our DNA, and we're ready for it.

Next question will be from Jonathan Chappell at Evercore ISI.

Ed, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that the coal RPU was one of the single biggest impacts on revenue. And you also said you expect the headwinds to persist. If we look at export benchmarks and even your [indiscernible] last week, made it seem like the coal RPU pressure would stop at least sequentially, maybe you're referring to year-over-year. Can you give us any sense to how much that may continue to step down from the third quarter level? And when do you think that, that headwind may begin to stabilize?

I think you got that right. And thanks for the question, so I can clarify. I think the export benchmark is something like 175 right now. And I don't necessarily anticipate any material degradation from that. So on a sequential basis, maybe go sideways, which on a year-over-year basis, is still double-digit down. Same is true on the utility side for export. Probably going sideways, but still on a year-over-year basis, double-digit down. And I think that's going to persist certainly through the quarter and maybe into early next year before it hopefully starts to climb out. There's a lot of uncertainty around export coal when it comes to both the met and utility side. who's going to get it or who's going to take it and where it will come from. So we're keeping a really close eye on that.

Great. So that revenue headwind than mostly volume, we should stop looking for RPU deterioration overall?

Yes. Year-over-year ARPU deterioration will continue. Sequentially, it should be pretty stable. And this quarter, we did start to see volume degradation as a result of the poor pricing environment.

Next question will be from Tom Wadewitz at UBS.

Wanted to ask a little more on the topic of the competitive responses. I guess the kind of name that comes out and seems the most prominent in Intermodal would be J.B. Hunt. And I just want to get a sense if you could Help us think about to the extent that BN is going to exert some control here and push more business over to CSX. How much of the business do you think should be sticky to Norfolk? I recall back quite a long time ago, you had some corridor initiatives that I think are differentiated like the [indiscernible], just lines that maybe CSX isn't going to serve markets as well. So I just want to see if you have some high-level thoughts on what can make business with JB or intermodal, in general, sticky in terms of network differences? And how much kind of risk is there of kind of [indiscernible] forcing some business over to CSX?

So I think we talked about it before that more than half of our business with J.B. Hunt originates and terminates here in the East. And we continue to provide a really excellent service product to them, and we feel comfortable and confident with that. retaining that business. I think for the balance and particularly in certain geographies, perhaps in the Southeast, that's really what's at risk right now that they can go in and talk about. But I just want to reemphasize that one thing. About 2 decades ago, we started investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build out our intermodal franchise. We built out that premier corridor in the Crescent Corridor, we built terminals, and we have an unrivaled intermodal franchise in the East. And it's a franchise that people want to be on because it provides the fastest route for the major markets. And with a terminal footprint where customers want it to be. So with time, cargo owners are going to want that business back on the NS and we are going to work aggressively to help them get that cargo back on the. So Ed, please chime in.

Well, gosh, I think you pre summarized it, but let me say this. There are a number of key lanes where Norfolk Southern offers exceptional value for customers that really can't be replicated anywhere. There's -- I would say this from experience, there's a reason why we have the second largest intermodal franchise in North America is because of the superior route structure that we've built out that Mark just referenced. And also a terminal network that gets you with your freight, landed closer to the consumer than any other network out there. So there's lots of things that can happen in terms of pushing freight around that, what I would call, be unnatural. But over time, we're very confident. John and I are that we put our heads together, make sure our service is exceptional. The way it is now. We continue to partner with the riots we're going to be in good shape.

But I guess one component of that as well is just that CSX has had this major construction project and debottlenecking with their Howard Street Tunnel. And so that makes them a lot more efficient north, south along the east. Is that like is that a significant competitive impact? Or do you think that's not -- that's kind of a impact on a modest portion of your domestic?

I can't really comment on that project for them. I hope it makes them a lot more competitive with truck.

Next question will be from Brian Ossenbeck at JPMorgan.

