Norfolk Southern Q3 2022 Earnings Report

Norfolk Southern EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $4.10
• Consensus EPS: $3.64
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.46
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Norfolk Southern Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $3.34 billion
• Expected Revenue: $3.22 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$123.41 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Norfolk Southern Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2022
• Date: 10/26/2022
• Time: N/A
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022
• Conference Call Time: 8:30AM ET

Norfolk Southern (NYSE:NSC) is a major U.S. freight railroad company that provides rail transportation and related logistics services. As a Class I carrier, the company operates an extensive network across the eastern United States and offers scheduled freight service for a broad range of industries. Its core operations include long-haul and regional rail freight transportation, intermodal services that move containers and trailers between rail and other modes, and terminal and switching services that support efficient rail shipments for industrial and port customers.

The company transports a variety of commodities, serving sectors such as coal and energy, automotive and automotive parts, chemicals, agriculture, metals and construction materials, and consumer goods. Norfolk Southern’s service offering is oriented toward shippers and supply-chain partners, combining rail haulage with routing, scheduling and terminal operations to move bulk and unitized freight. Intermodal operations are a significant component of the business, linking inland markets with East Coast and Gulf ports and facilitating cross-border flows through interchange with other North American railways.

Norfolk Southern traces its lineage to several historic railroads that developed freight corridors across the southeastern and mid-Atlantic United States, and it expanded through a series of mergers and network acquisitions in the late 20th century, including participation in the division of Conrail assets in 1999. Today the company’s network connects many major industrial regions, ports and metropolitan markets in the eastern U.S. and integrates with the broader North American rail system via interchange with other carriers. Norfolk Southern is governed by a corporate board and senior management team responsible for operations, safety, regulatory compliance and strategic planning.

Norfolk Southern Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Norfolk Southern delivered record Q3 results with 17% year-over-year revenue growth to $3.3 billion, record net income and EPS, and maintained a 62% operating ratio despite significant labor cost headwinds.
• The top SPG rollout drove a 20% improvement in network velocity through faster train speeds and shorter dwells, earning positive customer feedback and laying groundwork for future volume growth.
• The company hit its staffing target of 7,300 qualified transportation and mechanical employees a month early, while terminal enhancements—such as shifting to humping—boosted yard fluidity and capacity.
• Provisional labor agreements added $140 million in wage accruals for 2022—including $88 million for retroactive periods—creating roughly a 110 basis-point operating ratio headwind.
• For Q4, Norfolk Southern expects flat year-over-year volumes but anticipates service improvements and stable pricing to support revenue and maintain ~62% full-year operating ratio amid economic uncertainties like interest rate pressures.

Presentation

[Operator]

Greetings, and welcome to the Norfolk Southern Corporation third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone today should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce Luke Nichols, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, Mr. Nichols. You may now begin.

[Luke Nichols, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Please note that during today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements 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 disclosure of those risks and uncertainties we view as most important. Our presentation slides are available at nscorp.com in the Investor section, along with our reconciliation of any non-GAAP measures used today to the comparable GAAP measures. A full transcript and download will be posted after the call. Turning to slide three, it's now my pleasure to introduce Norfolk Southern's President and Chief Executive Officer, Alan Shaw.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Norfolk Southern's third quarter 2022 earnings call. I am joined today by Cindy Sanborn, Chief Operating Officer, Ed Elkins, Chief Marketing Officer, and Mark George, Chief Financial Officer. The Norfolk Southern team delivered strong financial results in the third quarter, achieving quarterly records for revenue, net income, and earnings per share. We also demonstrated our focus on productivity and efficiency with significant OR improvement, as Mark will describe in a moment. Thank you to all the men and women of Norfolk Southern for their remarkable work this quarter and throughout the year, proudly serving our customers and improving the quality of our product. We are qualifying conductors at a robust pace, executing and refining our TOP|SPG operating plan and further strengthening our leadership team and operations. The impact is evident across our network.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

We see improved operating metrics, such as higher train speeds and shorter dwells. We see improved customer-facing service metrics. We hear improved feedback from customers who are talking to us about adding business. Volume is the lagging indicator, and we are confident our broad and continuing service improvement will drive growth opportunities in the months ahead. Today, the NS team is providing better service, creating network capacity for growth, and demonstrating the customer-centric, operations-driven approach that is the foundation of our success. During the quarter, we reached tentative agreements with the unions that represent our craft colleagues. This was a critical first step. The tentative agreements recognize the significant contributions of our people and keep them among the highest-paid craft workers in any industry.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

In my continuing field visits with frontline railroaders and local supervisors, I've been able to express my appreciation for the vital work they do for Norfolk Southern, our customers, and the U.S. economy. Working on the railroad has always been a great opportunity to build a fulfilling career, and we want to keep it that way. In the final days of the cooling-off period, as the possibility of service disruption loomed, we took a transparent, no-surprises approach to communicating with our customers, which helped them make informed decisions about how to keep their goods and materials moving. This is an excellent illustration of what it means to be customer-centric. Even though it created a modest headwind on volume, as Ed will describe, we received positive feedback from many of our customers.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

We'll take that same no-surprises approach every time because it's how we will deepen customer trust and enhance long-term value creation and growth. Now, I'll turn the discussion to Cindy for additional detail on our strong operating progress during the quarter. Cindy?

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

Good morning. Turning to slide five, our resolve to improve service levels is paying off. During the quarter, we executed a smooth rollout of the latest evolution of our PSR-based operating plan, TOP|SPG, and ended the quarter with network velocity more than 20% improved from where it was entering the quarter. As a result, the service recovery glide path we charted earlier this year for the STB is trending well ahead of schedule. We have more improvements to make, with progress being fueled by staffing initiatives, TOP|SPG, and disciplined field execution. We are gaining momentum and will continue to drive to enhance our customer service and create capacity. Slide six highlights where we are with staffing levels of our transportation workforce. Our pipeline of trainees remains robust, and we have reached the waypoint target of approximately 7,300 qualified T&E staff a month ahead of schedule.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

This was accomplished through our innovative approach to recruiting and reinforces the advantage we have to recruit a high-quality craft workforce that takes pride in moving the economy forward. As you heard from Alan, we are pleased to have reached tentative agreements in the quarter to keep that workforce among the highest-paid in the nation. Slide seven continues the discussion on service improvements we are making. Last quarter, we shared with you the decision to adjust a couple of our existing major terminals from flat switching to humping. Those shifts went smoothly and are paying dividends today. We are leveraging a similar number of crew starts as we had entering this year inside our yards and terminals, and are now moving cars more fluidly through those facilities. As a result, the rail car fleet is moving faster through our terminals.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

