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Union Pacific is the parent company of Union Pacific Railroad, which specializes in shipping products across the U.S., especially by rail. The company ships products such as fertilizer and grain products but also finished automobiles and various types of merchandise in special intermodal containers. Union Pacific has a long history, having been founded in 1862 as part of the Pacific Railway Act approved by President Abraham Lincoln, which led to the creation of the first transcontinental railroad. In modern times, the company services 23 western U.S. states, not just with transportation via rail but also intermodal shipments.

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Q1 2025

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Union Pacific (UNP): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Union Pacific

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Greetings, and welcome to Union Pacific's first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants will be in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone this morning should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Just 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 for railroad and a little bit of rain coming down, but nothing that would stop the men and women of Union Pacific from going out there and delivering. Real excited to be here and excited to review our first quarter and then take your questions. 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 four, 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. It's real 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 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 a walkthrough of our first quarter income statement on slide six, 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 to $43 million, reflecting the impact of higher year-over-year fuel prices and adding 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 indexed to natural gas prices.

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. Wrapping up the top line, other revenue declined 4% to $324 million, driven by lower subsidiary revenue, as we have now lapped the Metra 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%-5% as we will 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-$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 to cash returns and the balance sheet on slide seven. 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 three 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. Although 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 three-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 continued 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 drove a best-ever quarterly average revenue per car. We continued 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.

On a positive note, domestic intermodal delivered its third consecutive record quarter, driven by outstanding service and continued commercial momentum. Softening vehicle sales pressured automotive volumes, though having won 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 feedstocks 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 outperforming industrial production. We expect the strong volume in construction and petrochemicals to continue based on our customer wins.

A great example is the Golden Triangle Polymers Company joint venture with CP Chem, where we are encouraged by the upcoming startup of this new world-scale facility in the third quarter. Wrapping up with Premium. International intermodal volumes will remain subdued, although we lap some of the shifts we experienced last year as we move 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. 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 three-year rolling averages. We set first quarter records in all six of our key performance and efficiency metrics on slides 13 and 14. Freight car velocity increased 9% to 235 mi 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 months, 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 fleet 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 carload 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, enabled 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 can turn to slide 16, please. 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, leading the industry in safety, service, and operational excellence. That further translates into 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 30th.

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 America's first transcontinental railroad. With that, we're now ready to take your questions. Rob?

Thank you, Mr. Vena. We'll now be conducting a 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 remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Due to the number of analysts joining us on the call today, we'll be limiting everyone to one question to accommodate as many participants as possible. Thank you. The first question is from the line of Scott Group of Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, thanks. Morning, guys. Jim, I wanted to ask on the merger. We were supposed to be six 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 give you any more or less confidence in your ability to get this approved? 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, "Geez, Jim and team, pretty good quarter," but I think top of mind for a lot of people is the merger. Let's talk about the merger. 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, and what we thought was going to happen didn't happen in the timeline we liked. We knew that this was not going to be a process that was 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.

At the end of that, when we look at the fundamental, we look at the facts of what this combination will deliver for both the country in 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've put forward. At this point, we are much more convicted. I'd be concerned, leading this company, if we had lost our way in how we operate and what we do every day because of the merger. 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. Because of that, let's turn to the merger itself and 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. 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 rail car 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 every one. That commitment is ironclad, and we're very happy to make that, with agreements or without agreements, even though we have a number of agreements. 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. Financially, it is good for our shareholders. We see a lot of growth opportunity there, lower cost movements, much more fluidity. 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 Christian Wetherbee with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Morning, Jim. Hope everyone's doing well. Yeah, I guess maybe to sort of think about the guidance, 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, fuel is going to be a headwind for you, fuel surcharges will be a headwind from an operating ratio perspective. 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?

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. 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. That will certainly pressure margins, particularly here in the second quarter. We have a lot of opportunities to drive efficiency in our railroad. We have opportunities 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. When you put all those things together, we are still confident for a full year that we will be able to improve our operating ratio.

We reiterated that to make sure that everyone understood 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. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good morning, Jim. Jim and team, pretty good quarter. My question's 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 tailwinds?

Yeah, Jonathan, thank you for that question, and certainly a topic that we review on a consistent basis. We've always said from the railroad's perspective, you have five critical resources, mainline capacity, terminal capacity, crews, locomotives, and cars, and you're obviously hitting on one of those five. Now, as we look at the railroad today, we have latent capacity. Now we've driven that through a couple different ways. Number one, and I reported this morning, on top of all the improvements we've made in train length, we did it again, 3% improvement, best quarter ever. That train length is generating latent capacity. After a number of other reasons why we do train length, it's right up there at the very top for being able to generate that capacity.

