Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Greetings, and welcome to the Union Pacific's First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, and slides for today's presentation are available on Union Pacific's website. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Jim Vena, Chief Executive Officer for Union Pacific. Thank you, Mr. Vena. You may now begin.

Well, good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. It's a wonderful morning here in Omaha a railroad and a little bit of rain coming down, but nothing that wouldn't stop men and women of Union Pacific from going out there and delivering. So really excited to be here and excited to review our first quarter and then take your questions.

So of course, I'm joined here by the regular crew. We have the Chief Financial Officer with me, Jennifer Hamann. Got Eric. Eric railroad looks pretty good this morning.

So excellent job our Executive Vice President of Operations. And of course, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Kenny Rocker. Now why don't we just go through the highlights real quick before I turn it over to Jennifer. If we go over to Slide 4, 2026 started strong as we delivered record first quarter results.

Again, we showed who we are executing on new opportunities and raising the bar on what's possible for ourselves and the industry. And it's really important that we see that strength reflected in our bottom line as we reported first quarter records in operating income and net income. For the quarter, reported net income of $1.7 billion grew 5%, earnings per share of $2.87 increased 6%, and we've improved our operating ratio. Excluding merger costs, our adjusted net income was up 7%, EPS of $2.93 increased 9%, and our operating ratio improved 80 basis points to 59.9%.

These are strong results that reflect what's possible when the team consistently executes at a high level. Now I'll let the team walk you through the quarter in more detail and then come back and wrap it up before we go to Q&A. Jennifer? Why don't we do the first quarter financials, please?

All right. Thank you, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin with the walk down of our first quarter income statement on Slide 6, where our operating revenue of $6.2 billion increased 3% versus last year as freight revenue of $5.9 billion grew 4% on 1% lower volume. Digging into the drivers, lower volume reduced freight revenue 75 basis points.

Fuel surcharge revenue of $608 million increased $43 million reflecting the impact of higher year-over-year fuel prices and a 100 basis points to freight revenue. Core pricing combined with business mix to drive 325 basis points to freight revenue improvement. As we committed, our quarterly pricing dollars exceeded inflation dollars. Specifically, coal pricing remained positive but at a lower rate than last year for business index to natural gas prices.

And as we noted in January, we continue to see impacts from the competitive and global environment in select agricultural markets. Fortunately, we are well positioned to compete as our strong operating performance and productivity initiatives enable us to continue to win new business at good margins. Our first quarter business mix was positive, although not as favorable as we might have expected, due to the higher volume in our lower average revenue per car businesses, such as coal and rock combined with lower volume on some of the higher arc businesses, such as food and refrigerated and forest products.

Upping up the top line, other revenue declined 4% to $324 million, driven by lower subsidiary revenue as we have now lapped the metro transfer completed in the first quarter of 2025. Turning to expenses. Our appendix slides provide more detail, but let me discuss the key drivers as total operating expense increased 3% to $3.8 billion. Compensation and benefits expense increased 1% as we almost entirely offset the impact of inflation with record first quarter workforce productivity that enabled a 5% smaller workforce. First quarter cost per employee increased 6.5%, driven by higher wages and benefits, along with increased incentive compensation.

We continue to expect full year compensation per employee to increase between 4% and 5%, as we work to offset cost inflation with process and technology improvements. Fuel expense grew 7% on a 7% increase in average fuel price from $2.51 to $2.69 per gallon. Purchase services and materials expense increased 7% as a result of merger-related costs, while equipment and other rents declined 9% with record first quarter cycle times. Reported first quarter 2026 net income totaled $1.7 billion and was a first quarter record with earnings per share of $2.87. Adjusted for the merger costs, our earnings per share totaled $2.93 and operating ratio came in at 59.9%.

Overall, we delivered strong quarterly results to start the year, and we are confident in the ability to continue delivering for all of our stakeholders by successfully executing on the fundamentals of our business. Turning then to cash returns on the balance sheet on Slide 7. First quarter cash from operations totaled $2.4 billion, up 10% versus last year, and we generated free cash flow of $630 million after making significant investments in the network and returning an industry-leading dividend to our shareholders. Net debt decreased $1.2 billion as we repaid our long-term debt. We ended the quarter with an adjusted debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 2.5x, while we continue to be A rated by our 3 credit rating agencies.

Looking ahead, we are affirming our 2026 outlook. This includes our expectations for reported earnings per share of mid-single-digit growth and operating ratio improvement. Our original diesel fuel estimate of $2.35 per gallon established in January is now much harder to predict as we have seen quite a bit of volatility recently. And all the fuel prices seem to be coming down for the month of April, we will likely average over $4 per gallon.

Beyond 2026, we remain committed to attaining our 3-year CAGR target of high single-digit to low double-digit EPS growth throughout 2027. I'll now turn it over to Kenny to provide an update on the business demand. Kenny?

Thank you, Jennifer, and good morning. In the first quarter, freight revenue grew 4%. And if you exclude the impact from fuel surcharge, freight revenue increased 3%, both first quarter records. Core pricing gains, higher fuel surcharge revenue and favorable business mix more than offset the 1% lower volume in the quarter.

Let's walk through the key drivers. Starting with our bulk segment, revenue for the quarter was up 10% compared to last year, driven by a 12% increase in volume. Strength in coal was driven by sustained utility demand and favorable natural gas pricing supported by strong service execution as well as new business with LCRA, which started in April of last year. In grain, first quarter delivered record volume driven by strong export demand, including a rebound in shipments to China and continued expansion into Mexico, such as Bartlett's new facility in Monterrey.

Grain products continue to benefit from business development tied to renewable fuels and associated feedstocks. Turning to Industrial. Revenue was up 5% for the quarter on a 4% increase in volume, delivering a record first quarter and outperforming the market. Strong core pricing, both best ever quarterly average revenue per car.

We continue to see strength in demand for construction projects driven by new LNG terminals and data centers, coupled with our intense focus on business development. Petrochemicals also performed well this quarter, reflecting new business wins and improved demand. Premium revenue for the quarter declined 5% on a 9% decrease in volume and a 4% increase in average revenue per car, reflecting business mix and higher fuel surcharges. As expected, lower West Coast imports and customer shifts had a drag on international intermodal volumes, which declined 28% versus last year.

