Q2 2026 Earnings Release

Thank you for accessing Union Pacific Corporation's 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call held at 8.45 a.m. Eastern Time on July 23, 2026 in Omaha, Nebraska. This presentation and the company materials include statements that contain estimates, projections, or expectations regarding the company's financial results and operations and future economic conditions. These statements are forward-looking statements as defined by the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in statements. The materials accompanying this presentation include more detailed information regarding forward-looking information and these risks and uncertainties. In addition, please refer to the company's website and SEC filings for additional information about our risk factors.

Welcome to the Union Pacific second quarter 2026 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 should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and the slides for today's presentation are available on Union Pacific's website. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Jim Venna, Chief Executive Officer for Union Pacific. Thank you, Mr. Venna. You may begin.

Thank you, Rob. I really appreciate it. Listen, pretty special day here today. Great day to be putting our results out. And it's my wife's birthday, so it's a double win. And she would have complained big time if this quarter wasn't good. So let me just highlight how it is moving forward. She might have been mean to me today. So why don't we get started? Here with me today in Omaha, Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Heyman, our Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Kenny Rocker. Out there, Weather's good, a little storm coming in, but nothing we can't handle, right? Now, let's review the highlights on slide four. This morning, we reported record financial results driven by strong execution and 2% volume growth. Net income totaled $2 billion after we adjust for $1.41 against last year. Fuel was a big driver of both surcharge revenue and expense this year, and we had some one-timers we called out last year. But what's real important, all of that, we see solid core improvement in our results with growth in revenue and operating income, and we were about 10 basis points to get through the quarter in more detail, and then I'll come back and wrap it up before we go to Q&A. I'm very excited this morning on the Q&A, looking for some great smart questions from our smart analysts and owners. We'll start with Jennifer and the second quarter financials. Jennifer?

All right. Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with our second quarter income statement on slide six. We're operating revenue of $6.9 billion, increased 12% versus last year, and freight revenue also grew 12% to $6.5 billion. Breaking down the drivers of freight revenue, volume growth added 225 basis points. Fuel surcharge revenue added 750 basis points and increased roughly $460 million, reflecting the impact of higher year-over-year fuel prices and volume. Solid core pricing combined with business mix to drive 175 basis points of freight revenue improvement. Importantly, our quarterly pricing dollars continue to exceed inflation dollars as we compete and win business at levels that reflect the value of our rail service. I also want to call out that second quarter business mix was a slight headwind in the quarter as growth in domestic intermodal outpaced expectations and offset the mixed benefit of less international intermodal traffic. Wrapping up the top line, other revenue increased 11% to $346 million as higher volume drove increases in both subsidiary and accessorial revenue. Turning to expense, our appendix slides provide more detail as total operating expenses increased 13% to $4.1 billion, primarily from higher diesel fuel prices. Compensation and benefits expense improved 1% against last year's reported results, which included the final breakperson buyout agreement of $55 million. Excluding that agreement, second quarter costs per employee increased 7 percent, driven by higher wage and benefit costs. A key driver to offsetting wage inflation is workforce productivity, and we have delivered eight consecutive quarters of record results. Although we're confident we'll continue that productivity trend, we now expect full year compensation per employee to increase around 6 percent. Fuel expense grew 63% on a 60% increase in average fuel price and 2% higher gross ton Year over year, our price per gallon grew from $2.42 to $3.86 and added 120 basis points to our operating ratio. Purchase services and material expense increased 10% due to merger-related costs as well as higher intermodal and subsidiary expenses. Despite increased volume, fewer operating equipment leases and record second quarter cycle times drove a 7% reduction in equipment and other rents, and other expense grew 13% on higher casualty costs. Income tax expense increased 29%, reflecting last year's one-time $115 million deferred state tax benefit and higher pre-tax income this year, partially offset by some good news in 2026 from state taxes. Put it all together, we had a record quarter with reported earnings per share of $3.36, cents. Adjusted for merger costs, our earnings per share totaled $3.41, and operating ratio was 59.2%. Turning to cash and returns in the balance sheet on slide 7, our strong financial results carried forward into cash from operations of $5.5 billion, up 21% versus last year. Free cash flow totaled $1.8 billion after we reinvested in our network and returned an industry-leading dividend to our shareholders. We also paid down $1.5 billion of long-term debt in the first half of the year, resulting in adjusted debt to EBITDA ratio of 2.5 times. Turning to our outlook on slide 8, we have delivered a very strong first half 2026 as we execute on our strategy and deliver improvement in safety, service, and operational excellence, leading to car load growth. From that focused approach, we have generated reported earnings per share growth of 6% year-to-date in line with our January outlook. Looking to the remainder of the year, we are raising our 2026 outlook to reported EPS growth in the high single-digit range as we continue to efficiently move increased volume on our network. We also expect to continue delivering operating ratio improvement and maintain our position of industry leadership, even against ongoing margin pressure from fuel. Fuel prices remain volatile, and our recent purchases have been over $4 a gallon. Overall, a strong first half of 2026, coupled with an improved outlook, highlight our ability to grow volumes, deliver for customers, and manage costs, a strategy that delivers value for all of our stakeholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Kenny.

Thank you, Jennifer. grew 12% to $6.5 billion. Walked through the key drivers on site, 1% declined, double-digit volume, while coal volume was challenged. Impacted overall, the same to industrial. Price and gains delivered a quarter of double digits and share gains. Our buffer resources allowed us to reach customer demand, market softness, business development about AGP's new export for Washington. We also see continued upside and fee stock markets challenging second-hand market-driven In the south, I'm winning new business with CP Chem that I mentioned last quarter. With premium, we expect domestic and immodal, supported by over-the-road market weakness. So while we're proud, it does not change.