First, just a quick follow-up maybe for Ed. I think you mentioned that business and we're talking about here, it would come back to the network even without mergers. Maybe you can just elaborate exactly what would have to change if it's better service or competing more on price? And then just maybe for -- on the upside for John, when you think about fuel efficiency, I mean we've always heard it was going to be a challenge at Norfolk because of length of haul and mix and a bunch of other things, wait but it looks like you've clearly broken through. Is that something you feel like you can get to sort of best-in-class levels with your peers? Some more thoughts on that would be helpful.

All right. I'll go first before I forget the question. When I think about the service from the West Coast into the Southeast, I think about UP and NS utilizing the Meridian Speedway as the fastest shortest route between those 2 regions, period. There's not a better ride out there when it comes to that kind of freight for intermodal. So that's one thing. The second thing is the exceptional amount of terminal capacity that we have and expertise to back it up, both in the Carolinas, Florida as well as in Georgia. That's just going to be a force multiplier and has been. So we're confident that over time, cargo owners are going to make the right decision about where their freight routed. I'll hand it off to you, John.

Well, I'm glad you're noting the hard work the team has done on fuel. And I won't comment on what the order the possible may have been thought through back then, but I'll tell you right now, and as we go forward, it's a big part of a strategy that includes all of our strategic sourcing and logistics approach, including the assessment of distribution, the use and consumption of the product like fuel. And the current efficiency represents a significant dollar value. And if you look at the Mosaic of measures that we present to you all, we're balancing speed, locomotive productivity, the fuel burn. And we're looking at it, not how fast can we go just to get faster and to get to point A to point B quicker, we will, if that means we can use a crew at the end of that trip to use them within the yard and save money somewhere else. But as we work through fuel consumption, we want to make sure that how we manage our fuel resources is aligned to what our train service plan is. And we're always looking at that service plan. we're taking more detailed approach on each element of it. what resources we need, how much fuel we need to move the tonnage, how soon we need to get to a customer. So on a product level view, we're satisfying the contractual obligations and elevating our service metrics and how they face the customer. And we're taking that -- the nice thing is we're taking that approach in mechanical, how we service our locomotives, how we maintain our parts inventory how we're putting stress on our engineering team through Ed Boyle and his great leadership and managing ties, plates, rail, ballast, all of those things. So across all of those things, whether it's fuel and operational resources, we're taking a really hardline approach on it. So I think we've got room to grow on fuel. I don't have any end in sight to the value we can create managing all of those components. But I can tell you, it's the tip of the iceberg as we move forward against all our enterprise resources.

And I would just add one other thing, Brian, is when I look back years ago when I came in, we had roughly high teens percent of our locomotive fleet that was AC. And through those investments that we've been making every year systematically to upgrade our locomotive fleet from DC to AC, we're now approaching 80% AC. So that is definitely helping provide more runway for the future that John is extracting using the methods that he's talking about. So that definitely is a driver as well, right?

Yes. And that gives us the just run just look at 2019, which was one of the bellwether years from a financial and service perspective. And right now, we're running year-to-date 23% less horsepower per ton. When you have that discipline in managing locomotives, the utilization of your power, your crews, you're reducing your stops, you're creating more fluidity it shows up in fuel and shows up in so many other P&L items. So you're right, Mark, those investments, those wise investments are paying dividends.

But the discipline you're bringing now for the things you're just talking about is really what's accelerating benefits and providing more runway into the future. So congratulations on that.

[Operator Instructions] Next, we will hear from Chris Wetherbee at Wells Fargo.

I guess I wanted to sort of ask about what you think is possible from an OR improvement perspective, particularly as we're thinking about 2026. So you came into this year, I think there was a revenue target around 3% with 150 basis points of productivity. And then 50 basis points of OR. Obviously, the revenue side has been more challenging because of volume. We'll see how much OR you get this year. But I guess maybe the question as we go into next year, how much sort of OR opportunity do you think there is that you can control and maybe how much is more revenue dependent? So obviously, it's an uncertain environment out there. I want to get a sense of out of the $600 million of productivity, how much do you think can be translated from an operating ratio perspective as we think about next year?