But on a positive, domestic Intermodal delivered its third consecutive record quarter driven by outstanding service and continued commercial momentum. Softening vehicle sales pressured automotive volumes, though having one incremental volume with BMW offset some of the market softness. Looking ahead on Slide 11, we remain optimistic about coal's potential despite current natural gas pricing, we expect full year coal results to be positive. In grain, improving export demand to China, along with continued momentum into Mexico, positions the business well to support growth.

For grain products, we expect continued strength driven by business development and expanding renewable fuels and feedstock markets with a clear renewable fuels policy, providing more stable demand. Moving to Industrial, despite a soft housing environment and tepid end market fundamentals, we remain firmly focused on out farming industrial production. We expect the strong volume and construction and petrochemicals to continue based on our customer wins. A great example is the Golden Triangle Polymers Company joint venture with CPChem, where we are encouraged by the upcoming start-up of this new world scale facility in the third quarter.

Wrapping up with premium. International intermodal volumes will remain subdued, although we lapped some of the shifts we experienced last year as we moved through the quarter. Domestic intermodal continues to perform well, supported by over-the-road conversions enabled by our strong service product and diverse market reach. While softer vehicle sales are expected to pressure automotive volumes, we expect business development wins will offset some of the impact.

Our first quarter results reflect the team's relentless focus on revenue growth, which is achieved through pricing to the service we provide, investing for growth and driving business development. And with that, I'll turn it over to you, Eric.

Thank you, Kenny, and good morning. Moving to Slide 13. Our first quarter operating results highlight our focus on safety, service and operational excellence. Last year, we led the industry in employee safety. We carried that momentum into the first quarter as we improved both employee safety and derailments versus their respective 3-year rolling averages.

We set first quarter records in all 6 of our key performance and efficiency metrics on Slides 13 and 14. Freight car velocity increased 9% to 235 miles per day. This performance was driven by best-ever terminal dwell of 19.7 hours, 11% better than last year and our second quarter below 20 hours. Every day, we continue to challenge ourselves to find new and innovative opportunities to reduce car touches, leverage existing technology in our terminals and implement new technologies. For service, both intermodal and manifest SPI finished at 98%, a 4 and 5-point improvement, respectively.

These results compare to our best service lines, which were achieved in 2025 as we continue to raise the bar for success. We also demonstrated that maintaining a buffer of resources is critical to recovering from weather and incidents as customers trust us to provide consistent, reliable service. Moving to Slide 14. Locomotive productivity improved 6% and was a best ever quarter. Notably, our average active locomotive decreased 4% with higher gross ton miles, highlighting efficiency gains from our combined efforts related to locomotive dwell, train length and capital investments that increased locomotive pulling power.

Workforce productivity, which includes all employees, increased 7%. Our active train engine and yard workforce decreased 4% on a 1% reduction in car load levels, demonstrating our discipline as we remain more than volume variable. Looking ahead, we continue to hire for attrition and to support our service. Train length grew 3% compared to last year.

Proprietary technologies such as physics train builder combined with mainline investments and solid execution of the fundamentals enable us to safely grow train length. In closing, we had a very successful first quarter. We operated safely, efficiently managed our resources and consistently served our customers. As we progress throughout the year, we will remain nimble and continue to build on our strong momentum.

With that, I'll turn it back over to Jim.

Thank you very much, Eric. Fantastic results. If we're going to turn to Slide 16, before we get to your questions, I'd like to quickly summarize what you've heard so far. We had a strong first quarter and start to the year.

Our network is running well and we are delivering on commitments to our customers. When you put it all together, we are doing what we said we would, the industry in safety, service and operational excellence, and that further translates in affirming our long-term guidance of high single digit to low double digit CAGR through 2027 with best-in-class operating ratio and return on invested capital. Before we turn to your questions, just a quick merger update. We are 100% on track with filing a revised application on April 30. We are confident the additional information we are providing meets the STB's expectations and we look forward to moving toward approval and the real exciting part of operating in America's fist Continental Railroad.

With that, we're now ready to take your questions. Rob?

[Operator Instructions] And the first question is from the line of Scott Group of Wolfe Research.

So Jim, I wanted to ask on the merger. We were supposed to be 6 months or whatever into this process. And I guess we're about to restart the clock. Does the fact that we are taking this long.

Does this give you any more or less confidence in the -- and your ability to sort of to get this approved. And I don't know, just maybe confirming we're -- yes, so that's the -- I guess that's the crux of the question. .

Listen, Scott, great question, and I appreciate it. It's a good way to start off. I thought for sure, you'd start with Jim and the team, a pretty good quarter, but I think top of mind for a lot of people is the merger. So let's talk about merger.

We were not we were disappointed but we were not surprised with looking at historical events of how the process works to put the railroads together that we were going to get some things that we foresaw in what we thought was going to happen, didn't happen on the time line we like. But we knew that this was not going to be a process that's going to happen as quick as I would like okay, to be done I was hoping it was going to be done for my birthday this year. So we're going to miss that date in August. But at the end of it, when we look at the fundamentals, we look at the facts of what this combination will deliver for both the country and being able to expedite, take trucks off of the highway, be able to move products in a much more seamless open up new markets for customers be able to provide service to some underserved markets that today, optionally, they end up going with trucks instead of going by rail, we are more convicted now than we ever have been when you take a look at what's in the merger application and all the detail that we're putting forward.

So at this point, we are much more convicted. I'd be concerned leading this company if we have lost our way in how we operate and what we do every day because of the merger. And as you can see, we've been very clear. Our time is spent on operating the railroad every day, finding ways to grow our business, finding new markets, finding new customers, adding to the customers we have.

And you can see that even with all the economic uncertainty with everything that's going on in the world and with tariffs that we had to go through and our customers did, we delivered again a quarter that moves us ahead. So because of that, let's turn to the merger itself and what's in the -- what we are going to put forward in the application and why it's such a compelling case, a much more compelling case now. The experts that we've hired are clearly going to show where their opportunity is. We know that on a service level, a seamless railroad is able to move products at less cost.

Therefore, even the pricing is going to be beneficial for our customers because of our less cost. And we're going to be able to serve our customers with a product that allows them to save on their own costs internally, whether it's railcar inventory and be able to move to their end product and end user faster. For our employees, we were real clear and we've been clear right from the start that our employees, our unionized employees. They should be part of the win of a new railroad that goes across the country, and we've guaranteed a job for everyone.