Thank you, Kenny, and good morning. We delivered record second-quarter operating performance, ran a fluid network, and improved safety, all while handling 2% more volume. It all starts with safety, and both employee and derailment rates improve versus their respective team's dedication to critical safety rule compliance and human factor prevention initiatives. Moving to slide 13, we provided exceptional service as freight car velocity increased 5% to 231 miles per day and set a second quarter record. Train speed increased 3% and terminal dwell improved 7% as we tied our first quarter record of 19.7 hours, our third straight quarter below 20 hours. Both the intermodal and manifest service performance indices finished at 95%, demonstrating our ability to execute on the fundamentals and effectively utilize our buffer of resources. This enabled the team to support double-digit domestic intermodal growth at very high service levels. And remember, this bar only gets harder for us as it resets based on monthly bests, which we achieved in 2025. Opportunities remain to improve, and we are committed to providing consistent, reliable service while growing with our customers. Moving to slide 14, our key efficiency metrics reflect our commitment to operational excellence as we delivered record workforce productivity, record train length, and record fuel consumption. The team is relentlessly focused on identifying opportunities to further enhance service, productivity, and efficiency across the network by first executing on the fundamentals, then implementing new technologies, and finally investing prudently back into the railroad. Locomotive productivity of 142 improved 1% as the average active fleet decreased 1% against 2% higher gross ton miles. We successfully onboarded incremental volume by leveraging existing train starts, demonstrating strong asset utilization and efficiency. Our fuel consumption rate improved 1% as we continue to benefit from fuel conservation initiatives and locomotive technology and modernization investments. Workforce productivity increased 5% on 2% higher volume. Our active train, engine, and yard workforce decreased 2%, demonstrating our discipline and remaining more than volume variable. Finally, train length grew 2% versus last year, driven by continued optimization of the transportation plan and reduce train starts. Closing the quarter, we delivered on the fundamentals while growing volumes and effectively serving our customers. We have the capacity to grow while continuing to improve safety and service. As Kenny's outlook has improved, we've been agile and reexamined our base resources and buffer, aligning both to support growth. We are also continuing to make strategic capacity investments, including the Houston Complex, Pacific Northwest Siding Extensions, and Sunset Double Track projects. The operating team is demonstrating daily that we are ready to grow with our customers while delivering the service we sold them. With that, I'll turn it back over to Jim.

Why don't we turn to slide 16. Before we get to your questions, I'd like to quickly summarize what you've heard and provide an update on our merger with Norfolk Southern. As the team walked through, we had a very strong second quarter as volumes, pricing, and operational efficiency drove record financial results. The network continues to be very fluid, and our buffer of resources is supporting broad-based growth. to meet increased customer demand with best-in-class safety, service, and operational excellence. For our 2026 outlook, we are raising to full-year reported EPS growth in the high single-digit range. As to the status of our merger with Norfolk Southern, first, we met a very important milestone when the Surface Transportation Board accepted our application as complete on May 28th. And on Monday, we will meet another important milestone when we complete the supplemental information asked from the Board. As you'll see when you read it, we've answered each of the Board's questions. We've also taken the opportunity to further improve the competitive nature of our merger through an expansion of committed gateway pricing, among several other voluntary commitments. Greater competition against trucks and other railroads. Also yesterday, we announced that we reached a merger settlement agreement with the railroad. I said from day one that our merger will create a stronger railroad with CN. A careful review. We've done our homework. Now versus almost one year ago when we first announced our plans to merge, we have even more conviction that our transaction is in the public interest and will deliver benefits for our stakeholders, especially our customers. The case for our transcontinental railroad is clear, and we're ready to go. With that, Rob, we're ready to take questions.

Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to withdraw your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. To the number of analysts joining us on the call today, we'll be limiting everyone to one question to accommodate as many participants as possible. Thank you, and the first question is from the line of Ken Hexter with Bank of America. Good morning, Ken.

Hey, good morning, Jim. You know, I guess a two-parter. One, a little confusion on the $0.14 fuel gain. Is that just all upside from fuel and the pricing? Maybe if, Jen, you could just delve into that a little bit. And then if you can expand on the commercial agreement with CN, the access to the EJ&E, maybe talk about what that gives you and what you're giving up on the network down south.

Jennifer, why don't you?

Yeah, Ken, on the fuel piece, you know, we're just calling out the fact that it did have the 120 basis point headwind to our operating ratio mathematically. But then when you look at the difference between expense.

And on the Canadian national announcement yesterday, it was in two parts. The one part was something that we knew that we wanted to make sure with the merger that we needed to do something. And we've told the Surface Transportation Board twice that we never wanted to take control and get over 50%. In fact, we called meetings at the TRRA and the other railroads didn't show up. But at the end of the day, the nice part about the deal is that clears that up as far as ownership of the Kansas City Terminal and TRRA. It also allows Canadian National to come over between St. Louis, just east of St. Louis, to Kansas City, and give optionality to the customers in the old area because we would have ended up with the two rail lines that we use at another one, so we thought it was prudent for us not to be too concentrated. Again, that was the only part of the company where we have a significant overlap, and that was a pretty small area when you take a look at the entire railroad. So with Canadian National, we've got an MOU that takes care of that. And then we also talked about, and it goes with our commitment to keep every gateway open. And Canadian National says, listen, can we figure out a way to get into Mexico to be able to move to what we wanted to, but we want to be clear that we could use a priority location that they find better to be able to have access into Mexico, and we worked out a deal. And for that, Chicago, east-west. and sometimes people look at things in the short term instead of long term and they don't understand listen i've worked in chicago and i worked at canadian national where it took us longer to get a train from the north side of chicago to the south side of chicago where our terminal was than it did to run it from prince rupert so anytime a railroad can figure out a way to be able to run much more seamless east west to make interchange connections or run through trains that's what we've done it's a win-win it's a win for union pacific and it's also a great national i think it's a deal that that is going to help both of us be able to increase traffic from both of us because of what we're able to take off the roads and move more of it on the rail so get ken maybe you didn't want that much detail but i just gave it to you okay no appreciate it have a great birthday, dinner, night.