We're operating at high levels of productivity and creating capacity within our switching resources to drive further growth and productivity. As I said last quarter, we will remain flexible to most optimally manage assets, control costs, serve our customers, and do so safely. Moving to slide eight, GTMs were flat year-over-year, coupled with crew starts that were up 1%, produced flat train length and weight. We are very focused on the implementation of TOP|SPG in the quarter and are now poised for growth on our train network. Active locomotives were up for the fourth consecutive quarter in support of service recovery, and I am pleased to say that as we regain fluidity over the last couple of months, active locomotives are trending down on both a sequential and year-over-year basis.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

The skill of our mechanical workforce, coupled with our DC to AC modernization strategy, allowed us to deploy surge fleet capacities to support service recovery at historic levels of reliability. As I've discussed, we're continuing the modernization program in support of reliability and capacity in the future. Lastly, this marked our fourth consecutive quarter of fuel efficiency gains, again, due in part to our fleet investments, along with shutdown compliance initiatives augmented with enhanced communications technology and many more efforts. Slide nine hits on a pillar of our digital strategy, Empower the Workforce, which crosses our entire operations group. Through Empower the Workforce, we provide mobile self-service capabilities to our field forces and enable them to better manage their work with modern mobile applications. They are no longer tied to fixed-based reporting and can input and retrieve information when they need it in modern, user-friendly mobile applications.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

We have a mobility group of technology specialists that are responsible for providing consistent, consumer-grade mobile applications to our transportation, engineering, and mechanical forces. Whether it's an application for reporting rail car pickups and set offs, obtaining track authority, or recording bridge inspections, we are providing information where and when our employees need it in order to better manage their workday. To wrap up, slide 10 is a snapshot of our progress on operating safely. We've been aggressively hiring and have a strong focus on equipping our workforce with the training and tools to perform safely and efficiently. I want to thank our entire workforce for their focus on the job at hand throughout the very dynamic third quarter. I am pleased with our progress, but we'll never be satisfied until we reach zero accidents and injuries. Thank you, and I will now turn the call over to Ed.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you, Cindy, and good morning, everyone. All right, turning to slide 12, let's review our results for the third quarter, where we achieved record quarterly results in several categories. Total revenue improved 17% year-over-year to $3.3 billion as fuel surcharge and favorable price conditions more than offset a 2% decline in volume. Most notably, revenue per unit, excluding fuel, increased significantly and established a new record in both our Merchandise sector and for Norfolk Southern overall. These results reflect a strong price environment and the deliberate efforts of our commercial teams to pursue these opportunities. Before I comment on our individual business groups, I would like to address the impact of our collaborative mitigation efforts in response to a potential labor disruption this quarter. Coming out of August, we were encouraged by the upward trajectory of our volumes.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

As we moved through September and concerns of a labor disruption grew stronger, we acted to guard against the potentially negative impacts on our customers and the communities that we serve. In keeping with our no surprises approach to customer engagement, we spoke with our customers early on about our plans to limit the risk of stranded hazardous materials and security-sensitive freight like intermodal by restricting service for these products. We estimate that this approach accounted for roughly 40%-50% of the volume decline in the quarter or $20 million-$25 million in lost revenue, mostly in our intermodal markets. Our goal as a customer-centric organization is to gain credibility as a transparent and trusted service provider so that our customers integrate NS further into their supply chain needs. We can only achieve that goal with proactive communication and planning that minimizes disruption.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Our customers told us that they appreciated our industry-leading communication, and we're confident that our approach will deliver long-term value for Norfolk Southern, for our shareholders, and for our customers. We are pleased that a labor disruption was avoided, and we remain committed to providing quality service that our customers can rely on for their supply chain needs. Now, continuing to our business groups' performance in the third quarter, Merchandise volume was down 2% year-over-year, driven by declines in our steel and ethanol markets that were partially offset by higher demand for sand and aggregates. With respect to steel, service challenges related to equipment availability negatively impacted our ability to meet demand. Ethanol shipments were also down as consumption of gasoline declined in the third quarter on a year-over-year basis.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

On the positive side, shipments of sand increased more than 43% year-over-year on higher demand related to the strong market for natural gas production. Aggregates were also up due to higher levels of construction activity. Merchandise revenue improved 13% year-over-year to a quarterly record of $1.9 billion on higher revenue from fuel surcharges and from price gains. Moving on to Intermodal, revenue improved 16% for the quarter despite a 5% decline in volume. Revenue per unit reached a record level this quarter, driven by higher revenue from fuel surcharge and price. Intermodal shipments continue to be pressured by supply chain congestion and equipment shortages. This temporary shift was felt most strongly in our domestic business, where volume was down 4% year-over-year.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

International intermodal volume declines were driven primarily by car supply and private chassis shortages, both reducing customers' demand for inland point intermodal and limiting our ability to satisfy that demand. Lastly, coal market conditions were again favorable for us this quarter, enabling us to deliver 43% growth in revenue for the franchise from volume growth, price improvement, and fuel surcharge revenue. Volume growth was led by shipments of utility coal that were up on higher demand, spurred by high natural gas prices. Export coal volume was also up due to some carryover from the second quarter and generally improved coal supply. Coal volume growth was partially offset by year-over-year declines in coke shipments due to facility closures. Overall, our performance for the quarter reflects continued progress on our strategic plan to drive value for our customers and shareholders while simultaneously working to address pressures related to volume.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Moving to our outlook for the remainder of the year on slide 13, our service is trending in the right direction and we expect that to be a tailwind to volumes in the fourth quarter. Additionally, we're optimistic that consumer spending and manufacturing activity will support volumes for the remainder of the year. Those expectations are somewhat muted in light of looming recession risks and tightening financial conditions that are pressuring economic activity, especially in interest rate sensitive markets like housing. Volume in our Merchandise segment will benefit from growing activity in automotive markets, with U.S. light vehicle production currently expected to increase in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to 2021. Also contributing to growth will be new opportunities to move corn and other grains. Much of the Southeast corn crop is down significantly versus last year. This is likely to increase demand for Midwest-originated corn by rail.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Since emerging from the pandemic low, manufacturing activity has been increasing at a steady rate, but we're beginning to see that growth level off, with forecasts calling for growth to moderate to 3% year-over-year in the fourth quarter. As the Fed tightens interest rates, mortgage rates have increased to levels that are cooling the housing market. This reduced demand affects several of our Merchandise as well as intermodal markets. Overall, we expect Merchandise volumes to be relatively flat in the fourth quarter, with some upside potential as service continues to recover. Within Intermodal, our expectation is for volume to be down slightly year-over-year, with opportunities from easing terminal congestion and equipment supply being offset by expectations for weaker demand and a softening truck market. On the domestic side, national intermodal volume trends are showing signs of slowing, suggesting weaker peak season demand.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