And that commitment is are on glad, and we're very happy to make that with agreements or without agreements, even though we have a number of agreements. So service is going to be better. We provide more opportunity. We take trucks off of the highway and our employees are guaranteed jobs.

I think we're more convicted now that this is good for the country and good for Union Pacific. And financially, it is good for our shareholders. We see a lot of growth opportunity there, lower cost movements, much more fluidity. So I'm more convicted today than I was when we put the application in the first time, Scott.

Our next question is from the line of Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo.

I hope everyone is doing well. I guess maybe to sort of think about the guidance. So that was helpful on the merger, and I think it gives us a good sense of how you're thinking about it. As you think about the outlook for this year, particularly the operating ratio improvement, obviously, a good first quarter, but fuel is going to be a headwind here of fuel surcharges will be a headwind from an operating ratio perspective.

So I guess if you could maybe give us a little bit of color, are there incremental productivity sort of opportunities that are becoming more apparent to you as you guys have been operating so far through the year. Can you just sort of talk a little bit about that because I do think that there's a headwind there, but maybe there's been some incremental positive offsets?

Jennifer, why don't you talk about the fuel and everything that we're doing on that piece?

Yes, sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. So you're right, fuel will definitely be a headwind, particularly here in the second quarter with -- again, I mentioned on the call, in the prepared remarks, we're paying a little north of $4 a gallon right now here in April. So that will certainly pressure margins, particularly here in the second quarter.

But we have a lot of opportunities to drive efficiency in our railroad. We have opportunities and Kenny and his team are driving in terms of business development. With that great service product, we are also being very consistent in terms of pricing for the value of that service. And when you put all those things together, we are still confident for the full year that we will be able to improve our operating ratio.

And we reiterated that to make sure that everyone understood if we have that confidence and we have line of sight to be able to do that. Fuel, again, pressure here in second quarter, and we feel good about the rest of the year, though.

Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Chappell with Evercore.

Jim and team, a pretty good quarter. So my question is really for Kenny or Eric, whoever wants to answer it. We look at the numbers that Eric's team is putting up on slides 13 and 14, and then we understand there's obviously a lot of macro headwinds that you're facing across different end markets. Is there an estimate for spare capacity or maybe another way to ask it is what kind of volume growth can the current system handle without needing to add extra resources if some of those macro headwinds turn to talents?

Yes, Jonathan, thank you for that question. And certainly, a topic that we review on a consistent basis. We've always said from the railroads perspective, you have 5 critical resources, mainline capacity, terminal capacity, crews, locomotives and cars, and you're obviously hitting on one of those 5. Now as we look at the railroad today, we have latent capacity. Now we've driven that through a couple of different ways.

Number one, and I reported this morning on top of all the improvements we've made train length, we did it again, 3% improvement best quarter ever, that train length is generating lane capacity. After a number of other reasons why we do train length, that's right up there at the very top for being able to generate that capacity. In addition to that, we still invest between $500 million and $700 million a year in capacity projects. And you've heard us talk about those in the past.

They're citing extensions, they're citing constructions. They're the expansion of terminals. So the Union Pacific is positioned and will remain positioned with that capacity to bring growth that Kenny and the team are working on every single day to bring this railroad.

The only thing I'll add, Eric, is 2 tangible ways to see that capacity really bearing fruit. One is on the equipment side, where we're able to go in and insert more equipment into a facility and/or spot at 100% of their order fulfillment, which allows us to go out and capture more business. But then more importantly, on the capacity -- and I've talked about this before, is the ability to shift in different lanes or geographic areas. So maybe we're going from the Gulf to the Southeast or from the Midwest shift down to the Gulf of Mexico.

That's the kind of capacity benefits that we seem to really take advantage of.

And that's a really good example, too, when we think about the grain this year. So last year, you recall when we were talking about volume opportunities. Kenny and I were talking about the shift of grain into Mexico. But we've seen some of that shift back to the Pacific Northwest as China has become more open to receiving American commodities, and we didn't have to go in and build 5 more sidings.

We went in with the capacity we had and took advantage of it and very successfully delivering on it.

And nor was that clearly forecasted. So we had to be agile.

So Jonathan, if I can just add what the team already said was is we build the railroad, both capacity-wise and with asset-wise with a buffer. But what's really important for us is today, with the business level that we have, and I looked at in detail every morning, we're operating with over 100 locomotives on the mainline less just because of our speed and what we've been able to improve. So we parked them. So they give us a nice buffer of locomotives and assets.

On the people side, we figured out both by technology, by investments by how we operate the yards, by how fluid we try to stay, we've been able to get more cars switched per employee real important. And we see line of sight to be better at that. On the capacity of the railroad to add 10% more business, let me say this. We've invested hundreds of millions of dollars, especially in our terminals to make them more resilient and able to recover faster and have a higher level of capacity, both by the speed that we're moving the railcars through and the way we're handling them and touching them less, moving less touches.

The overall network, and this is key of who we are and what we do. So if you turn the clock back, and I hate to look back too far, but in 2019, if we were operating this railroad the way we were in early 2019, we would have 25% more trains out there running this morning than we are today. So we did not remove capacity. So this railroad is operating at the higher volume.

But let's say, it's not less volume. It's higher volume than we were in 2019, and we're operating 24% less trains to be able to move that volume. The touches are faster, less touches, the way we operate our terminals is faster. So I'm very comfortable that we have the capacity to add a lot of business without the huge incremental costs that normally would have to, both capital and operating cost because what happens is if you're running up against your capacity, it costs you more operating dollars to be able to try to operate it through because you cause congestion.

So I'm very comfortable. We do not sleep until we're comfortable that the railroad is running with the system it has. Now Eric will tell you that we're not done. You go back again to when I came back and joined the company again after my sabbatical, some people were asking me the question, what's left.

And I think you could see what was left. There was lots of opportunity, and we see lots of opportunity as we move ahead over the next few years. So thanks for the question, Jonathan.

Next question comes from the line of Jason Seidl with TD Cowen.

Obviously, a good quarter, and it's nice to see the railroad operating so strongly. This is probably on Kenny's side. I wanted to sort of dive deeper into your commentary on business development. One of your fellow railroads yesterday, talked about their success.