Thanks, Jim.

You bet. If I'm good, I'll take her out. Or if she's good, I'll take her out. If not, we're just ordering in McDonald's.

Our next question is from the line of Chris Weatherby with Wells Fargo. Please ask you with your question.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Good morning. So maybe sticking on that topic, I guess I just wanted to kind of see if you could expand a little bit on how you think this plays out, both from like a revenue synergy perspective. I think there's initially in the initial merger agreement, there was some concessions baked in, several hundred million dollars of potential concessions. So maybe thinking about this agreement that you've constructed and how it may influence some of the revenue synergies and concession numbers, and then maybe a bigger picture, is this the first of what could be multiple of these types of arrangements? I guess, how do you feel about the receptivity of the rest of the rail industry? This is a big move coming from potential opposition to agreement to get on board with the deal. I just want to get a sense of how you see the landscape right now.

Yeah, listen, Chris, I won't get into too much detail of some other discussions we've had, but I'll tell you that if people are reasonable, we are more than willing to come, and this one is a reasonable expansion for Canadian National, and it's great for Union Pacific. As far as the impact, listen, we knew we were going to have to do that. We see this as, for both of us, a growth story, not a limiting factor on business, so this will not impact what we're doing. Remember, we're still going to have to have them operate on our railroad to get to Mexico. So it's not like, and what it does is it makes them much more competitive against the Canadian Pacific, Kansas City. We see that as them being able to grow more business and not be less, and that we should be able to get more revenue on trackage or whatever else that we do and how we finalize the deal. So it's a real positive, Chris.

Yeah, and I would just say a big part of it, which is addressing Kansas City, was all part of to do something to address that, so all part of our thinking.

I appreciate it.

Have a good one, Chris.

The next question is in the line of Walter Spacklin with RBC. Please receive your question. Thanks very much.

Good morning. Good, good. And I know, Jim, as you mentioned, you worked a lot on the EG&E, certainly when we first met, and some of the loop arounds and efficiencies you get, and as you translate into the Transcon solution, is quite compelling. I'm curious if whether when you were talking to CN, does this open the avenue now for more cooperation with CN, or is this something, okay, we've addressed this now with CN, let's move on to any of the other railroads? Just curious whether you're seeing this as, okay, that's one player we've addressed and now we move on, or is there avenue for further opportunities with CN that might have come up in the conversations?

So listen, let's start with fundamentally. We would have never been able to get to this kind of deal with Canadian National if it wasn't because of going through the merger, okay? So that's the problem with people, anybody thinking that it's easy to make a deal with another railroad or another company is, Walter, pretty tough, okay? So it was the merger that drove us and helped Canadian National. It truly is a win-win. I'm not sure what the next step is, okay? I really don't. The problem we have is we have a whole bunch of overlap, two-to-one and three-to-two customers even. There isn't a lot else that we need to give up. Like what is it that you give? You give access to somebody around Nashville? Well, we'd like access to a different part further south than Jacksonville. So at the end of the day, it's going to be difficult, but we're always open to have discussions. We really are. and if something happens. And I love our relationship with Canadian National, but I'll tell you, they don't give me any deference because I know they're a railroad. I'll be honest. They're tough negotiators. Son of a gun, okay? I was hoping I didn't have to give them that much access into Mexico. But at the end of the day, they're tough negotiators. They're smart. But I like that. That's what you want, Walter, is to be able to move the deal forward together. And if there's other things that we can figure out how to do, We'll do that. We really will. But I don't see a whole bunch of things that are – and, Walter, because I think you've met my wife, you know I would never take her out for a burger, okay? Sometimes I like having a joke. Like the chance of me having a marriage for 43 years like I have or 44 years and take her out for a burger for her birthday, that would not work out good, okay?

McDonald's is not on the menu.

Okay, thanks very much, Jim.

I appreciate it.

We're in Omaha. It should be like a nice steak from Omaha, I'm telling you. Nice Wagyu from a farm out in Iowa or Nebraska. I'm looking forward to it tonight.

It might play out a bit better. Thanks again, Jim.

The next question is from the line of Jonathan Chappell with Evercore ISI. We received your question.

Hey, Jim. Jennifer, shifting gears away from the merger for a second, you raised the EPS guide, you know, versus three months ago while also raising the outlook for your most important cost line item with the cost per employee. So can you help us kind of solve then for where the majority of the upside is coming from? Is that volumes running better than expected? Is it surcharge tailwind benefiting you more than you thought in 2H, more productivity in other line items? You know, how do we kind of rectify those two changes?