Chris, thanks for the question. Look, I think what we're going to do, which is very similar to what we're doing this year is we're going to focus really hard on the controllables, in particular, those elements on the cost side. So we're going to maintain a lot of discipline on our employment levels and try to drive labor productivity for sure. We're going to focus on the fuel efficiency and every single line item in the P&L that we can control. Obviously, we get things like claims that surprise us -- and Jason has talked a little bit about that and can talk to you some more about that, some of the social inflation we're seeing. But there's a lot we can control, and that's where we're going to put our focus. On the revenue, obviously, we've got some headwinds. And mathematically, that's going to probably put some short-term pressure on the OR that we're going to have to deal with. But Ed and his team are doing a great job fighting every way they can to preserve every single unit that's out there and try to grow every single unit with the value offering that we have, thanks to the great service John is providing. So we're going to do that. But I think at the end of the day, the OR is going to be an output of the those 2 elements. Jason, do you want to add anything?

Yes. I would just say it's really -- if you look at our kind of our cost profile over the last couple of years and think about the inflation that we've taken on and the volumetric expenses, really, and thanks to what John and the team have done from a productivity standpoint, harvesting almost $500 million of productivity. That's what's enabled us to kind of keep that cost profile flat over these last couple of years. So I think you hit it right on, Mark, as we move into next year. I did just want to for a second talk about claims because you had mentioned it, Mark. But John, you can maybe jump in and talk a little bit more about what you guys are accomplishing from a safety perspective, which I think is really remarkable progress. But on the cost side, claims is always very volatile, and we see that quarter-to-quarter. But what we're seeing right now is the resolution of some older claims. And while the frequency is going down, we're experiencing higher cost per incident to close out those claims. So over recent years and quarters, we've seen pressure on that claims line. as both the insurance rates increase, but also we're facing the same type of social inflation that you're seeing across the transportation sector. But John, maybe a little color on what you guys are doing to mitigate the number of incidents.

Yes. And we've said it. Our safety from an injury and accident perspective are taking on a really strong momentum, and we're continuing to invest in our safety camps I've mentioned it before on these calls, our [indiscernible] has got a component of safety and safety leadership. We've processed over 2,500 leaders through that program who have now had a more capable way of approaching our workforce, building the environment and skills that are necessary. And you couple that with the investments we've made in technology and a great story. We had a broken wheel derail with a train that had come on us for 1 mile. And we -- as a leadership team said, there's got to be a better way. And very rapidly through the work we do with Georgia Tech and our portal systems, we created a wheel detection device that gives us -- identifies wheel integrity on all of our trains that pass through those portals. It was so effective that we made a suit case version, a mobile version, and we're putting it into the ingress and egress of our hump yards and other high-density corridors to give us a good view to insulate ourselves from something that is not ours. Most of it is on foreign cars. And it's been really effective so far, we've -- I would say using my own language that we prevented over 40 games by the detection that we've had with these wheel inspection devices that didn't exist a year ago. That ability to take ideas understand the business, convert them into actionable items and then put them into field use at scale is a testament to the commitment we've got on safety and how we can really influence line items that you're talking about and solve them at the root cause.

And Chris, I just want to come back to one other thing as we look to '26. So obviously, we're going to work on controlling the controllables on the cost side. But paramount importance in 2026 is for us as an enterprise to continue this quest toward improving and preserving a very safe railroad. We cannot have a mismatch. Similar to that, we have to maintain outstanding service for our customers. We cannot step back from that. Those are the 2 most important things. We're going to control costs. But those 2 things are paramount importance. And I would say the other thing is really the preservation of employment and retention because we have to go into this merger with talent to ensure that it succeeds. So that's where our focus is. And like I said, we're going to fight like hell for every unit and every dollar that's out there. But let's not lose focus on the the safety and service elements, which are high, high priorities for us.

Next question is from [indiscernible] at Deutsche Bank.