They're seeing new projects grow in excess of 15%, and we're talking about adding maybe 1% to 2% in terms of car loading growth for next year. Could you give us some more color on UP's efforts right now, and where do you think that could go and add your car loadings into the future?

Yes. I won't give any guidance on the volume, but we are very bullish, optimistic about the new pieces of business that are coming online. I think you're talking about the industrial development aspect of it. We feel good about the numbers we closed for the quarter.

We closed about 20 new construction projects in the first quarter. We feel good about where we're headed in second quarter. And I tell you, we got a strong pipeline that's out there of construction projects that are coming on. Most of those are on the carload side.

And you've heard me say in the past that we've really taken a focus on adding new customers, both at the origin and the destination and expanding that capacity. So we're pretty excited about where we are.

The next question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter with Bank of America.

Great job on the expenses, and I thought that was an impressive stat on the -- stats some. I don't think we've heard before. But looking at the way the stock is trading, I want to return to the M&A seems to suggest the market is building in maybe larger concessions that might be somewhat destructive to market value. Just again, given where you're trading and the peer,does that make sense?

Is there anything in the detailed request for deal terms or discussions parties are having through the process on where you'll come out on concessions? And then, Jen, any reason you switch the language to reported outlook from adjusted in you're calling out merger costs or does that mean your long-term target still includes some merger cost. I just want to understand a clarification there.

Yes. Let me hit that last one. Ken, actually, we added that as a clarification from last time because we didn't have reported and that generated a lot of questions. And so we wanted to be clear that when we talk about the EPS growth that of our reported.

So that includes the headwind to your point, that we do have from the merger cost that we didn't originally anticipate as well as the fact that we're not buying back shares right now. So it is on reported. Jim?.

Okay. Reported. Jennifer thought she was helping, and I love it, Ken, that you caught the change in words, so that was perfect. Listen, as far as the stock and conviction on that, the market is the market, okay?

I can't control the market I wish I could, but I can't. But I'll tell you, fundamentally, as a business, we see growth in opportunity with customers, whether we're building in on some customers. And those will be new products that we add or the amount of investment that our customers are making in different parts of the country to grow their business and be able to export and the move within the U.S. economy. So we're real comfortable with that.

On the merger, Ken, and concessions. This is truly an end-to-end merger with a small little piece of overlap that we'll take care of as we go through in the application and say how we're going to handle that to make sure that no customer. In fact, the number of customers that are going to go from 2 to 1 is like a handful out of all the thousands of customers we have. So it's a very small piece in the hand.

It's pretty hard to come up with concessions that make sense. Now some of our competitors are out there very, very loudly talking about what this business is. And let's put the framework of where we are today and what our competition is. CSX reported yesterday, great results.

I was impressed. They did a great job, okay? And they are going to compete hard and they will still be a competitor in the eastern part of our network. They will compete every day against everything we try to do as a seamless railroad.

And they'll do that through price, they'll do that through innovation, They'll do that through being able to be more efficient. And that's what they need to do to compete against us. But if anybody thinks they're not going to compete, and you could see what they've done to try to compete already just with the announcement that we had on the merger and what they've done. In the West, people get this wrong.

We are not competing against Burlington Northern Santa Fe. They're owned by Berkshire that this morning is over a $1 trillion company. Berkshire has the monetary capability with $300-plus billion in cash plus they have the capability to invest in the railroad and they're going to be a strong competitor for us after. So if you take a look at the 2 biggest pieces of competition that we have in the U.S., we're very comfortable that they will compete hard against us, but we are going to be able to provide a level of service with less touches that speed up products moving across the U.S., that's why it's so compelling.

So Ken, I'm not sure, and I don't see a big change in the amount of concessions. Are we talking to people? Yes, we are. We're talking to customers.

We're talking to to competitors across the spectrum to see that we could come up with something reasonable, but we're not prepared to really give concessions to the level that basically just opens up our railroad for no reason at all other than they want to gain something through this process. That's not the way America works. America works and that if it's truly detrimental to customers, the real world combination, then you need to do something about it. But when you speed up things, give more opportunity, it's pretty hard for us to see any major concessions that we have to give.

The next question comes from the line of Brandon Oglenski with Barclays.

Maybe I'll follow up on that because I think your more skeptical competitors and maybe even some investors would say yes. But this combination at a very high level is going to drive more than 40% market share to your network relative to now much smaller competitors and regional competitors. And how do you push back on that criticism of a transaction of this size?

Well, I think what you have to look at is the entire market that's out there. People want to look at the railroads and say, combined Union Pacific and the folks Southern is going to have a combined 38% or 39% actually is the number of GTMs, but we're not going to be that much bigger than our Western competitor at that level with gross tons that were both going to be moving. As far as the local market. Listen, I think short lines do a great job and an excellent job of handling that first mile, last mile and ICS strengthening them, we'll be able to drive more business to them with this combination.

So they're not going to lose in the long run. There's always some that are going to be affected because of if we don't stop cars or hand them off somewhere, we can take them to a longer route or a different route that will help. But at the end of the day, listen, the 40% or actually the 39% number when you take a look at the entire market, railroads are in the low double digit. Capture of the true mark that moves by land or by water here in the United States of America.

So that opportunity is huge for all of us to be able to swing that a little bit. And I think that's a better way to take a look at it, Brandon.

Your next question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies.

I think I'm going to ask maybe a different question theme here. But Jim, I wanted to get your opinion in terms of how you think about just the value of Union Pacific's physical network at a time where look, investors are increasingly focused on AI-driven disruption. So what do you think the market is missing about just the intrinsic value of the network, especially post deal? And then also maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing in this world of just a lot more technology opportunities, AI-enabled efficiencies and what you're already doing in the yards and operations to drive better results?

Great. Thanks for the question. Listen, Eric, why don't you start about how we're using information AI technology to operate the railroad and what we see coming down the pike?

Absolutely. So our conversations inside UP when we talk about AI or equivalent tools, really focused first on making sure that we're not doing it just to do it. We're instead focused on what is the actual thing we're trying to solve and what's the associated value, whether that's removing car touches, dropping dollars to the bottom line, improving our service. And I think it's important that you all hear us say that because you see in other cases where that's not it.