Yeah, I mean, I think you kind of answered your own question there a little bit, Jonathan. It really is a number of different things. Certainly, when you hear Kenny talk and look at his outlook in terms of how the business is performing and what we see the opportunity for the second half of the year, it's stronger than what we thought it was coming into the year, which is great news, and we feel very bullish about that. And then you see how Eric and his team are handling that increased volume, doing it very efficiently, a very cost-efficient manner, and giving a great service for growing their business. So it's all of those things, and we feel great about it. So it's a great setup for the first half, and looking forward to it.

The next question is from the line of David Vernon with Bernstein. Pleasure to see with your question. Good morning, David.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for fitting me in here. So I'm going to try to squeeze two into here because you guys are quick on the next question, Mike. The first question is really around the outlook for the second half. Kenny, you sound pretty positive about everything except coal, which sounds like a throwback to last decade. I wanted to ask if you're seeing any sort of broadening of industrial demand outside of anything related to sort of data center construction, anything that you're seeing in the economic tea leaves that would tell you that we are starting to see some broader industrial recovery kind of building up. And then the second question would be around the Falcon service, right? How does this agreement sort of change that? Or is Cienk going to be running some of its own trains? Or is that totally separate from what you guys announced today?

Yeah, so the first question, you know, we look at car orders and those are up slightly. And so, yes, if you look at it broadly, if you look at the car order, seeing that and the momentum that we talked about, business revenue per car and the revenue that's there. So that's encouraging to us. And then there are some things that we're doing that make our life a lot better. So you look at grain and grain products. We've got a few more facilities that are coming online, some that are exports, some that are domestic. Automotive is not to go out and compete in that area. So a little bit of a macro supplement in that by winning new business. I think the second question was around the Falcon at CN is going well on the CN there. So you can see the numbers. Mexico, we've done well in Mexico.

The Falcon was true Chicago. but the other railroads' comers want it to move.

Our commitment as part of the merger, which has remained unchanged, and what will remain unchanged is full access to all the active interchange points. And, you know, when some people think about that, they underestimate when I say interchange points in New Orleans, which are obviously incredibly important to us and all the other railroads. But just remember that every single day there's 260 interchange points across the Union Pacific network as we sit here today. So we're really committing to that, 260 open interchanges just for a month ago, and that's going to remain that, because to Jim's point, our partnerships with all of the railroads are incredibly important when you consider 40% of our volume every day is interchanged to another railroad or received by us from another railroad.

Our next question is from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jeffries. Please receive your question.

Morning, Stephanie.

Hi, good morning. Thank you, guys. I guess I wanted to maybe ask a bigger picture question here for whoever on the team would like it. But, you know, I wanted to ask a little bit about just maybe the re-industrialization theme that we're seeing across the U.S. And maybe that means a bit more domestic manufacturing and maybe less imports coming onto the West Coast. So can you maybe frame how you think the network is positioned to handle, you know, what could be a pretty big medium-term theme here over the next, you know, five, ten years?

So, Candy, why don't you talk about what you see with all the construction, different products, hot markets, cooler markets, real quick, and then Eric, talk about the railroad and how it is.

Yeah, Stephanie, you're really asking about an area where we're either expanding on our network, and that pipeline has remained strong. A lot of new customers talked about AGP, which is a, but then we've also seen it with Hyundai Steel, and we see it show up at the data center, robust number of opportunity to compete in that area.

And we remain poised to be able to handle that growth. You know, you saw that a couple examples here recently. You go back to last year with the 33% increase in international intermodal, and we handled it. We handled it well. Then you look at what's happened in the domestic intermodal market, which credit to Kenny and his team, they've done a great job bringing that growth to our railroad, and you've seen us handle that exceptionally well, especially when you see 5% increases on car velocity in a period of the year where historically, no matter how many years you go back, we actually would degrade by about 15 to 20 miles per day. But 50 days into the summer, we haven't had any degradation, and we don't plan to have any degradation. Now, that really tells you that the fundamentals of the railroad are strong. Every single metric I gave before that indicate that we're not only strong, but we continue to make more progress. Now, on the capacity side, to be able to handle that, and you used examples like the West Coast and Mexico, think about what we've been doing. And this is not a new thing. We've always invested in our capital, invested that into the railroad prudently. So whether you're thinking about the more than $125 million we've invested in our Houston complex, whether you think about our continued work to finish double-tracking the sunset route from Yuma all the way to Tucson so that we're actually double-track all the way to El Paso, and even on the bulk side and the manifest side, when you think about our siding construction projects and siding extension projects up in the Pacific Northwest and across Iowa, we are poised, we'll continue to be poised, and we'll continue to maintain a buffer so that when unexpected growth comes, because of all of Kenny's team's hard work, we can bring it out of the railroad with an immediate yes to our customer.

Yeah, and just one last thing to add there, Stephanie. So you've heard us talk about our pipeline of industrial projects where you're, and Kenny mentioned the RFIs. You know, we've got about 200 of those in the pipeline today. It's a very strong pipeline, so we feel very bullish about our opportunity to continue to grow there.

Thank you very much, Stephanie.

The next question is from the line of Tom Wadovitz with UBS. Pleasure to see you. Good morning, Tom.

