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Earnings Calls: 
Union Pacific First Quarter Earnings Call
Author: Maclintosh Kuhlengisa
123jump.com
Last Update: 10:41 AM EDT May 05 2008


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The transportation firm realised income of $443 million or $1.70 per share, a 21% increase from 2007 as a continued focus on price resulted in revenues of $4.29 billion, up 11% from $3.89 billion a year ago. Setting aside the impact of higher diesel fuel prices, Union Pacific expects pricing gains and productivity to continue in the second quarter and increase overall profitability.


Investors Question and Answers

 
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Source: Company filings    Q1:March  Q2:June  Q3:September  Q4:December
 
Thomas Wadewitz (J.P. Morgan): In terms of the 11% yield, was there any mix or was it purely $5.5 from price and $5.5 from year-over-year increase in fuel surcharge?

James R. Young: There is some mix in there when you look at it. It did hold down, it negatively impacted our overall yields.

Thomas Wadewitz (J.P. Morgan): Where do you see the opportunity that comes from high fuel prices?

James R. Young: We are seeing more interest, on the one side there is a lot of pressure but there also a lot of these truckers are just basically trying to get some positive cash flow. So they can put some pressure on pricing in the short-term which we see.

Unidentified Analyst: Can we get an update on the Oregon outage?

Dennis J. Duffy: What we did was we restored the service. On a night-time basis we take about a 10-hour window at night to run trains through there. What we are in the process of doing now is cleaning up the unsuitable material that possess risk to be able to come down on us in future operation. We are gaining on that and we should get that behind us here hopefully within the next 30 days.

Unidentified Analyst: On the auto side, looking at the strike which seems to be have done worse not better recently what''s the impact?

Dennis J. Duffy: It cost us $14 million in the first quarter. s.

Unidentified Analyst: How should we think about labour moving forward?

Dennis J. Duffy: We will hire in total 4,000 employees for the year. We are going to lose about 4,200, 4,500 employees. Part of this is a really a function of how we look for volume going forward.

We have got what we have 300, 400 locomotives sitting in storage right now. We have got about 15,000 freight cars in storage. We have on our train and engine crew size, the total there is about 300.

Unidentified Analyst: Has the Meridian Speedway started to open up a little bit for you?

Dennis J. Duffy: We lost a little bit from this fare that we talked about, but we are rebuilding it fine and customers like the service, it’s great performance, very reliable and it is going to be one of our growth features for the rest of the year.

Unidentified Analyst: Could you give an update on the Sunset quarter and the timing for when you think the double track will be done from here?

John J. Koraleski: We are doing what we said we will do this year and that is about 36 miles additional construction, we are doing somewhere about 140 miles of additional rating and we are on target to get all that accomplished.

We are working with Arizona to get our permitting issues that behind us there as well as the local communities in Arizona.

William Green (Morgan Stanley): Do you see any sort of demand elasticity as the fuel surcharges keep rising?

James R. Young: In some cases we are again at the end of the day for our customer it is the total cost, core price plus fuel surcharge and they are going to make their decision in terms of where there might be an alternative move that gives them more economics.

In some cases, you can find some low cost in the market but what we are trying to work with our customers on is long-term. In some cases, there is some business that quite honestly probably should not be moving on the railroad.

William Green (Morgan Stanley): On leverage ratios, where do you see those going and do you expect that might have any impact on the second quarter call?
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