So sorry to beat a dead horse, but I also wanted to talk about the revenue erosion you expect from competitor reaction. First, I wanted to confirm that this was ring-fenced to intermodal. And then I guess what is really hindering your ability to compete? I know you enhanced your partnership with UNP in the interim, for example, Mark, you just reminded us today about the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in intermodal over the past 2 decades to make for a very strong product. So I guess I'm just confused on why you would be challenged just because you're pursuing a merger? And then is your competitor winning on price? Or is it something else? I mean that it's not Howard Street. So maybe just elaborate a little bit more there.

That's a great question, Ed?

Sure. Well, let me start with your first question, which is, yes, it is confined to intermodal and specifically to domestic nonpremium intermodal. And I can't talk about or address why other entities contracts may or may not allow for certain things to occur. But I can tell you that we're competing vigorously both from a price perspective in a market that's been down for 40 months, but also from a service perspective. And John and I are laser-focused on the route coming out of L.A. across Freeport, Meridian Speedway and into the Southeast. And we have a great team operating our 2 terminals in Atlanta, our one terminal in Charlotte, our other terminal in Greensboro and the one in Jacksonville that are not only poised to handle the freight we're getting today, but can accept more, frankly. So that's the landscape. And again, like I said, I think over the next couple of bid cycles as those beneficial cargo owners look at the value that they're receiving from the service that they are getting from whoever they're getting from we're going to offer a very compelling case for them to come back to a network that makes the most sense for them. John, do you have anything to add there?

I would just emphasize that our customer-facing composite standards are extremely high. We're committed to delivering them. And we've got resources, we've got assets, and we've got a corridor that's poised and ready for growth. And we're going to deliver regardless

For every customer that is able to use Norfolk Southern. We're open for business.

And look, again, I'll get back to the fact that when we control the relationship entirely with our customer base in our region, we're doing great. But when it's an interline arrangement and the contract may not be specifically through us, that's where we're seeing some of these challenges. So this is really kind of interline only. That's where it's -- that's where we're seeing it.

Next question will be from David Vernon at Bernstein.

I guess, Ed, sticking on this topic, can you put a finer number on kind of what the quarterly run rate should be down, assuming nothing else changed in the business from where we're exiting kind of 3Q, just to help us kind of better understand what's in that model. And it sounds like you're saying you guys can go market that against that service and maybe get some of traffic over time. What's the risk that this gets worse, right? I mean it sounds like you're saying you're going to go back and try to go directly to BCOs presumably with another IMC to pull back some of that volume. Is there -- do you get worried at all that maybe there's another shoe to drop as far as kind of the volume that's been lost.

[indiscernible] But I would say this, we're working really close with all of our partners, including ones that may be affected with this to make sure that we're offering exceptional value for them in places where we can do that. And there are places across our network that I would argue we offer services that really no other railroad can replicate. Quantifying it's probably a little bit difficult. You saw what the effect kind of was really on a portion of order. So we'll see from here. And again, it's not like we're in a super healthy truck freight environment where there's a lot of lift right now. So the whole world is struggling when it comes to freight, this is one other -- one more headwind applied to the portfolio, but we're very confident in the service -- we should reiterate.

In the third quarter, it wasn't the majority of the challenge in intermodal. It was on the margins -- this will build in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. And that's where it will take us, like you said, a couple of good cycles, we should end up getting it back. But we're going to feel the pain here in the next handful of quarters.

Next question will be from Stephanie Moore Jefferies.

Maybe talking a bit about your plans currently or your strategy to mitigate potentially any integration risk that we should see with the integration of the 2 networks. Clearly, you've made tremendous efforts from a service standpoint over the last several years and UNP as we all saw earlier today, also at a really strong point. So wanted to just talk again hear your view how to early on mitigate any of that integration risk or network disruption that could come as a result of the merger.

Yes. I think that's 1 thing, Jim and I are very, very aligned and clear on is that we cannot afford to have any integration pickup or challenge. So we're going to take our time and do this the right way. We're going to learn from the lessons of the past, and we're going to study that carefully. And we're going to kind of do a lot of benchmarking and leverage the talent we have on both teams to start planning when that's appropriate and observing what it is we can do from a systems perspective and then even from a technical perspective. We're going to do this very, very deliberately. It's an ultra high priority for us when we do bring these companies together to ensure that the integration is done right. John?