Yeah, good morning, Jim. So, and, you know, congratulations on this deal with CN. That seems like a really nice step forward for you in terms of, you know, making the case with STB. I wanted to ask you just for a little more kind of understanding on how you would view that deal. So can you give us any kind of framing of, you know, let's say three to two, two to one customers when you consider the customers on St. Louis to Kansas City or in St. Louis area that CN's getting access to? How large is that group? Is that like five customer facilities? Is that like 50? Is there any way to kind of frame that? And then I guess the other component would just be, you know, their access to your line on Memphis to Eagle Pass. would you expect cn to compete with you on business to and from mexico or is that like hey you know this is going to really enable them to compete with cp on business it's more like you know call it you know eastern canada to mexico just want to see if you could give us a little bit more perspective on kind of the you know how meaningful it is and how you think it affects the competition okay the new deal is canada to mexico so it's not competitive with us it's uh it's good for both of us.

It allows them to sell it. Second is, as far as the number of 3 to 2 and 2 to 1, it's in the application, Tom. It's absolutely a small number. Less than out of the thousands of customers we have, we're talking about a couple handfuls, if that. Jennifer, what's the exact number? I don't want to put the wrong number out. I think the... Because it's been a freaking moving market.

Yeah, the 2 to 1 is 3 or 4, and the 3 to 2, I think, is low 30s.

Right. So that's it. So out of all our customers, and we said that we would fix the two-to-ones, and we have a remedy even for the three-to-two series. If somebody has two plus a truck or two, they should be competitive, but we want to make sure that there's no question about leaving every optionality that people have. Tom, I'll take exception to one thing on yours. It's pretty straightforward. This merger doesn't need a lot of help, okay? And I've been pretty adamant about this, And what people are missing is when you give customers a seamless single-point railroad that can move things a longer distance, that automatically makes the thing less expensive for the customer and more competitive against any other product that's out there. So people want to make noise about whether we need to help this. I think the CN deal, the Canadian national deal, is great for both of us with EJ&E and Mexico and then within the piece, but we're talking a small number of customers. This is a growth. We see taking trucks off the road to go across the U.S. faster and take things that are right now going through cities and less fuel efficient, more greenhouse gas impacting roads that, of course, everybody knows trucks do not pay their full share of the construction and capital costs on the interstate system while we pay for all ours, but we want to put them on our railroad. So this is truly more compelling today than we looked at it than ever before. And you can see, because it only touches, think about that, less than 10 customers go two to one. This is truly an end-to-end that wins. We think we have a strong cap and say whatever they want. You got me going a little bit this morning. Good morning.

Tim, do you think you'll get a shipper agreement as well? Are you optimistic on that?

Sorry, you broke up on one piece. What did he say?

Oh, no, I'm just saying like, yeah, you've got to see an agreement with CN. Do you think it will announce some kind of big shipper agreements as well or maybe not for a while?

Listen, we talk to our customers all the day, and we have sent a number of customers, and how do we move ahead? How do we understand how it is and how they can win in the marketplace? So, yeah, we're not going to announce them because they're private deals, but at the end of the day, absolutely, we've been talking to a lot of customers. I sent the letter to our top 50 customers saying, if you have any questions about the business that we're doing together, and I sent it to their CEOs, here's my phone number, give me a call, text me, and we'll get the teams together to go through details so you understand what the benefits are. I had a meeting on Monday with one of the big shippers here in the Midwest, and, you know, they're not going to come out, and he told me black and white. He says, listen, I'm not going to come out to support it because other people are not worried about what they might say and do if I do. But at the end of the day, he says, I see the advantage. If we're moving Pulse products from the southeast U.S. to the west, which they are, they see the seamless. So customers, absolutely. And thanks for the question. It got me to fill in all the gaps of what I haven't been able to say yet this morning. So appreciate it.

Thank you, Jim.

Next question is from the line of Brian Austin. Back with J.P. Morgan. Pleased to see you with your question. Morning, Brian.

Hey, good morning, Jim. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe just one real quick for Jennifer, then a couple for Jim. Jennifer, the Comperhead up 6%. I mean, typically you have good visibility on that to start gear. It continues to move up a bit. I just wanted to see what the driver was for that. And then, Jim, you mentioned or hinted that there'll be some, I guess, improvements, expanding of the CGP and a couple other, I guess, voluntary enhancements, if you want to call them that, that we'll see on Monday. I wanted to see if you could get a little bit more granular on that, gives a little bit of a preview of what to expect. And then, of course, the STB had a couple decisions out yesterday. One that was interesting, just the trackage rights, the reciprocal switching with UP going back to Lake Charles. Is that anything that you think sets the precedent as you start to work towards the merits, the review of the transaction on the merits? Thanks very much.

So real quick on the STB, listen, I think they were very prudent when they came out with the decisions. And basically they just said that there are certain things that were in place that just make sense. And you can't just automatically ask for access for nothing on somebody else's property. It would be like somebody setting up a coffee shop and going to Starbucks and saying, I want to set up a coffee shop in Starbucks because I drove by the frickin' place. That doesn't make a particle of sense, and that's what the STB said. So we're very happy. Now, are we happy with every decision? You know, they want us to put out detailed information on employees. And you think about it, we've given it to every law firm that covers every person that might want to comment on this deal. So at the end of the day, are we happy with that one? I'm not because it impacts people's lives, and I always worry about that and how it impacts our employees. But overall, I think it's a clear win for Union Pacific that our position was correct in how things were done with the three cases. So on that, that's where I am with it. Jennifer?

Yeah, on the comp per employee piece, Brian, it really is wage inflation and benefits. So it is on the health and welfare side. You're right. The wage inflation is known. Just as a reminder, you know, we had the...

You remind everybody?

Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about, they start to give you some perspective, but I have the benefit to be able to peel that back and see at the ground level exactly what's happening. And so to Jennifer's point, while we are running hot on that, we've seen continued progress on the productivity side. You don't grow train length almost 9,900 feet by chance. If you think about it, not that long ago we were at 7,500 feet. So our 2% gain is on a very large gain over the last five years, and we don't see a stop to that. I often get asked, can you make it to 10,000 feet? We've got the team here at Union Pacific that takes challenges like that very seriously and looks for safe opportunities for us to be able to do that. Now, when you look down even deeper into our terminals and you look at line of road with our wage increases, our challenge that we take on every year, we focus on every quarter, every week, is to offset as much wage inflation as possible.

And you can see how we've done that.

You can see that when you're increasing car velocity and you're running at 231 miles per day, you're dropping your recruit rate to 4.5%. We did that in the quarter. That's two whole points better than it was last year. And I can go on and on, terminal dwell being down 7%, run-through dwell down being down 8%. It's all those things that our team and the operating department with the support of the rest of the company do every single day, and I could not be more proud of them, mostly because they're perpetually dissatisfied, always looking for more opportunities. And we're going to offset as much inflation as we possibly can, and our track record demonstrates we do that quite well.

Oh, sorry, a subpart. What was the third subpart?

Thank you for that. Humoring me there. Yeah, I think just to give us all a preview of what's expected on the supplementals, it sounds like there might be a couple additional things. You went above and beyond the initial list.

I was hoping you forgot that piece, okay, when I asked you. But bottom line is, listen, there's a whole bunch of detail in there. What the expansion does is we actually went out and talked to our customers, and the feedback we received was, would you guys examine? And we went to detail with a lot of them to say, listen, it will help us being able to. Just because, and I've always talked about distances is your enemy if you try to route things the wrong way. So the bottom line is when we went through that, you'll see it in the application, we've expanded it because of what our customers gave us of feedback. Again, we don't see that as a negative because the more you can open up some of those things to make sure the optionality is there, we get more business out of it. And it's about growth. So Eric, you know, I thought Eric was going to give you a real quick, yeah, our productivity was, again, great, but he decided to show you the whole freaking railroad. He's starting to sound more like me, okay? Pretty soon, Eric, I don't even have to come on these calls. Between you and Kenny and Jennifer, you guys have got it. So that's where we are. You'll have to wait until Monday, okay? I can't let the whole cat out of the bag.

Thanks very much for the time.

Have a good one.

The next question is from the line of Jason Seidel with TD Cowan. Pleasure to see with your question.

Morning, Jason. Hey, morning, Jim. Congrats on a good quarter here. I wanted to focus on two different things. One, I guess I want to talk to Eric a little bit about operations, guys doing a great job out there. How much ability do you have to take on additional freight without sort of adding much in the way of headcount or other expenses, particularly on the intermodal side, for both the near term and also sort of the longer term as you look at some of your forecasts that are out there for the deal? And then I guess for Kenny, how should we think about pricing on Intermodal as it flows through your network for the remainder of the year in 27?

All right, so let me start. So you asked the question in the context of the merger. When we put in our application, we said that there would be an incremental increase in our union employees to be able to handle the revenue synergies that Kenny and the team have identified with the help of Norfolk Southern. But don't be surprised by the fact that when we look at that, we didn't start in that place. You start from the place of we know our transportation plan and we know our network and Norfolk Southern knows their transportation plan and their network, and you look first for where do you have latent capacity within your existing train starts. Now, you've seen our history over the last four to five years. We've done an exceptional job of being able to utilize latent capacity. So you always want to look there first. From there, we then overlay the new volume that's coming onto the railroad and some train starts. Now, we've been clear with that, and it's in the application, that those train starts involve trains that are going to go from L.A. to Chicago. Well, I'm not, but I want to make sure you understand. We just sort of give them a high level. I don't want the other railroads to listen in, though. Yeah, I know, I know. Jason, he's afraid I'm giving away the secret recipe, But the secret sauce stays here, exactly. That sauce is our people, and we will make sure that we have the appropriate number of people and also do it in a volume variable way.

And that last part is important, is you're not going to see people grow at this.

Listen, Eric, I love it, but son of a gun, I thought pretty soon you were going to say how we start people and what our terminal time is and how we got that down. I'm not giving that secret sauce away. Would you stop, for God's sake?

Eric, you can just email that all to me.

That's fine. about price when you're doing that, and BCOs want to align with us because of that. So, you know, as we're able to quote these new rates throughout the year and to the next on these spots, we are getting some of that.

Thank you very much. Good question. Maybe the rest of the people that are on, I want to answer everybody's question, but we're going to try to be real fast because I do not want to overlap with Norfolk Southern who's coming on here at the top of the hour. So if we could ask the question, you might not get as long an answer. Ask me and the team any yes or no, we'll be quick, and away we go.

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

Ari, good morning.

Hey, good morning, Jim. I'll give you a yes or no question. Was there any discussion with the STB prior to reaching the agreement with CN? And to the extent you can give any color around kind of how it came together, whether it was you approaching CN or the other way around, it would be appreciated. Thanks.

The answer is no with the STB. And I don't know who made the first call. Probably was me. Okay.

Fair enough. Thanks.

That was quick. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Brendan Aglansky with Markleys.

Morning, Brendan.

Hey, Jim. Good morning. And sorry, I haven't been on the full call here, So maybe I'm being redundant with my question, too, so you can just tell me to shut up. But in the world where truck availability and spot rates are so volatile, you know, up like 50% in the last six or nine months, I mean, doesn't this just embolden the case for transcontinental rail mergers? And, I mean, congratulations on the deal with CN. Do you need to do more like that as well just to win over more hearts and minds here? And maybe that's where it is. Like, is this going to close, Jim?

