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Earnings Calls: 
Burlington Northern Santa Fe First Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Rozalina Destanova
123jump.com
Last Update: 6:31 AM EDT May 05 2008


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While fuel costs rose, revenue from shipping agricultural products jumped 38% to $866 million, and revenue from transporting coal rose 26% to $954 million, driven by higher volume and also higher prices. Total freight revenue rose 17% to $4.14 billion, with gains in all segments. Overall volume by rail car fell 0.8%, weighed down by a big drop in volume of shipments of consumer products. Agricultural volume jumped 15%.


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Walter Spracklin (RBC Capital Markets): What is the reluctance among the companies to choose the intermodal product?

John P. Lanigan, Jr.: It is their trucks and their drivers. It is the business model that they have and trying to come to grips with the best use of their resources longer term. It is getting over that emotional hurdle of what their heritage is with having a driver, a tractor and a trailer from point A to point B and giving part of that haul up to the railroad.

Matthew K. Rose: They have spent years trying to protect drivers trying to find drivers, retain them and everything else. Now as volumes are down, they have got drivers and they know intuitively what they need to do is to reduce capacity in these periods. It is hard because they have worked so hard to get the drivers and it is a expensive proposition.

Walter Spracklin (RBC Capital Markets): Some of the larger carriers are starting to reduce capacity, particularly in the sort of mid to long haul routes. If fuel stays up at these levels, would some of these conversations going to turn to contracts?

Matthew K. Rose: Yes, if you look at our fuel efficiency, if everybody is pricing fuel properly, a rail unit versus a truck unit, rail is going to win every time just because we are some much more efficient. You will see the supply chain start to refigure their half of their transportation that they are buying. You are going to see more of a bias and more pressure for shippers to use more and more rail if fuel stays anywhere close to where it is today.

Walter Spracklin (RBC Capital Markets): How much of your fuel recharge is still tied to RCAP versus other metrics that maybe diesel-based or otherwise?

John P. Lanigan, Jr.: The percent on RCAP is almost totally within the coal area. We are probably in the 10% to 15% range.

Walter Spracklin (RBC Capital Markets): How much did exports on the intermodal side increase percentage wise?

John P. Lanigan, Jr.: 5% or 6%.

Walter Spracklin (RBC Capital Markets): Is CapEx going to be sticker in time on the downside when times are faster on volume because of the pricing and the need to continually push up service levels?

Matthew K. Rose: A lot of things are being debated within the halls of Congress of how much does a railroad have to invest and what happens when a railroad does not do well, i.e. we have got a couple of situations out there where you have got a line segment that are not reinvestable if you will. I think these are all fair arguments. Our position is simply that what we have said all along as long as our returns exceed double-digit type returns that our investors want us to continue to invest. When we are thinking about our capital program for this year, and this is a great example this year where we have increased our capital modestly to take advantage of the bonus depreciation that is in the stimulus bill, we are doing that in spite of the fact that we have got negative to positive volume. These locomotives that we are bringing forward have a 20-year life.
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