However, consumer spending, which has historically been a big driver of this market, is currently forecasted to hold steady through the end of the year, providing underlying support for our domestic intermodal volumes. We continue to see volume opportunity for domestic intermodal as our service recovers, and we expect customers to shift loads from the highway to rail as we intently focus on improving domestic intermodal service. International intermodal will continue to struggle with congestion and equipment supply, and we expect intermodal storage charges to remain elevated so long as those issues continue. When supply chain congestion does ease, we expect to deliver additional international volume for customers as inland point intermodal, or IPI, becomes more attractive. Finally, our expectations for Coal are that volumes will continue to improve year-over-year in the fourth quarter, driven by strength in the markets for both utility and export coal.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

EIA's latest forecast is for natural gas prices to remain elevated through the end of the year. This will increase demand for coal as a competitive alternative. Seaborne coal prices are expected to remain at relatively high levels through the end of the year, indicating continued demand for U.S. coals abroad. We also anticipate increased coal supply in the fourth quarter, primarily for export, which will create opportunities for coal volume growth. To summarize, we have a number of uncertain market signals in front of us right now, but our focus remains on impacting the things that we can control to deliver quality service to our customers and increase value for our shareholders. Overall, we have a fantastic portfolio of customers and as always, I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their business and for their ongoing partnership.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

I will now turn it over to Mark for an update on our financial results.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you and good morning. Starting on slide 15, Ed walked you through the drivers of our 17% growth in revenues. You'll see operating expense up $355 million or 21%, and that includes a $117 million true-up to our compensation accruals based on the terms of the tentative labor agreements. This resulted in the operating ratio increasing year-over-year to 62% for the quarter. Operating income grew $136 million or 12% despite that headwind. EPS was up 34% or $1.04, thanks to strong earnings growth coupled with share shrink, but also from an adjustment to income tax expense related to Pennsylvania's rate reduction that was enacted in the quarter. You will recall we did signal this in our second quarter earnings release.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Let's take a moment on slide 16 to drill specifically into the labor cost adjustments that we recorded. As I mentioned, we increased our wage accruals by $117 million in Q3, with $88 million of that amount related to past periods, and $29 million related specifically to Q3 2022. The columns represent the period in which the adjustments relate. These amounts, including the impact of the bonus payments, represents more than 2x what we had been assuming. We anticipate another $23 million of incremental expense in Q4, bringing the total amount for the year to $140 million, which represents as much as 110 basis points of headwind to the full year OR from what we had been expecting.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

It is also worth noting that there is an additional $50 million of incremental labor cost that will be capitalized into property additions this year. Now, let's take a moment on slide 17 to reconcile the drivers of OR and EPS, since there are some movers in the quarter. The impact of the $88 million out-of-period wage accruals in Q3 was meaningful, representing a 270 basis point headwind to the OR and $0.28 on EPS. We did have a favorable legal settlement in the quarter that provided $0.05 of help to EPS and 40 basis points of help on the OR. The favorable state tax rate change caused a $136 million reduction to our deferred tax liability, which equates to $0.58 of EPS lift.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

That leaves a core improvement in EPS of $0.69 and improvement in the operating ratio of 50 basis points, which I'll point out includes the absorption of 90 basis points of headwind from the $29 million in period incremental labor cost adjustments that I spoke to on the prior slide. Moving now to slide 18 and the changes in operating expenses of $355 million, which represents a 21% increase year-over-year. Fuel was the primary driver, up $175 million or 84%, due almost entirely to price. As Cindy noted, we did enjoy benefits associated with a 3% fuel efficiency improvement. Compensation and benefits, it is up 21% due to the elevated labor costs associated with the tentative agreements. Moving on, you'll see purchased services and rents collectively up $52 million.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Inflation and slower network speed continue to drive up these two cost categories. Materials, claims, and other expenses were down 4% or $7 million year-over-year, helped in part from the $15 million favorable legal settlement in the other category. Turning now to slide 19 for the P&L below operating income. Other income was an expense of $2 million in the quarter, $16 million unfavorable compared to last year, driven by losses on the company-owned life insurance investments due to negative equity and fixed income market returns in the quarter. While pre-tax income was up 11% in the quarter, net income was up 27% due to the 12.4% effective tax rate in the quarter, thanks to the benefit recorded from the state tax rate change.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

EPS was up 34% greater than net income growth, supported by our capital allocation strategy that includes share repurchases. Shifting to slide 20, cash from operations through nine months is up $111 million, while property additions were higher by $257 million. As we discussed last quarter, I expect capital expenditures to be at the high end of the $1.8 million-$1.9 billion guidance range, with materials inflation and now incremental wage inflation creating meaningful headwinds. Free cash flow conversion stands at 86%. Shareholder distributions have been strong this year with a 15% increase to our dividends plus continuing solid share repurchase activity. With that, I'll hand back over to Alan.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you, Mark. Noting the considerable changes that occurred in the third quarter, I'd like to update you on our outlook for the balance of 2022. As you'll see on slide 21, based on the strong Q3 revenue performance, we now see full year revenue growth of 13%+ year-over-year. Ongoing strength in RPU, driven by fuel surcharges and strong price gains, are helping us overcome lagging volumes, which as Ed laid out, we expect to be flattish overall in Q4. Turning to the operating ratio, we are tracking to our previous guidance, excluding the impact from the tentative labor agreements. Mark laid out $140 million of incremental impact for the year, which is roughly 110 basis points of OR headwind.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

As such, we now expect the all-in OR for the full year to be roughly 62% based on our current assessment of the market. Since I became CEO in May, you have heard me speak to the strengths of our team and culture, our powerful network, and the macroeconomic trends supporting highway-to-rail conversion. I have shared some thoughts on our customer-centric, operations-driven approach and spoken to the bright future ahead for Norfolk Southern. I continue to be encouraged by my engagements with all of our team members and their commitment to serving our customers. As we approach our December 6th, 2022 Investor Day, we are eager to share a more detailed view of our long-term strategy for value creation. We will now open the call to questions. Operator?

[Operator]

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question today, please press star one from your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants who are using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Due to the number of analysts joining us on the call today, we'll be limiting everyone to one primary question and one follow-up question to accommodate as many participants as possible. Thank you. Our first question today will be coming from the line of Justin Long with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.