This is going to – the merger is going to close. it's just too compelling for the country but it would be a mistake for this deal not to close we would be harming canada goes across across the entire country and there's a reason why they haven't applied to the canadian equivalent to the stb to split their railroad up up there both of them because it doesn't make a particle of sense it hurts customers hurts the country so this deal will close and and it'll close with limited impact just because it's an end-to-end something else with other people, we'll move ahead. Anything else I missed? Fred, thank you very much.

Our next question is from the line of Jordan Allinger with Goldman Sachs. Please receive your question. Yeah, hi, morning.

I know there's a lot of moving parts on the yield front between fuel and mix and core price, but is there a way you could maybe give some thoughts, at least on how you're thinking about revenue per car load, whether it be the third quarter or the second half, take into context, you know, core price mix, and the fuel impact, volatile as it may be. Thanks.

So let me start, and then, Kenny, real quick, talk about ex-fuel, the way we look at it, too, and just give an idea, because we don't always split everything up particularly. Put it this way. If you remove all the noise, we actually had a 58 operating ratio, okay? So that tells you fundamentally who we are and what we're doing. We don't, we like to, we absolutely report the way we're supposed to report, but if you remove the noise from those things that are, because fuel was an impact of 120 basis points, so you take that away from our report, we're at 58. So the railroad is good.

Kenny, second piece? Yeah, we do look at revenue ex-fuel, and let me just leave with the price according to that. Most times it shows up in average revenue per car. I talked a little bit about that, depending on the mix. But we're going to, with the service that we're providing, the investments that we're making.

Yeah, just one quick comment on mix, though, Jordan. So as you heard me say, it was a little bit of a headwind for us in the second quarter. That surprised us a little bit just because of how strong domestic intermodal came on in the back half of the quarter. is we look then to the second half with domestic intermodal likely staying very strong and maybe some upside on the international side. We'll probably see a little bit more pressure on that mixed side, but it's great business. We're handling it well, and we look forward to the contribution that provides us.

Listen, thank you very much, and we love the way July is running so far, and you guys can all see the car loads. Thank you very much.

The next question is from the line of Bascom Majors with Stevens.

Bascom, how are you this morning?

Hey, Jim, how are you doing? Thanks for the time here. As you look forward and get to the point on Monday where you release the next set of things the SDB has asked for, where do you think we land on in the procedural schedule where we get to the point where you see the more formalized list of demands for some of the competitors that oppose the merger and ultimately the hearings where we discuss that live with the regulator. Does the agreement that you've reached with the CN change the tone of that in any way that you think is meaningful or impactful for those of us watching? Thank you.

Well, I think the deal with CN clears up some of those things that we said that we needed to clear up. So that's real helpful. And it expands our capability to go through Chicago faster. So I love it. but not a problem there at all. As far as, what was the other part of the question? Was that the timing? My chief legal officer and everybody that we've hired, some of the best law firms say the statute's pretty black and white. When you accept the application, they have a year. So I just follow the law, right? Like if I get caught speeding out there, when I get pulled over, the police officer says to me, well, you know why I pulled you over? I go, yes, I was going 70 in the 55 zone. And he goes, son of a gun, you're telling me the truth. Yeah, usually he gets me off of the ticket. So I like to be honest and upfront. The statute's pretty black and white. It's clear. So we would expect the clock to have started when they accepted the application. The next step, people get the comment. So we're to finally people putting their facts in and telling us factually what it is, not some high level, whether Union Pacific has the capability to operate the system across the country and worried about this and that. So I'm looking forward to it, to tell you the truth, and let's hurry up and get this thing done. We're not going to get it done for my birthday on August 17th, but I love it. Let's move ahead. Good question. Thank you very much.

The next question is in the line of Ravi Shankar with Morgan Stanley. Please see if there are questions.

Hi. Good morning. This is Madison on for Ravi. Madison, I like having you on, okay?

I can't remember the last time I talked to Robbie. I knew you were going to be on. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I like talking to you guys, too. I think we're just wondering how does fuel impact seasonality on numbers in third quarter and fourth quarter and how we should be thinking about kind of like the opportunity on OR?

Yeah, so in terms of fuel, I mean, it likely will continue to pressure OR. As I mentioned, we're paying, you know, a little bit north of $4 a gallon right now. Even with that, though, we're still very confident that we're going to make margin improvement. We feel like when we look at what we see ahead for ourselves in terms of volume opportunity, in terms of our continued gains from productivity and efficiency, who knows exactly how it's going to play out. So, you know, that's why we just need to be nimble, need to try to become more fuel-efficient to the extent that we can. Obviously, we're already more fuel-efficient than truck, and that's a benefit to us, more fuel-efficient, more emissions-friendly. But we'll wait and see how that plays out overall.

We always worry about what happens with our customers.

Oh, yeah, no, true. That's a good point, Jim. I should mention that. The issue with fuel can be what that does to overall price inflation and the consumer. and long enough that it starts to reduce demand overall.

No, we haven't seen it so far.

No, we have not.

But that's always a worry, and that's why I'd rather have fuel prices come down and not gather that extra revenue from fuel, because we're better off having the consumer strong. So, Kenny, they've been pretty strong right now?

They have.

That's a yes or no. Our next question is from the line of Jeff Kaufman with Siddonson. Please proceed with your question. Morning, Jeff.

