Q2 2022 CSX Corp Earnings Call
Speaker 2: the next couple of weeks. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Brent and I will be your conference moderator for the 2022 2022 CSX
Speaker 2: All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question at that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. Thank you. It is now my pleasure to turn today's call over to Mr. Matthew Corn, Head of Investor Relations. Go ahead.
Speaker 2: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. We welcome to our second quarter call. Turn to me on today's call, I'm Jim Fritt, I'm President and Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Boone, I'm Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Jamie Boychek, Executive Vice President of Operations, and Sean Polky, Executive Vice President, and Chief of Financial Officer. In our presentation, you will find our throw the can disclosure on slide two, powered by our non-capital school closures.
Speaker 2: But with that, it'll be my pleasure to introduce Bob Prydon and chief executive officer Jim Fit.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Matthew, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today.
Speaker 3: I'll start by expressing my thanks to all of CSX's employees for their hard work during another quarter of tough operating conditions.
Speaker 3: And I am very pleased to welcome everyone from Pan Am who joined the CSX team in June . We look forward to working together to build new single line service across our combined network.
Speaker 3: Our second quarter results were solid as we continue to benefit from strong customer demand and firm pricing.
Speaker 3: But our ability to hire and retain new workers, which is vital to improving our service and growing the business remains challenged. And growing the business remains challenged.
Speaker 3: We are not alone in facing this problem. The labor market is tight. Respective recruits have many job options. And the pandemic has had a profound effect on employees' work and lifestyle preferences. The pandemic has had a profound effect on employees' work on employees' work.
Speaker 3: Our prok hiring process has been steady.
Speaker 3: But slow.
Speaker 3: We will not let up in our efforts to grow our engineer and conductor headcount and improve network fluidity to pre-pandemic levels.
Speaker 3: To the time of our last earnings call, uncertainty and volatility have clearly increased in the financial markets and in part to the economy.
Speaker 3: Inflationary pressures have moved higher and interest rates have risen.
Speaker 3: We're staying villages by keeping close touch with our customers, monitoring our order rates, and constantly updating our forecast.
Speaker 3: But what remains constant is that right now, as we have seen this entire year, there is more demand for rail service than what we are able to satisfy.
Speaker 3: access capital to our shareholders. As we stressed last quarter, we are moving forward, but real progress takes time and is often challenging and gradual. There's plenty left to do, but the whole CSX family is committed to delivering on our goals, supporting our customers, and growing this company. Thank you, and I'll turn it back to Matthew. Thank you, Jim. Now, as we start Q&A, in the interest of time, I'd ask that everyone please limit yourselves to one and just one question. And with that, operator, we will now take questions. I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from Scott Group with Wolf Research. Your line is open. Hey, thanks, afternoon, guys. So if I look headcounts down sequentially excluding Pan Am, and you guys were the first rail to talk about ramping up hiring, but perhaps maybe struggling the most. Why do you think that is? And then maybe just separately for Kevin, any thoughts on just guidance on other revenue and coal RPU in the third quarter? Thank you. Well, I'll say, hi, Scott, I'll take the first part of your question about hiring. And yeah, I don't know if we're struggling more than everybody else or not. I think everybody's struggling. Um, you know, we've hired over the last-