They treated as a hobby. We're not in the business of hobbies here. We're in the business of delivering value. Now if you think about how we're using that, some of the ones that are most important because they're foundations to our service and their foundations to our productivity, which allows us to grow.

It's how we think about using AI inside of our dispatching center. We have an automated movement planner is a program that we call that's informed by AI, and it's continually evolving. Automated movement planner really focuses on driving an even more consistent and reliable service by providing support to our dispatchers in real time and looking out 12 hours in advance to lay out their railroad. If you just even look at 200 miles of railroad, there's a lot that happens in not just the movement of trains, we have to have people go out and maintain the track and then we also have variability events, unfortunately, some days.

And we have to plan for that, and AI has been a great resource for us to do that. Now when we think about inside our terminals, we've talked in the past about technologies like Mobile NX that allow us to automate part of that. There's some AI components to that, and there's certainly value in that. Even more valuable is the tools that we've provided like terminal command center to our teams that are actually on the ground operating those terminals.

That provides them an even higher level of intelligence and being able to not only forecast what's coming at them, but for what they have in their yard, how do they see problems right? If you're going to go out and you're switching a bunch of cars and now you've got a trim, but you accidentally have the wrong car in one of those cuts, okay? Well, that's a big hit to the productivity and thus impacts our [indiscernible] product. We can see that ahead of time.

Well, then we can plan that even 2 hours ahead that says, "Well, I'm going to be in that track. Let me grab that car then. So even in the case of mistakes, which we work tirelessly to avoid, you can even be more efficient in how you're able to address those, if you can see that risk ahead of time, and that AI tool allows us to do it. And I'd say in total for the whole company, I mean, there's at least 8 or 10 really major projects that we're using.

I've given you 2 examples, but they really represent how we're using it to, one, improve our service product and to, drive efficiency.

The nice part about technology and how fast it's changing with AI. And what it really drives for us is we always talk about the big things, trains, assets, big locomotive weigh in 434,000 pounds and how we move it. But fundamentally, across the company, whether it's how we're going to be able to communicate with customers, how we're -- the number of people you need to be able to communicate with customers and how you get information better. We're working hard on that using AI tools and information tools to be able to do that.

Even in the finance department, how do we get better being able to get information out. So it's across the board that we're doing that. Stay tuned. We're going to be implementing and have the capability to implement our locomotives to make them even more autonomous than they are today so that they can operate to give us more fuel conservation.

Those tools are driven by technology in the background that allows the locomotives to operate in a smarter, much more fuel-efficient manner. And we're getting pretty close to be able to roll that out, not yet today. Eric will get real excited if I start to announce things a little bit ahead of them. But those are the things.

Big things, how fast we can change with the different flow of business. I talked about at the very start this morning about a railroad being a little bit of rain coming down in Omaha. It's rather cool in Green River this morning. It's below freezing.

So we got a whole bunch of snow up at the top of the Danner Pass. We have rather breaking warm weather in other parts of the railroad. The nice part about it is we get a little bit of everything. So how you react to the weather and how you react to be able to change the network and be able to change the way we operate every railcar in a faster manner, we use tools to be able to get to the point where we're going to be able to react much quicker.

We're talking about trying to get to the point where we can do that in days instead of weeks the way it takes us right now. The way we manifest and use employees to make sure that we optimize the entire system. So it does touch a lot. We're a simple old business with big hardware.

But at the end of the day, we've got a whole team and Rahul who leads that for us and is doing a spectacular job for us to look at opportunities to embed the latest in information, manipulation and get us an answer quicker and be able to be able to automate as much of this railroad as we can. So good question. Love it. Hopefully, I answered your question.

The next question is from the line of Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. .

Brian, how many pounds do you have in your back now lots.

We're up to 65 and climbing. So just trying to keep up.

Impressive, Brian.

Maybe I'll put a copy of the next merger document in there as well. .

That's more than 60 pounds. You'll need a trailer behind you.

I just might. Well, in terms of -- just 2 quick follow-ups on Jim question on integration technology, kind of dovetailing that last discussion. So are you still assuming first half of '27 approval, and it doesn't sound like it, but I just wanted to confirm that you're not really expecting to address some of these concerns from your peers, just so addressing what the STB has asked for and the new application out next week. And then just would love to hear more about maybe from Eric and you, Jim, about clear concern about integration based on prior issues that the industry had quite a long time ago.

Clearly, things have changed some of that you just mentioned with technology. So what can you give us in terms of new ways, new processes, new new abilities to really get ahead of what's been a huge concern in the industry, but we would assume it should go a little bit better this time around. So I know you can leave you so much on that part right now, but would love to hear how you're planning for that this time around with some new tools?

Brian, you are on it this morning. There were 5 questions in there. I love it. But let's start with the timing.

Yes, we're working off of the timing that we know of that the STB has put out. So it will be second quarter next year, we would expect to be able to be at the place where they approve it, then we can move ahead. So that's the timing. Now it's not finalized.

We're hoping that they can speed it up and get it -- get through the process. I think they should be able to. Again, it's Jim Vena. The way I do things, we make decisions pretty quick.

But I understand they want to look at it. They want to do a thorough examination and we're ready for it because we're operating the railroad the way it should be operating, and it's not affecting what we're doing for the Union Pacific stand-alone today. I'm going to pass it over to Eric here in a minute on integration. Our competitors, what we're doing with the application is we are answering, and given the information that the STB asked for, they were very specific on the information that they required from us, and we're answering those questions, whether it's the EPRA, whether it's market share and the amount of business that we built in.

So we've done that. And we're absolutely sure that we've answered the questions that -- and how we're going to handle it. We've decided to release 5.8 really at the end of the day, I never thought that our competitors should know exactly what that document held. But when we looked at it, listen, at the end of the day, it's not going to make a big difference.

So that's going to come out. So we will answer the 3 key points plus the other point that they, in general, wanted some more information. So that's what we're answering. As far as our competitors, you're a smart guy, Brian, and everybody on this call are smart people.

Competitors are always looking to get an advantage that they can't get or they don't want to spend the money to be able to get. If a railroad wants to build in, which we are building into customers, they have every right to do that. They have every right to go through their own merger, small and large, which they have. So at the end of the day, if we built this transaction against satisfying what the other railroads, absolutely Canadian Pacific would love to get access to the West Coast of the U.S.