[Justin Long, Managing Director at Stephens]

Thanks, good morning. Just to start on the 2022 guidance, if I look at what you're guiding for revenue and your commentary on volumes, it implies that yields will be down at a decent amount sequentially in the fourth quarter. I was wondering if you could provide some more color on that, specifically around Coal RPU. Then maybe secondly, there have been a lot of inefficiencies in the network this year. Is there a way you can put a number on what that cost has been in 2022 as we think about service recovering and that potential future tailwind?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, Justin, good morning. Yeah, certainly, we see some potential headwinds in some of our markets moving into the fourth quarter, specifically energy, as you called out, and I'll let Ed talk about the projected impact on the top line.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Sure. You know, we've seen how seaborne coal prices have fallen, but they have found a new floor, and you know, they remain at relatively high levels. On the utility side, we expect there's still a lot of demand out there for that. You factor in what's going on in Europe, and we feel pretty good on the utility side, on the steam coal side. The met coal side is a different story. There's a lot of crosscurrents and headwinds, particularly from China that we see. Steel production in China remains muted and the housing situation there, which consumes a tremendous amount of steel in that market, remains off-kilter, so to speak. We are more guarded about the met coal side of the business.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Does that answer your question?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, Ed, your talk about your outlook for fuel surcharge revenue.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, fuel surcharge, you know, when we look at the forward curves and we know we have a two-month lag, we are expecting that there's a headwind that's going to come into play in the fourth quarter.

[Justin Long, Managing Director at Stephens]

It sounds like it's more a function of fuel and Coal RPU versus any slowdown in core price.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

That's right.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, we, you know, you've heard us talk about this before. We price to the value of our service in the market. We're very diligent about that. We are confident with our commercial teams that we're identifying places where we're adding value. We had, let's see, RPU less fuel records in Merchandise and overall this quarter, and we've had almost six years of revenue improvement or RPU improvement in Intermodal and almost seven years on our Merchandise side. You know, that is, that's through a lot of up and down cycles, freight recessions and freight boom times, and we've consistently been able to deliver. We're very focused on that side of the business.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

As we price to the value of our product, the value of our product is improving.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yes.

[Justin Long, Managing Director at Stephens]

Got it. Maybe Mark, on the network inefficiency cost question.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. Clearly, we're suffering incremental service costs related to where we are in our service product today. Honestly, it's at least $40 million a quarter. Those things, you know, show up in comp and benefits. It shows up in purchased services. As things improve going into 2023, we'll start to see relief in the P&L there.

[Justin Long, Managing Director at Stephens]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Yeah. Hi. Question, so you've talked about volumes and hopefully seeing some improvement there, but I'm just sort of curious, you know, when do we see these service metrics more fully translate to volume capability based on, you know, demand and why has there been such a lag? Thanks.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Jordan, as we noted, volume is a lag to service. We had seen a lot of improvement in our volume sequentially heading up to the potential work stoppage in mid-September. We're starting to see some improvements now, Ed.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, I'll repeat what I said earlier. You know, we felt like we had a lot of momentum going into that strike or the potential for a strike. We've talked previously about the IPI issue at our railroad, and that continues to impact volumes in the third quarter as our international customer portfolio made decisions to do more port-to-port services, specifically on short-haul lanes that are typically sensitive to spot truck prices. If you look, our revenue per ton-mile in Intermodal declined 1% on a 5% volume decline. That really confirms to us that the headwinds are highest in these very short-haul lanes. We see some factors that have driven these IPI decisions like ocean freight rates that are really reverting to a more normal course.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

We have a very broad base of international customers, and when you look back pre-pandemic, the IPI business, the Inland Port International, played a significant role in our customer supply chain. As inland congestion eases, those supply chains are gonna return to normal, and we know our customers are telling us that they expect to increase their use of IPI as that happens. We talk to our customers every day, and we are very encouraged by the feedback we're getting. We have customers coming to us that are recognizing the change in our service product for the better and are looking to put additional volume on the railroad.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

As one example, outside the ag markets, where, you know, we've been able to really participate in some of the spot markets that previously we weren't able to because we have new capacity because of the improvements in our service product. That's just an example.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Wetherbee with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

[Chris Wetherbee, Senior Research Analyst at Citi]

Hey, thanks. You know, I guess we are seeing some warning signals in terms of economic factors, and I guess I just wanted to make sure I understood sort of, you know, how you guys are going to manage the network as you sort of potentially deal with those maybe in the first half of next year, maybe over the course of next year. You've got the service improvement underway. It looks like hiring is kind of where you need it to be. I guess, how flexible can the network be through potential volume volatility as we sort of, you know, progress over the course of the next several quarters?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Chris, we are intently focused on continuing our service recovery. It is the value of our product, and as Ed noted, we price to the value of the product. As our product value improves, we continue to see more volume and revenue opportunities for us. We're encouraged by the number of conductor trainees in our pipeline. Right now, it's about 950, which is, I think, pretty close to our high in 2022. We are continuing to hire for some specific locations. As we talked about, we have about 95 different crew hiring locations. We're gonna reassess our legacy assumptions on staffing, and we're not gonna make any unilateral commitments on what we're gonna do going forward.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

I will commit that we will be data-driven in our approach, and we're gonna make decisions based on the long-term value creation, balancing service, cost control, and growth. Cindy, you're thinking about some specific opportunities to add more flexibility.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

You know, in the short term, we do have some training opportunities to replenish our locomotive engineer ranks that we set back to conductors and allow us to step them up when we need to because it takes longer to train an engineer than it does a conductor. We'll also be enhancing our Go Team membership, the folks that we're gonna have in our Go Team group. It won't be a huge number of people, but that will also be a resiliency tactic that we'll take. In the effort to improve our conductor availability through the downturns that we've had or through the challenges that we've had, we've territorially qualified them a single segment because that's where they would stand to work.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

Now we need to qualify them on other segments radiating out of that same supply point. There's a number of actions that we'll take here to make sure we're fortified and ready to go into any upturn. Going through a downturn, we'll manage through these opportunities, and then as we come into an upturn, they'll be available to us.

[Chris Wetherbee, Senior Research Analyst at Citi]

Okay. That’s helpful. I guess, you know, I think there’s been some concern for the industry broadly that if we were to see maybe a more sudden drop-off in volume, that the industry would be less sort of able to react as quickly as possible, sort of resulting potentially in worse decremental margins than we’ve seen in previous downturns. You know, I think that sort of has something to do with, you know, with furloughing employees maybe a bit more aggressively in previous times. Any thoughts on whether you think that is a valid concern as we go into next year, or are there enough levers that you have to pull to be able to offset that?