Thank you, Bert. Hey, good morning, Jim. just terrific news I have a question for Kenny you know Kenny the volume environment feels pretty good some of this as you mentioned is customers can't find truck capacity because of the driver shortage I think some of this is customers may be diverting because of the pricing and the fuel surcharge situation one of these is a little stickier with with longer-term potential one of these is a little more temporary can you talk about what you feel is just shorter term customers scrambling to the rails and then beyond intermodal which is kind of the obvious conversion what other rail commodities

do you think you're seeing a benefit from whatever is going on in the trucking industry that's creating the shortage of capacity yeah so you know one part that you did not mention is the fact that we are winning business and we We are winning over one or the other. That's just a strong. But, yes, there's an optionality for our QEV deploy number that give our BCOs and set it. And, yes, to your point, there are other markets that are very strong for us. You look at what's happening in the market. That's been talked about some wins there, but that market is also strong, and we're moving a lot export. And we've invested in the same thing with our grain network. We've invested in the grain network, and Eric and his team are markets. Last year, you know, it was, you know, Mexico. This year has been the Gulf. Whether it's the P&W, the Gulf, or Netflix in those markets, wins in automotive. So, you know, as you look at the overall landscape, coal is still the wild card a while ago. But I'm very bullish on where we sit.

Thank you very much. Thanks for the question.

The next question is in the line of Harrison Bauer with Susquehanna. Harrison, good morning.

Morning, Jim and team. Thanks for taking my question. You know, jumping off Kenny's point on some of the rail assets that you're deploying, can you walk through maybe the thought process, decision, and the opportunity that you have in some of your assets? Are private assets constrained right now? And then maybe how does this allow you to accrue more economics, whether through peak season surcharges or into next bid season? Thank you.

I love the way you ask that. I think you always need to price on what the market provides that you can still move the product and win. So that's the way we look at it. If we can price higher because of it, which we have, then we're going to do that. As far as the assets, sure, we went from having a whole bunch of our containers stored to just about all of them out. But what we're doing is we're trying to drive more productivity by being able to get the turns on them quicker so we can get more turns on them, and we see some of that. So that's what it's all about, and we've always liked to have a buffer. Now, we chewed up a big piece of the buffer, and we're sitting in a place where I think there's still more growth, and we're not going to limit it, but, of course, we're going to price and be smart about how we price so we can continue to move. Kenny, anything you want to add?

Yeah, and I said this a little bit earlier. With that new business, that's the poster charges that we put in place for people on our railroad.

Good question. Thank you very much. Last one. We're going to do it and get it done.

And the last one is from Rika Harnain with Deutsche Bank. Good morning.

Good morning. Honored to be the last question. Thanks for squeezing me in. So I just wanted to clarify, maybe piggybacking off that last point, and maybe, like, drilling down more into the intermodal commercial strategy. I'm curious how you're partnering with other IMCs. And, you know, you just said your private assets have capacity, but are other IMCs you work with, private assets struggling with dredge drivers? We heard that's a concern that's been popping up over the last couple of months. And, you know, how the strategy has changed and it's influencing your ability to address the strong demand. You know, we've also been hearing trans-con, intermodal trends are pretty competitive. It sounds like they're doing a good job getting price. Just curious if you square all of that. Thank you.

Well, listen, I think it's a two-parter. One thing about this team here is operations and marketing work close every day to figure out exactly the question that you're asking. How do we do this, and how do we make things more efficient so we can get the asset turns quicker so that we can use less assets and use that 20-plus percent capacity buffer we have on our railroad to be able to run it faster. And don't kid yourself, Jennifer's in there like a dirty shirt pushing these guys around to make sure that they're spending money the right way in the capital. So I'm going to let the team talk about this. It's the last question. But you guys don't go on for 10 freaking minutes because we need to let an S on, okay? So away you go. Do whatever you want.

Let me make this very judicious about conversations with them about it. So if you're sitting on our box a long time, that's a problem, and we're going to address it.

Say anything, Eric?

I think Kenny did a great job explaining exactly how we think about it.

Bottom line is who we are, and this is culturally, and it's not just Eric and I, okay? Eric's a real smart guy, okay? He's well-educated, but I'm telling you, he's a railroader. You know, probably five or six years ago, I would have said he was an engineer or in the engineering department. Now he's a railroader. And what we do and what he's led the team and the people, the culture that we've developed from the frontline people, they're not afraid to make a mistake. We want them to push. We want them to look at what's possible, and we want to make sure we move ahead. That's who we are. and when we do that because you can't operate a railroad that's spread out across the entire country and think you're going to make every decision from Omaha you have to make it locally so I love where we are we're clear on what we have to do if we need to speed up something we react quick we decide how we're going to do that we measure the heck out of it and we move ahead so listen that's where we are Jennifer anything before we tire up yeah the only thing I'll say is I think you slid something in there at the end of your question about transcontinental pricing, transcontinental margins.

Again, we have surcharges out earlier than normal on our assets. We see very strong demand and we're providing a great service product, so we are competing in a market that is strengthening.

That was the last question, so why don't we just tie it up real quick. I'm going to look forward to having another discussion here in a few months and we don't look backwards okay it's done so we're delivering for this next quarter and seeing what we can do to get this merger approved quicker than than slower because we think it's a benefit we want to move ahead and like we talked about uh where the eps is going to be a high single digit so i'm excited about what where we are what we're doing and blessed to have a team that makes my life easy. I get up in the morning and sometimes I wonder what I'm going to do. Everyone have a great day. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference. Let me disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful day.