Well, I'd love to get the Toronto. If they want to give up Toronto in markets in Eastern Canada and into the Canadian Prairies, I would love to do that, too. But it would be pretty hard for me to ask for that. So it's really some of the stuff that they've asked for is not fundamentally about competition.

It's about trying to gain for their own railroad. And we're not going to answer that. We don't need to answer that, but we're more than willing to sit down and talk. Like I would be more than willing to trade Toronto for access to Denver as somebody who wants it tomorrow.

So anybody who's listened in that wants to do that, give me a call, and I'm ready to do that. I'll run the Toronto, you can run the Denver, okay, and we'll match that up. So some of the stuff that they're saying is just not fact-based and I find it hard to believe. If you step back, though, let's talk about competition.

I was just in Canada, visiting my family went out to one of the ports and terminals in Vancouver, and we talked through with one of the largest world operators of terminals, and you know what Canada is spending money to compete against the U.S. ports. In Prince Rupert, there's a plan to expand and double. In Vancouver, there's a plan to expand and double. At Contrecœur, there's a plan to expand and double the capacity for imports.

That's who we're competing against. We sometimes have a narrow view of what competition is without looking at really what's happening in the marketplace. Our intermodal product, our international and domestic product is in competition with product. The size of the investment that's being made by the Canadian government, they expand the ports in Canada, the Canadian economy that cannot and does not need that much.

It's purely to compete against U.S. ports and U.S. movement of goods in the U.S. That's the real competition and sometimes we're too narrow the way we look at it. Eric, on integration?

Perfect. So Brian, on the integration side, you're right. You certainly want to learn from the learnings of past mergers. Now we got to be a little careful there, right?

You hear some people go back and reference challenges from mergers 30 years ago. And to your point, right in your question, you said it, a lot has changed in 30 years. But let's hit the most important 3 items when you look back in time and then think about how we already are planning to do it differently. So one of the things that certainly caused challenges in the past was technology.

When you had 2 railroads merging together with 2 different transportation systems. It wasn't the technology itself that caused the problem. It was the pace at which the integration occurred. In other words, there was an intentional thought and change management around what is the pace you cut that over.

Well, we've got a huge advantage, right? We, Union Pacific, have already demonstrated a very strong ability to change over systems, including our full transportation system called NetControl, just a little less than 2 years ago very successfully not a blip, no customer was impacted. It was seamless, it was very effective. So we've got that experience.

In addition, when you move past the technology and you think about timing, you've seen in the past with some mergers where a KPI right out of the gate is the pace of implementation. Now look, we're not in the business of going slow. We're in the business of understanding exactly what we have to on day 1, day 90, day 180. And I'll tell you on day 1, you're not going to see a lot of difference, right? We will operate these 2 railroads, largely independently, at least for the first few months.

And then we'll thoughtfully because of all the planning that we're doing, implant 1 action, once that action is implemented, we'll make sure that it worked effectively and then we'll move to the next. And then I save the most important one for last. If you look at past mergers, often, the premium railroad was buying a railroad that was operating very poorly. That's not the case here.

The Norfolk Southern is a good railroad. They're good in how they think about their infrastructure, they're good in how they think about technology. Together, we're going to be even stronger, but we're not buying some railroad that's been in disarray for a decade. We're buying a really good railroad, combining it with another really good railroad.

And obviously, as Jim has pointed out today, the net outcome is a positive for all of our stakeholders. So that work is all underway. It's being done very intentionally, and we're going to be the most comprehensive integration of any 2 railroads that this country has ever seen.

Brian, I appreciate the question. Thank you very much.

The next question is from the line of Walter Spracklin with RBC.

I just like to go back to the Kenny slide, I guess that's Slide 11. And when I compare that outlook slide to the same slide, the quarter before. It looks like you've added 3 new positives. You've had construction as being a plus, you deleted forestry as a negative and you improved auto from negative to neutral. So 3 positive inflections there.

And then we're hearing from trucking peers that it sounds like the freight recession might be overall together. So my question is that and your Q1 results and volume are pretty good. Your railroads were operating well. If the volume is indeed looking better compared to where it was in the fourth quarter, why wouldn't your EPS guide be up as well.

And I don't think your team would have an issue getting operating leverage, but it doesn't -- that logic kind of implies you are. So just love to get some clarity there on those topics.

Walter, I love the question. I'm going to pass it over to Kenny because I'll tell you, you must have been listening in because we have had that same discussion. So I can hardly wait to hear his answer. Go ahead, Kenny.

Yes. So first of all, you heard my comments, lumber is still challenged. It's just a smaller volume that we're talking about there. And yes, we're looking at autos.

And I'll tell you, we highlighted the fact that we have won some incremental pieces of volume. The SAAR for lumber is still negative, call it, 3%. The SAAR for auto is still negative, call it, 2% or 3%. So we're winning our way here to get to a point that we can fill a little bit better about those markets.

There was a second question, I believe you had more on the intermodal side. And you're right, we've seen the jump up in the fuel here. Now that happened here pretty weekly, call it, mid-March. And -- we'd like to see that sustain a little bit more from a timing perspective.

We'd like to see the sustained tightening of the truck market. We're looking at the prices, just like everyone else. And as we progress throughout the year, if those sustain, then you're right, we should see a little bit more uplift on the volume there. So it all begins with the service product.

Eric and his team have done a fabulous job, and you're seeing us win. And again, our size is -- our goal is to increase the size of the pie here with over the road, and we're accomplishing that.

So Walter, no advance or but you gave the same answer to me as he gave to you this morning. But the next thing I said to them was pretty clear is if you have a railroad running at a high level of service and you're delivering for customers and the economy is still it's not been as impacted as some people would say because of all the ins and outs that are out there at this point, that it's his job and our job and his job and his team specifically to go sell that service level that we have, look for opportunity to grow the business. And I like it, though, he's got more positive than negatives on there.

So I'm real comfortable with that. So Walter, I know fellow Canadian, okay, spent -- you spend your time in Canada, and I go back every so often I'm not sure what the heck is going on with the Canadian teams at hockey, but most of you are probably in bed, but I stayed up to watch the oilers last night and they lost. So tough times. Hopefully, your team is winning.

Our next question comes from the line of David Vernon with Bernstein.