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, I think, you know, we as you noted, I mean, the labor market is different than the past, and our recruiting efforts are a little bit different than in the past. We know how long it takes to train and hire an employee, and we've talked about having 95 different hiring groups that we have to manage that through. I will say that, you know, we have to make sure we manage through downturns in such a way that we're in a good place to handle the upturns. That's how we're gonna manage, and that's how we're gonna grow in the long term.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

We have levers such as attrition that can help us if we need it, but we also know that we have to be fortified in having a good hiring pipeline or a line of sight to that hiring pipeline so that we can manage the upturn. We don't just wanna manage one side.

[Chris Wetherbee, Senior Research Analyst at Citi]

Okay. Thanks for the comments. Appreciate it.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

[Scott Group, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Mark, you talked about at least $40 million a quarter of sort of network inefficiencies. I'm wondering how much of, you know, storage revenue though, are we seeing per quarter and, you know, what's a more normal number? As service gets better, that $40 million of cost goes away, but maybe how much of the storage revenue goes away? I'm just trying to understand the puts and takes.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yes, Scott. Clearly there is some storage revenue that helps mitigate that, the accessorial revenues that we talk to. Certainly, as service recovers, we'll start to see those accessorial revenues come down. Ed, I don't know if you wanna talk about the pacing in which you see that happening.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. You know, earlier this year, we thought that the supply chains would unlock faster, and we would start to see that storage number come off as customers got more fluid at the warehouse and on the street. Frankly, that hadn't happened. If you look at many of our hinterland markets, particularly deeper into the Midwest, we continue to see the same issues that we saw earlier. The storage number continues to remain elevated, and we expect right now that it's gonna continue to be elevated in the fourth quarter. I think next year we're hopeful that supply chains will unlock, and there'll be more opportunities to move volume instead of storage.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

It's also true that while storage revenue is elevated, the year-over-year comps are slowing down.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Oh, absolutely.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

We've lapped it.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah.

[Scott Group, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research]

When you think about the puts and takes for next year, you know, I think probably another good year of pricing, service improvement, you know, some uncertainty with volume, wage inflation. Do you think the pieces are there to start getting margins higher again next year?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, we're actually putting together the budget for 2023 now, and there's a lot of big assumptions that have to be made. You know, we'll be back to you with 2023 guidance. You know, certainly, that's our goal at this point in time. You know, we've gotta get inflation under control. We've gotta try to get some offsets on the top line from that. How much volume we can get is gonna be a big, you know, a big lever as well. We'll come back to you with the 2023 numbers.

[Scott Group, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Jason Seidl with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

Yeah, thanks, operator. Alan and team, good morning. I appreciate you guys taking my question. Wanted to look a little bit about Intermodal's growth rate, and sort of how much do you think it's been impacted by, A, your service levels, and B, some of the labor issues that we saw last quarter. In other words, what's a good economic base to look at 2023 off of 2022?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Intermodal is clearly a growth driver for us going forward. Ed, why don't you talk about how we're gonna continue to leverage that unique franchise strength.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. We think we have the most powerful franchise in North America when it comes to Intermodal. We're located square in the heart of the U.S. consumer markets as well as manufacturing with access, great access to all the East Coast ports and all the Western railroads. We talk to our customers every day. They are investing for growth. Our channel partners are priming themselves to grow with Norfolk Southern as our service improves. As our service improves, we're creating additional opportunities for them to satisfy supply chain issues that are still manifesting themselves out there. We know that there's a lot of crosscurrents and a lot of what I would call mixed signals out there in the macroeconomic environment.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

You know, we're encouraged by what's going on in manufacturing, which had a great report in September. Future orders appear to be, you know, somewhat of a drag. It's undeniable that with interest rates going up and inflation staying stubbornly high, there is some demand destruction out there. We're confident that for our customers and for our channel partners, Intermodal is still gonna be a great way for them to save money going forward in a very inflationary environment as they take freight off the highway and put it on the railroad.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Jason, we're looking forward to sharing more of our long-term vision for value creation at our Investor Day in six weeks.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

Yeah.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Intermodal is a key component of that.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

I look forward to hearing that down there. I was just trying to get sort of if you guys can even put a ballpark figure on sort of how many growth points, service, labor issues, lack of equipment might have cost you this year on a three-quarter basis so far.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, I think you nailed them all, and then I think you should also add in this IPI issue, where the short-haul business from the ports is being trucked. Despite that, and despite the fact that our intermodal volumes were down by 1% in the quarter, as Ed noted, our revenue ton miles in Intermodal were up 5%.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

Gotcha. You think that if we didn't have all these issues, you guys would have positive volumes at least this year?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

There's absolutely no doubt.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

Okay. Really quick, if I can get one more in. The Pennsylvania tax benefit in the quarter, is there gonna be an ongoing benefit that'll impact your future tax rate?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Pretty modest at the total level in any given quarter. You know, it's kinda within that range that we guide. I don't think it's gonna adjust the range, the effective tax rate that we guide.

[Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen]

Okay. Fair enough. Appreciate the time as always, gentlemen.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

All right. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Tom Wadewitz of UBS. Please proceed with your question.

[Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Yeah, good morning. I'll give you the two questions up front. The first one would just be on pricing. Mark, you talked about, you know, the big assumptions in the budget for 2023 that, you know, you need top line to offset some of the inflation. I wonder maybe for Ed, if you can just give some commentary on how sensitive you think price is in your book to a weaker truckload market and following truckload contract rates. You know, can you accelerate pricing against that backdrop or is weaker truck something we should really be mindful of? The second one is just on volume. You know, I think we've had this assessment that improving service that you're delivering more capacity would translate to stronger volume.

[Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

It sounds like that's maybe not the case, just because the markets are getting a bit weaker. I don't know if, you know, that's right, or if you still think there are segments that are gonna, you know, see stronger volumes as you continue to improve the service? Thank you.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Sure. Thank you for that, Tom. On the revenue side, on the price side, you know, like I said, we've been talking to our customers every single day about where price is going. We've got a great track record of being able to deliver price as we increase the value that we're delivering to our customers, and they can transfer that on. Our service is improving and I will tell you that our customers are confident that as our service improves, they can put additional volume against the railroad. Look, that helps save money for our customers in the long term. We price to the value of the market. We know that there's a lot of noise around the spot market, which goes up and goes down.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

We stay focused on the long-term trajectory of contract rates, and our customers understand that. Can you repeat your volume question again?

[Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Well, okay. I guess just to finish that thought, though, but do you think we ought to be careful about the truck market getting weaker, or you say, "No, that's not a big impact on our pricing in 2023?

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. You know, I think the macroeconomy is gonna tell us where we're all going in terms of economic trajectory. We've been able to price and continue to be successful in pricing because of the value that we're delivering to those customers. I think a recession, if there is one coming or a downturn, that's gonna dictate how much volume we can put against the railroad, how much is available to put against the railroad, but we're confident that we're gonna be able to do that. On the volume side, I will tell you that we have a strong portfolio of customers that are, like I said, they're investing to grow.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

We see that happening, and I think as the IPI situation reverts to normal in terms of conditions that allow that, our customers are gonna find value in that market as well.

[Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Okay. Yeah. What about industrial? Like, if service improves, do you expect metals and forest products and chemicals volumes to improve in response to that?

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yes. In fact, you know, we're seeing on the bulk side of our network, additional throughput capacity that we're putting up against customers right now in the spot markets, that's indicative of the opportunities that are out there. I think I noted in the third quarter, we had cycle times on equipment that still inhibited our ability to serve everyone that wanted to be served. As our fluidity improves, we're gonna be able to put additional capacity against them, too. Our customers are telling us that there's additional volume out there that they wanna put on the railroad. If you look at most of the manufacturing sectors, there's still a lot of unfilled orders out there that they're working through.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Even in a what I would call a declining demand environment, there's still a lot of back orders. We're confident about our ability to continue to grow volumes as service improves.

[Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Okay, thanks for the time.

[Operator]

Thank you. As a reminder, due to the number of analysts joining us today, we ask you please ask one question. The next question will be coming from the line of Amit Mehrotra with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

[Amit Mehrotra, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Thanks, operator. Hi, everyone. Mark, I just wanted to deconstruct the guidance of 62 OR. I think it includes the $88 million, excuse me, prior period labor adjustments and then the $15 million of legal settlements. I'm just trying to figure out, you know, it looks like it's really like 61.5 if you kinda strip out some maybe extraordinary. If you could just talk about that. You know, the implied fourth quarter is something like, I think, like 63 OR or something like that to get to that 61.5. I mean, you'd have to go back to like the fourth quarter of 2019 to get something that's that low or high. You know, yield is up over 20% since then.

[Amit Mehrotra, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank]

Revenue's up over 10% since then. I'm just trying to reconcile, first, if my numbers are correct, and then two, you know, why would there be such a deterioration despite even some of the headwinds, based on kind of the improvement you're seeing in the business from a yield and service perspective?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Thanks, Amit. Yeah, the guidance that we gave of the 62 for the full year includes the retroactive wage adjustment as well as the ongoing wage adjustments. Basically, the $140 million. It is the all-in, including the items that we called out this quarter. It's that kind of where it comes to. I'm not getting to your 63 number implied for Q4. If you do the all-in, I think it's largely in line with, in Q4, it should be largely in line with the full year number.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Okay, maybe I'll take that offline. I'm just trying to think, like, if you strip out the $88 million, you're really looking at. Obviously, that's not an ongoing, you know, that's prior period.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Correct.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Maybe 61.5 is kind of the right way to think about the jumping off point as you move into 2023. Is that a fair way to think about it?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. When you ignore the $88 and you look at our restated Q3, and then you can look at Q4 inclusive of the $23 million that we told you about, it's obviously a much lower number than the $62.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Right. Okay. All right, very good. Thank you.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.

[Bascome Majors, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna]

As we look out in the next year with the visibility into the union labor wage increases, can you talk a little bit about, you know, either broader rail inflation or something in a cost per employee kind of context that we can think about modeling just, you know, without getting all the way to preliminary guidance next year? Just what sort of cost inflation on the labor front or overall are you expecting versus history?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Bascom, this is Mark. If you look at our comp per employee in the third quarter, and you take out the retro wage adjustments, it's you'll get to about $34,250 for the quarter. You know, I would probably guide you all to think that same number would apply in Q4 because that is kind of the new number baking in this 7% higher wage that took effect in July. That would kind of go sideways there in Q4. As you think about 2023, what we typically see in the first quarter is a resetting of the payroll taxes. That'll knock it up a couple of points in conjunction with assumptions for higher bonus payouts as well.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

You'd probably see a point or two increase in that number going into the first half of next year. Then of course, when you get to the back half of next year, you have another wage jump that comes from the contractual agreement numbers that you would have seen published. That will probably go up another few points in the back half. That's probably the way I would look at it. It probably wants to go up more than a few points, but we will have some service cost relief as service improves and some of those costs that we are incurring related to overtime and training costs, et cetera, start to subside. I would model it out that way.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

You know, a point or two elevation here from that level in the first half and then another, call it, few points in the second half.

[Bascome Majors, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna]

Thank you for the detailed walkthrough.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Ben Nolan with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

[Ben Nolan, Managing Director at Stifel]

Thanks, guys. As I'm looking at the 4Q sort of service improvements that look like they're having an effect with train speeds and dwell and so forth, and then matching that up with the increase in headcount that you have, just curious if you can frame it, how much of the service improvements you can say put at the feet of being more fully staffed or appropriately staffed or whatever, versus just sort of the well, any other factors that might be helping there.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

Thanks for the question, Ben. I think hiring is a critical part of our service improvement efforts. You know, we established a target that we shared with the STB of about, call it 7,550 qualified T&E's by mid-2023, and we are ahead of that target as we head into November. When we think of that number, you know, we're really clear in that top-line number, we have to recognize there's 95 hiring locations underneath it. So while that number is important, we also have to have folks in the right critical locations. I would say another lever that we pulled, and we've talked about it in prior quarters, is our TOP|SPG operating plan initiative that is in place.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

It's really helped us, I think, have a more executable plan. It's boiled down into a comprehensive review of connection standards, our distributed power playbook, and helped us to recalibrate train meets. As we get closer and closer on time, that fluidity continues to allow us to be more fluid, I guess, is the best way to put it. I would say those two things are the biggest levers that we've had.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Ben, recall that we implemented the first phase of TOP|SPG at the very end of the second quarter. In the third quarter, our train speeds increased by 20%. As Cindy noted, it applies the principles of PSR, and it's really focused on balance, simplicity, and executability.