Yes. Mark, I've been through these potential mergers before, and I'll let those results speak for themselves, but merger or new merger leadership matters. And since early 2004 and throughout 2025, this team has successfully delivered our PSR 2.0 transformation, which has been building the momentum and producing irrefutable value. And we've had to navigate complexity ambiguity and even adversity. It works in all business environments, and we're going to continue to invest in our generational leaders elevate our service. We're going to continue to stress the plan. remove waste and deliver more volume with fewer people, fewer locomotives, fewer cars and less fuel. So really, it comes down to the fundamentals. As I said in my prepared remarks, the fundamentals are sound. And from that stability lends the opportunity for the development of an integration land?

Yes. I think, again, it gets back to my response to Chris. We've got to go into this merger, both of us really operating well. And that will certainly ensure a good foundation for integration. And right now, we're both in strong positions and the way our safety and our service metrics are yielding and that is important to maintain because once we come together, we're coming together from a foundation of strength, we can integrate a lot easier.

Next question will be from Bascome Majors at Susquehanna.

As you think about the competitive response what conviction do you have that some of what's happening in intermodal doesn't bleed into the carload side of the business? And maybe aligned with that 3 months in post announcement, like what conversations are you having with your large industrial carload customers? And do those skew optimistic or cautious?

I would categorize it in a couple of different ways. Number one, we have built a firm runway of success there when it comes to our carload service. And of course, that's the number one thing that our customers are looking for on that side. They want that conveyor belt that moves at the same speed all the time with little variation. And John and his team have done a really good job of building that resiliency back into it. Number two, and I think this is kind of turn horn, but I can't help [indiscernible] we're known for being a relationship business. We are a relationship company, and we've built strong partnerships across the board with our big industrial customers. They know us. We know them. And I can say hi to them on this call. We -- they know us and they know the way that we do business, and I will tell you that they are curious, of course, to learn more about what's going to happen in the future, but they're confident that with us being a part of the equation that they're in good hands, so to speak. Now in terms of any other erosion, it's a competitive landscape. We'll see what happens. We're competing every day to try to get more so as everyone else. We'll see where that part goes. But I think that combination of relationships and good service is a very good defense for us.

Next question will be from Jordan Alliger at Goldman Sachs. .

You gave some good color around the coal yields intermodal. But maybe thinking through sort of like total yields or revenue per carload as we look out to the fourth quarter, maybe talk about some of the puts and takes overall, whether it be core price, mix, et cetera?

I appreciate it. I'm very pleased with where we've landed with our price plan this year so far, and I fully expect that to continue for the rest of the year. So our pricing plan is intact. And I would say that we're in good shape there, particularly versus inflation. When I look at the mix piece, we're going to see more utility. We'll probably see a little bit less on the export side. And you got erosion in the RPU for the coal piece because of that seaborne price. That's going to be a little bit of a mixed headwind. On the merchandise side, we've already highlighted that natural gas liquids and even some metals markets in terms of scrap, that's diluted the RPU sum. But I will tell you that probably the the biggest challenge we're going to have from where we've come from might be on the automotive side where we've seen that one big supplier to one of our big customers have an issue. And so we expect that there'll be a little bit of wind taken out of the automotive side, so to speak, when it comes to the volume piece, and that's to go along with everything else. Hope that helps.

And at this time, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to turn the call back over to Mark George.

Okay, everyone. Really appreciate you dialing in this evening. Just to summarize, we're running a really good railroad right now despite the uncertain macro environment that's ahead and obviously the increasing competitive pressures. So our top line may be volatile going forward, but we are absolutely committed to safety, to service and maintaining our cost structure, and we are going to fight like hell over every available unit and dollar rest assured. There's a lot of opportunity on the horizon with our proposed merger with UP, and that's going to yield huge benefits to our customers as well as our country.

So we thank you for your time this evening, and take care.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. And at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.