So Jim or Kenny, I'm wondering how you guys are thinking about this -- tackling this issue of proving that this merger enhances competition. You've been out in the market for a couple of months now with this concept of commute gateway pricing. I'm just wondering how or what kind of feedback have you gotten from customers Obviously, we've heard the other railworks, but how are you thinking about that idea and its ability to kind of help meet this fairly ambiguous notion of how the merger enhances competition?

Well, let me start. We're not ambiguous. I think how do we have competition and how do we enhance competition pretty straightforward. We're going to be able to move products across the country faster than anybody with less touch points.

If people want to compete against that, okay, they're going to have to either be able to enhance their service and be able to move it with less touch points with whichever way they can do that or they're going to have to do it in price. That's what they're worried about is some lanes that are only going to be able to do it with price. We're going to enhance competition to be able to have products that move right now that are consumed mostly in the East, it's going to be able to move across the country in a much more seamless manner. They open up more markets for it.

It enhances the capability to sell in markets and move the way products are supposed to move. We're going to enhance so that we can compete better against the -- like I mentioned with the intermodal, but I could do that with the carload business, I could do that with soybeans. We're going to be able to move their product in a faster, much more efficient manner that allows them to open up markets. Again, our competitors, whether it's trucks because a large piece of the growth that we see is intermodal is we're going to be able to remove and give our customers optionality to look at do they want to go intermodal with the railroads or do they want to go by truck.

The committed gateway gives the railroads both the Western and the Eastern Railroad, the optionality to have a set price that they can offer to go out to customers and those products that we've identified. We've said that we're going to keep every gateway open. If somebody wants to get to the Southeast through the CSX at New Orleans, they can have that. It is the faster road in some markets.

Why would we ever limit that capability. So the base is the base, and we are enhancing the movement. Kenny, why don't you talk about the conversation with the customers or...

Jennifer, if you point -- I'm going to see you trying to jump in first. So let me just kind of remind everyone, 520 customers that have signed a letter of support 700 commercial partners signed a letter of support, 2,000 in total that signed a letter of support. And I'll tell you, Jim and I have spent a lot of time together going out and seeing customers. Here's what's undisputed.

The customers see the value on the transit improvement. They see the benefits of an interchange going away, they are excited about the fact that their supply chains. I'm talking those that invest in equipment and those that use our system equipment that, that will become more valuable to them and will increase the cycle times there. The things that as we move throughout the journey, we do know they want to see what we're going to be filing.

They want to see this process as we go through it with the STB and other stakeholders, but we are staying close to them throughout this whole journey. Let me double down real quick on something that Jim said, though, that's how we're able to win the day. Now I didn't mention this in Jim's last comments about domestic intermodal book, we've got 3 consecutive quarters where we have really put together a record quarter. And we've done that, Eric, through first service which is what you need, and you'll see that with single line service from this merger.

And then a lower cost structure allows us to open up new markets. The margins look a lot better for new pieces of business. Customers see that, customers appreciate that and that excites the customer base.

And the only thing I was going to add to what you have said is with committed gateway pricing, we're actually extending the benefit of the merger to customers that would otherwise not be impacted. And so that absolutely enhances competition. .

Yes. Good point there, Jennifer. Listen, great question. Thank you very much. Go ahead.

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

I wanted to ask you about just how you think about the key things you need to execute on? You said kind of if you're looking at like maybe 2Q '27 for approval. So you got some runway ahead, you want to execute well, and your service is strong, your rail network operation is very good, which I think would be supportive of the case you can make it all work, right? How do you think about volume growth?

Is that also important for you to deliver volume growth as you continue to build your case that you can handle what's a heavy lift of integrating 2 large railroads. So I think that's just like -- is that an important piece, too? And then I guess related to that, how do you think about volume versus price? I mean you are more -- you've got efficient operation, low cost structure.

Do you intentionally like say, "Hey, we just want to do a little more volume think you may be intermodal and grain markets where I think there's been some question about price versus volume.

Listen, we want to increase volume, no way answer, but that's a goal. So don't have to expose or talk about that for too long. We want to increase revenue. So we do that by having more business, being able to move more products on our railroad, drive more business to our railroad, but also be very diligent on price and making sure that we price in the right way to increase revenue.

And you could see that again this quarter. We've done a great job of it in the last few quarters of where we are on revenue. So that is key. And remember, I separate what we're doing for the merger versus what we're doing for the railroad today.

The railroad today's job is, is to run at a real high level, and I give Eric and the entire operating team a lot of credit. I look at it and I'm an old operating guy, okay, I spent a lot of time in this 48 years I've been railroading to be able to look at railroads and what we can do. And I'm very impressed, and I see more runway there to be able to make ourselves more efficient and be able to move the products. And that way then can go sell or sell our customers on what we can do better.

So for us, absolutely, we need to increase revenue, which we've done, and we have good line of sight on it, and we have to price at the right level for the service that we're providing, for the value we're providing. And I think there's a lot of runway left in there that we can show what we're delivering for our customers with better speed, better flexibility, better timing that they can win in the marketplace and we can grow together. There are certain markets we react and we have to react. We've had to react on the movement of some grain products, okay, just because of where the market is.

We've done it with soda ash. So it is a -- if it was easy, my mother would be here running the railroad. So it's not easy. But our key goal is increase volume and increase revenue drive it to the bottom line, high level of service for our customers and operate as efficiently as possible.

I think that's a good summary of the way we are, Jennifer.

That's an excellent summary. And even with some of the high truck competition we've seen in the last couple of years that have compressed it. Truck pricing is still a more expensive option than rail. And so what we're doing to be more efficient and get into new markets and offer new services to our customers just positions us very well to grow going forward. .

Kenny, anything you want to add or you're good? .

No, I think you covered it all. Okay. .

I was trying to pass it over to you. Next question.

Next question is from the line of Richa Harnain with Deutsche Bank.

So I wanted to ask about headcount. I think you made this comment record on few workforce productivity, and this is indeed the lowest quarter or headcount levels we've ever seen. And that's as growing top line. So maybe you can just update us, is this the new normal?

Or could it be better? I think Jim, you made a comment that you have line of sight to be better than that, and Eric is holding us to that. So maybe talk about that and drilling to effectively how this is possible, how are you achieving these productivity initiatives? What are you doing differently?