[Ben Nolan, Managing Director at Stifel]

All right. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Jon Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

[Jon Chappell, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Thank you. Good morning. Cindy, sticking with some of the service questions and updates to issues, from the recent past

[Jon Chappell, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Hasn't been much talk about chassis recently. Is that because the availability there has cleared up meaningfully? How does that impact as you think about the excess equipment or the spare capacity on the network, once you are appropriately resourced in the economic backdrop you're looking at for next year?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Ed, some of the chassis issues in the past have been our own, some have been our customers.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yep.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Could you cover that, please?

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Sure. We've been successful in getting a portion of our order online of our chassis. We're seeing that help in terms of fluidity. I will tell you on the international side, there still remains a lot of shortages out there, mostly because I believe those units are deployed on the street or at a warehouse. It continues to be an issue on the international side of the business, particularly in these hinterland markets, as we talked about earlier. We deployed a number of countermeasures, which includes some temporary storage facilities that we've been able to open to help accommodate our customers. We continue to look for additional fluidity going forward, particularly on the private chassis side.

[Jon Chappell, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Ed, just to be clear, I mean, is there any improvement or any line of sight towards improvement? Because it was in kind of major focus, let's call it nine months ago, and maybe not so much anymore, but it sounds like it's still having a really big impact, especially on your international remote.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

On the international remote side, it is having an impact, you know, and that's not a chassis or an asset that we control per se. For our chassis on our equipment, we've seen some relief, both in terms of the fluidity side, but mostly because we've been able to add some chassis.

[Jon Chappell, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI]

Okay. Thanks, Ed.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

[Brandon Oglenski, Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Barclays]

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Look, I don't mean to be near-term or quarterly focused here, but can we come back to the implied 4Q sequential on the operating ratio? 'Cause Mark, if I back out the $88 million of prior year accruals and maybe even the legal settlement, it still looks like you're guiding OR up maybe 400 basis points-500 basis points sequentially, which I think would be one of the worst outcomes if we go back in time for your company. What are we missing on the cost side? Or is this really, you know, deceleration on the revenue front that we should be thinking?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, look, I think the story here, it's mainly a top-line story. We see the expenses largely in line with the third quarter when you exclude the labor adjustments that were retroactively made, as well as the favorable legal item that we called out. Really what we're talking about is more of a top-line story. You know, Ed talked a little bit about the RPU assumptions that we made on energy pricing. Hopefully, that's conservative and that comes back. It's really less about cost and more about just a little bit of deceleration.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, I wanna clear up a point. There's nothing that we're looking at that suggests a 400 basis points-500 basis points decline or worsening of our OR in the fourth quarter. We don't see that math.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Our core pricing story remains absolutely intact.

[Brandon Oglenski, Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Barclays]

All right. I'll follow up with you guys. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question comes from the line of Walter Spracklin with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

[Walter Spracklin, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Yeah. Thanks very much. Appreciate you taking my call. Just a quick housekeeping question on the tax rate. You mentioned that it's not changed. Are we in the 23.5%-24% range? Is that right?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, for the time being, that's where the implied guidance is on overall tax rate. That includes, obviously, the federal rate, you know, which is at 21%. It also includes the multitude of states, not just Pennsylvania, where we operate, that brings it up a little bit higher. Yes, Pennsylvania's rate goes down a little bit, but we still get all the other state tax that we pay.

[Walter Spracklin, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Got it. Perfect. Okay. My second question here is on carryover impacts, whether it's headwinds or tailwinds, that would impact OR going into 2023. One of your peers mentioned, you know, they started out with a target for the beginning of the year, obviously weren't able to achieve it due to the headwinds, but indicated that it's off the table for next year due to some of the carryovers. I don't know if Cindy is the best one to ask this for, but is there, you know, headwinds to what you would have expected your OR to be, say, the beginning of the year that won't allow you to kinda achieve some of the benefits akin to what other industry peers are seeing? Or is that kinda specific to them?

[Walter Spracklin, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Do you believe that you can see a material improvement in your OR because those headwinds don't exist going into 2023?

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

As I noted before, we're gonna be more than happy to share our vision for long-term value creation at our Investor Day in about six weeks.

[Walter Spracklin, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets]

Okay. Fair enough. Look forward to it. Appreciate it. Thanks.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Yep.

[Operator]

Our next question is coming from the line of Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Hey. Great. Good morning. Thanks for getting me in here. So Alan and Cindy, just to highlight earlier, I thought that was a really important point on the furloughing and decrementals. I think that's probably one of the most talked about discussions on the future of the railroads is gonna be what happens, can the rails be as variable as they had been? But I just wanna visit on did I catch you right? Did you say that labor costs were 2x your target? Seems to be a very big step relative to the other rail peers, and is there any reason for that? Then I guess on my follow-up on the TOP|SPG, what's the issue now? As you ramp employees, is it equipment chassis?

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Is it getting the humps back to speed? What else needs to be done?

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

You know, going forward here to finish improving the service.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, Ken, I'll start on the labor costs. I mean, the PEB recommendations were obviously higher than we expected, and we laid out very transparently for you the details of how those increases were allocated, including those retro adjustments. We advised throughout all of Q3 that we were accruing in line with historical increases and which is what we had on the table with labor prior to the PEB. The adjustment is really just the math. Go ahead.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Let me talk about the service. You know, we improved our train speed by 20% in the third quarter, and our service metrics are better than what we had projected to the Surface Transportation Board earlier this year. Our service metrics and our service product is at a level, as Ed described, that's allowing us to participate in some lucrative spot opportunities that we didn't anticipate we could participate in a couple of months ago. We made a lot of improvement. What we're allowed to do now because of the health of our network is narrow our focus a little bit more on some specific areas in which we need to continue to improve our service product. That's our focus. It's job priority number one on Norfolk Southern.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

I would add on the SPG piece, Ken, that, you know, it's a constant iteration, refinement, simplification, all of those types of things. Again, you know, it's very PSR-oriented to making sure we get asset turns as we need to and be able to create fluidity that not only helps us from a cost perspective, but is exactly what our customers need. There's continuing work going on there as well.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Thanks, Cindy. A clarification. Mark, did you mention the headwind on the lost fuel surcharge for the fourth quarter was there, or was it just we're going to have a headwind? I didn't know if you'd put a number on that.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. Actually, Ken, thanks for the opportunity to clear that up a little bit. That was another thing that's driving the fourth quarter operating ratio in the implied math too, is fuel surcharge. The net fuel surcharge was actually a benefit here in the third quarter, and based on where fuel prices are going, it spins to become a headwind again, just like it was in the first half.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Appreciate that. Did you put a level or number or just that it's going to be a headwind?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

I did not.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Okay.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

I did not. Well, we have to see where the prices are going. We've just seen a dramatic spike just in the past week and a half, which initially we weren't expecting to see, and we thought that maybe we would not have the headwinds that we're facing. But right now, fuel has moved up, and because of the lag effect, we'll end up having an OR headwind here in the fourth quarter. Won't catch up until the first quarter. Again, in periods of rising fuel, because of the lag, we end up with OR headwinds. When fuel stabilizes and starts to go down, you tend to get fuel tailwinds. In Q3, we ended up having a reprieve on that, and we got some OR help from the fuel surcharge program.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

It looks like it's gonna spin again to a headwind here in the fourth quarter.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Great.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Just like we had in the first half.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Appreciate it.

[Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Thank you.

[Cindy Sanborn, COO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you. Thank you, Ken.

[Operator]

Our next question is in the line of Ari Rosa with Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

[Ari Rosa, Senior Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Hi, good morning. So I wanted to start with just a philosophical question. Just maybe you could address how you're thinking about balancing desires for volume growth versus OR improvement. I know for a long time, I think the argument for NS has been, well, we grow, you know, we're gonna outgrow the industry and therefore maybe our ORs will lag peers a little bit. Maybe you could just update us how you're thinking about the tension between those two. And here we are in an environment where you're obviously adding resources in terms of headcount and other things, but you're looking for volume growth to be essentially flat in fourth quarter. So maybe you could talk about that and the opportunity to maybe get volume over time to kind of meet those higher resource levels. Thanks.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah, Ari, we firmly believe that service and margin improvements support each other. Frankly, you saw that in the third quarter. As service improved, our margin improved versus the second quarter. With respect to fourth quarter volumes, just note that normal seasonality would suggest generally about a 5% decline in volume in the fourth quarter relative to the third. As our service continues to improve, we believe we're gonna outperform normal seasonality on our volumes. Longer term, our commitment is to industry competitive margins with above-market growth.

[Ari Rosa, Senior Analyst at Credit Suisse]

Okay, that's helpful. Just really quickly, Alan, you mentioned that you're getting increased inquiries from customers based on kind of some of these service improvements. I was hoping you could just add some color around where those inquiries are coming in. What's the nature of those inquiries? Again, it's a little difficult to reconcile with the notion of, you know, volume growth maybe being a little bit flat or at least as implied by the guide. Just maybe give us some color around the nature of those conversations with customers.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

Ed, you're talking to our customers every day, as am I, but you're certainly much closer to this.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. You know, overall sentiment from our customers is that things have improved, and we're continuing to move in the right direction. We're hearing that every day from a range of customers. You know, one thing that we're certain about is as we increase train speed and reduce the amount of dwell, we're gonna have more capacity to deliver value to our customers, and we're hearing that from them. I'll use the ag markets as an example on the bulk side, where we are seeing customers come to us with spot opportunities that we probably wouldn't have been able to execute on, in prior periods, but we're able to now. We're diligently looking at these opportunities, and it really means looking at opportunities where we can be successful and add value.

[Ed Elkins, CMO at Norfolk Southern]

There are several of those on the bulk side, and we'll continue to look for them.

[Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks for the time.

[Operator]

Our next question is from the line of Cherilyn Radbourne with TD Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Cherilyn Radbourne, Managing Director at TD Securities]

Thanks very much, and good morning. I was just looking for a bit of clarification on the $88 million retroactive labor accrual and the extent to which it reflects base wage increases versus the proposed bonuses. To the extent that it's more weighted to bonuses versus the base wage increase, should we then assume that that means the company was correctly anticipating base wage inflation and therefore should have been passing that on as contracts roll? Or how should we think about that accrual?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Yeah. We didn't provide the split of impact between the bonus and the base wage, Cherilyn. You know, we can let me look at providing that to you offline. I do think that we are. The overall impact that we've got from the 88 that relates to 2020, 2021, and the first half of 2022 now becomes something that we have to absorb over time and mitigate with, you know, not just pricing, but with productivity and efficiency going forward. That's our goal on how we offset that.

[Cherilyn Radbourne, Managing Director at TD Securities]

Helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Jeff Kauffman with Vertical Research. Please proceed with your question.

[Jeff Kauffman, Partner at Vertical Research]

Thank you very much, and congratulations. Yeah, a lot of my questions have been answered, so let me just go with one modeling detail question. Debt was relatively flat. Interest expense up $7 million. Obviously, interest rates are rising. Can you give us a sense of your interest rate sensitivity? Let's say the Fed does an additional 150 basis points here and then slows down. What would be a good way to think about run rate interest expense as we enter 2023?

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Well, Jeff, I mean, the weighted average interest rate in our overall debt portfolio today is below current rates. With every new debt issuance that we have, it will be at higher rates than the average. As old maturities roll off, new ones come on, interest will start to go up a little bit. We're not so worried, frankly, because we do have a portfolio of debt that exceeds $14 billion or so. I don't think it's gonna be a meaningful drag on us going forward. We haven't really seen the interest rates at levels yet that cause me much concern.

[Jeff Kauffman, Partner at Vertical Research]

Okay. More a function of new issuance replacing old issuance as opposed to any interest rate sensitivity on future increases.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Correct.

[Jeff Kauffman, Partner at Vertical Research]

Okay. Thank you. That's my one.

[Mark George, CFO at Norfolk Southern]

Thank you. Appreciate it.

[Alan Shaw, President and CEO at Norfolk Southern]

We thank you for joining our call, and we look forward to continuing this, these discussions at our December 6th, 2022 Investor Day.

[Operator]

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Participants

Executives

• Alan Shaw, President and CEO
• Cindy Sanborn, COO
• Ed Elkins, CMO
• Luke Nichols, Senior Director of Investor Relations
• Mark George, CFO

Analysts

• Amit Mehrotra, Managing Director at Deutsche Bank
• Ari Rosa, Senior Analyst at Credit Suisse
• Bascome Majors, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna
• Ben Nolan, Managing Director at Stifel
• Brandon Oglenski, Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Barclays
• Cherilyn Radbourne, Managing Director at TD Securities
• Chris Wetherbee, Senior Research Analyst at Citi
• Jason Seidl, Managing Director at Cowen
• Jeff Kauffman, Partner at Vertical Research
• Jon Chappell, Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI
• Jordan Alliger, VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Justin Long, Managing Director at Stephens
• Ken Hoexter, Managing Director at Bank of America
• Scott Group, Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Wolfe Research
• Tom Wadewitz, Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS
• Walter Spracklin, Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst at RBC Capital Markets