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Earnings Calls: 
Canadian Pacific Railway Earnings Call, Second Quarter 2008
Author: Albena Toncheva
123jump.com
Last Update: 12:47 AM ET August 13 2008

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Second-quarter earnings declined almost 40% from a year ago hit by the surging fuel prices, a worsening economic situation and flooding. Revenue remained flat at $1.22 billion Canadian ($1.21 billion). The railroad company slashed its full-year profit guidance to a range of $4 to $4.20 per share Canadian, down from $4.40 to $4.60 outlook issued earlier. Despite the traffic drop, price increases boosted freight revenue by 2%.


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David Newman (National Bank Financial): With the operation 1 the West end quarter you are putting some initiatives in place in election quarter – obviously, you are looking for a very robust look in the second half and into the fourth quarter on the bulk side. Are there any measures that you need to take to handle the increased level of volume to ensure that the network is fluid?

Kathryn Mcquade: We feel confident that we have adequate capacity in terms of our mobile assets, in terms of our crews and in terms of track on the Western quarter. I told you in the past, we have been powering up our coal trains. We have powered up our potash trains. We have also mentioned the longer trains, potash trains as well, which will add capacity. We have ECP breaking that for two train steps that we are implementing and in terms of crews and locomotives we are still very comfortable to handle the bulk projected for the fourth quarter.

David Newman (National Bank Financial): Is there a number that you can put on in terms of storage capacity utilization that you are at right now and what you might scale up to, in the fourth quarter by taking various initiatives?

Mike Lambert: Over the course of time in addition to the major initiative we put in place about two years ago to expand the western quarter. We also have been doing rightful shot de-bottle necking and we have done some of that work again this summer early in the process of finalizing that type of work. So, we would like to believe, for lack of perfect science, that we are probably positioning our self to be running in the high ‘70s, low ‘80s percent of capacity utilization which we think as an optimal zone. And we think we have got a couple of more points of activity that we can undertake this fall with new volumes and still lead us in a very efficient zone.

Kathryn mentioned about the pre-hiring. There is a six month lead time between trying to find people getting them trained and having them in place. So, some of the Q2 expenses we have incurred and some of which we will incur in Q3 are both getting the right numbers of running trade employees and the right number of mechanical employees so we can keep this locomotors running efficiently and on the road all the time. So, we have resourced up. We will continue to resource up.

Kenneth Hexter (Merrill Lynch): If we go back to last April when you lowered the target of 440 to 460 from 465 to 480, that was a $0.20 to $0.25 reduction and you would say it is because of the CTA adjustment on the car rental cost. That meant about $0.05 to $0.06 per quarter. If I take a look at this quarter with, as much as yields were down, it seems to be about a $25 million hit to revenues or about $0.10 for the quarter. Am I looking at that the right way where yield is hit in a bigger way than you would have been anticipated on the grain side?

Mike Lambert: No, we did quantify the CTA adjustment as a nickel. But it was a nickel to our original outlook. It was only $0.05 or less than $0.05 a quarter. It was only $0.05. So, no we have not been surprised by the amount and that is not what is causing us to reduce our guidance right now. It is, of the $0.40 reduction, it is $0.30 related to fuel, $0.20 of that is just in the price and $0.10 is on the lay.

Kenneth Hexter (Merrill Lynch): If I go between first quarter and second quarter revenue impact or even what a normalized gross rate would have been on a year-over-year basis if you would have yields flat. I am asking specifically about grain.

Mike Lambert: To give you a round numbers, grain was a nickel, fuel was about 12 and a half volume with around 12 and a half.

Fred Green: What you are really seeing with regards to the reduction in grain activity is the fact that the prices were so high that big farmers shipped, I will not say pre-ship but the advanced ship in an awful lot of product and now we are basically faced with about 50% to 60% of our normal volumes during July and August.

Randy Cousins (BMO Capital Markets): Your real estate or other income was down. Can you give us some guidance for the second half?

Mike Lambert: In the first quarter, I had alerted everyone that the second quarter would be lower than last year. Essentially, we will be down for the total of the year modeling – it is just the impact of this quarter, for the balance of the year we should be flat.
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