And as you think about maybe the pending merger with NS, do you think these productivity gains are transferable? Or do you think there's something unique about the U&P network, allowing you to achieve these levels of productivity more easily than maybe alternative networks.

I'm going to pass it over to Eric here in just 1 second because he has the largest amount of employees. Of course, we look at everything that we're doing on our management and how we operate the railroad from a management side, and we've done a good job of being able to be more efficient and through attrition and be able to size it the right way, and we see more benefit on there. As far as the combination, absolutely, I don't have to talk about it a lot. That's -- we do see substantial improvement in how productive we can be when the 2 railroads are combined.

You only need 1 Chief Marketing Officer, and you only need 1 CEO. So some of those things are real easy. So I'm just joking, cannot worry about it. But at the end of the day, yes, we see a lot of that.

And Eric, on the day-to-day operating the railroad, what do you see moving forward?

Yes. And Jim got it exactly right, that they absolutely are transferable. So 7% improved workforce productivity. When you think about how we did that, like -- and then you think about tomorrow and a week from now, a month from now, it's the same thing.

Really, one of the greatest strengths of Union Pacific, yes, it's all the initiatives that we execute successfully, but it's more our mindset right? Because when you have a mindset that says productivity drives growth, and then you can drive alignment within the whole company of why do we work every day to be productive. And we have that. We do that exceptionally well.

And then you combine that with operating kind of mindset of perpetual dissatisfaction. And you can look at it every single day, like it doesn't matter. I can look at any scorecard and the team can look at any scorecard and they can have lots of conversations just like I do, and you see things. Now sometimes those things are big and they take a while because maybe you have to make a bunch of changes, but when you look at our productivity over the last handful of years, a lot of them have come just straight from the fundamentals.

Why is one terminal at 19 hours of dwell but another terminal is at 15 hours a dwell. We can't 19 be 15. And so we go and we grind on that. And we grind and we grind until we can get that terminal as good as the other one. Now that's what I mean by fundamentals, and it expands across our entire network.

You layer on top of that the technology that Jim had mentioned and Jennifer mentioned and I mentioned in a previous question that was asked, well, now you got a multiplying factor right? Now you're actually getting even more out of those initiatives. And that's what we do. I could not be more proud of what the team has accomplished in productivity because, again, we do it to position Kenny and the team in the best possible position to win in the marketplace.

And there is no finish line to that.

Thanks for the question.

The next question is from the line of Ari Rosa with Citigroup.

Nice quarter here. I actually wanted to stay on the headcount point because it is truly impressive what your -- the efficiency gains that you're able to achieve here. But Jim, you've made this commitment to the unions that all the union jobs are going to be protected. I'm wondering, given the kind of productivity gains that you're seeing, is there any dimension in you worry that, that could slow down actually some of that that progress?

Or how are you thinking about that commitment against -- weighed against the very impressive productivity gains that you're achieving? And then just kind of broadening out, is there anything that you think you would be doing differently in terms of how you're operating the railroad currently if the merger process were not going on?

Let me answer that last question. No. we operate the railroad the best we can today and always look for improvements. So we're not changing. And I'm telling you, I've sort of tried to tell everybody this real clear and people will tell you at Union Pacific.

There's people that are dealing with the merger, dealing with the applications, dealing with how we look at putting it together when it gets approved because it's going to get approved. It's such a compelling case. But bottom line is most of the people at Union Pacific, their job is to operate the railroad. If anybody thinks I'm going to let people get lost and travel into some place to go talk about the merger, okay?

That's not going to happen. We're talking -- we're railroading the Union Pacific, the way we are today, okay, now ifs and or buts. So I'm very comfortable that we're doing the right thing. The commitment with the unions.

I thought about this, I didn't wake up one morning have my cup of coffee sitting out in the balcony looking at 6:00 in the morning at the metrics and said, maybe I should just protect every employee. When we make these big decisions like that, we looked at attrition numbers, normal attrition numbers for both railroads. We've looked at how fast we think that we can put this together and get the -- optimize it so that the service is not impacted for the customers on both railroads, and we're very comfortable that the commitment that we gave will not limit our capability to move ahead and be productive, but it also guarantees people a job.

We're very comfortable with that with just the attrition numbers. And remember, this is a story. We see the opportunity to grow the business in intermodal, for example, there's areas in the country where we just don't move intermodal, it gets trucked that we know we can give the optionality. And if our service stays high, we can win more business and bring it on the railroad.

So I'm very comfortable with the attrition numbers plus what we do for growing the business, that, that commitment is strong. It's set in stone, but we're very comfortable when we made that commitment that it was made with a thoughtful process. So I don't see any issue with that commitment at all impacting us as we move ahead.

Our final question is from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

It's actually Madison on for Ravi. Just one more to kind of end the call. Just wondering, given your current network utilization and service levels and kind of current levels of inflation, was wondering what does operating leverage and incremental margins look like in the up cycle?

Well, listen, we love upcycle. Jennifer would scold me if I got into too much detail. But it's -- Madison, that's exactly the way we're thinking about it is there are so many things that are going on that are sort of holding back all the railroads, truck pricing, all those things that would be helpful. So higher natural gas, we love it.

Now anybody who heats a pool like I do in Phoenix, Arizona, I don't like it. But at the end of the day, for the railroad, I like it. So I think we're in a good place. We operate in a good manner and Madison, I see us up cycle would be very beneficial.

And if everything in the world settled down and we had the economy growing, would really help us because we grow with America and the businesses in America. So -- thank you very much for the question.

Thank you, Mr. Vena. There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn it to you for closing comments.

Well, listen, thank you very much. I know there's lots going on. There's lots of many companies reported, and I'd like to thank you all for joining us this morning. As far as our shareholders, our owners, you can be rest assured that we look at this railroad every day to make sure we operate in the best way possible move ahead.

I'm very comfortable that we're doing that, have the right team. I joke around with Kenny about only needing 1 Chief Marketing Officer. But at the end of the day, him and his team are doing a good job I can't be prouder of Eric and the team, the way they're leading and Jennifer and her whole team that keeps our feet to the fire and making sure that we're doing the right things. So with that, looking forward to putting the application in on the 30th, getting it accepted and moving ahead with this transaction that will just build on the results of Union Pacific and make us a stronger railroad and a strong competitor to move the products that Americans use every day.

Thank you very much. Appreciate everybody joining us.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may now disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.