In addition to that, we still invest between $500-$700 million a year in capacity projects, and you've heard us talk about those in the past. They're siding extensions, they're siding constructions, they're the expansion of terminals. 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 to this railroad.

Only thing I'll add, Eric, is two tangible ways that I see that capacity really bearing us fruit. One is on the equipment side, where we're able to go in and insert more equipment into a facility and/or spot them at 100% of their order fulfillment, which allows us to go out and capture more business. More importantly on the capacity, and I've talked about this before, is the ability to ship in different lanes or geographic areas. Maybe we're going from the Gulf to the Southeast or from the Midwest, to ship down to the Gulf or Mexico. That's the kind of capacity benefits that we seem to really take advantage of.

That's a really good example, too, when we think about the grain this year. Last year, if you recall, when we were talking about volume opportunities, Kenny and I were talking about the shift of grain into Mexico. Well, we've seen some of that shift back to the Pacific Northwest as China has become more open to receiving American commodities. We didn't have to go in and build five more sidings. We went in with the capacity we had and took advantage of it and very successfully delivering on it.

Jonathan, if I can just add what the team already said was, we build the railroad both capacity-wise and asset-wise with a buffer. What's really important for us is, today, with the business level that we have, and I look at that in detail every morning, we're operating with over 100 locomotives on the main line less just because of our speed and what we've been able to improve. 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 be able to recover faster and have a higher level of capacity, both by the speed that we're moving the rail cars 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. 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. We did not remove capacity.

This railroad is operating at this 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. I'm very comfortable that we have the capacity to add a lot of business without the huge incremental cost that you normally would have to, both capital and operating costs. 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. 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. Thanks for the question, Jonathan.

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

Thanks, operator. Morning, Jim. 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%-2% in terms of carload 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 to your carloads in the future?

Yeah, 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 second quarter. 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. 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. We're pretty excited about where we are.

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

Hey, great. Good morning, Jim and team. Great job on the expenses, and I thought that was an impressive stat on the train starts, something I don't think we've heard before. Looking at the way that the stock is trading, I want to return to the M&A. Seems to suggest the market's 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 switched the language to reported outlook from adjusted since you're calling out merger costs, or does that mean your long-term target still includes the merger costs? I just want to understand a clarification there. Thanks.

Yeah. Let me hit that last one. Ken, actually, we added that as a clarification from last time because we didn't have reported, and it generated a lot of questions, and so we wanted to be clear that when we talk about the EPS growth, that's off of our reported. So that includes the headwind, to your point, that we do have from the merger costs 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?

On reported, you betcha. 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. 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 to move within the U.S. economy. 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 two to one is a handful out of all the thousands of customers we have. So it's a very small piece end-to-end. It's pretty hard to come up with concessions that make sense. Now, some of our competitors are out there very loudly talking about what this business is. 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? 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. 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+ 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.

If you take a look at the two 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. 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 competitors across the spectrum to see that we could come up with something reasonable. 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.

A merger works in that if it's truly detrimental to customers, the railroad combination, then you need to do something about it. When you speed up things, give more opportunity, it's pretty hard for us to see any major concessions that we have to give. Thanks for that question.

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

Hey, good morning. Yeah, good morning, Jim, and maybe I'll just 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. 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 a combined Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern is going to have a combined of 38% or 39% actually is the number of GTMs. We're not going to be that much bigger than our Western competitor at that level with gross tons that we're 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 I see us 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'll help. 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 market that moves by land or by water here in the United States of America. 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.

Next question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. I think I'm going to ask maybe a different question theme here. 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 investors are increasingly focused on AI-driven disruption. What do you think the market is missing about just the intrinsic value of the network, especially post-deal? 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. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. 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 pipe?

Absolutely. Our conversations inside UP when we talk about AI or equivalent tools really focus 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. I think it's important that you all hear us say that, because you see in other cases where that's not it, they treat it 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 they're foundations to our productivity, which allows us to grow, it's how we think about using AI inside of our dispatching center. We have 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 mi of railroad, there's a lot that happens in a day. 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. We have to plan for all that, and AI has been a great resource for us to do that. Now when we think about inside our terminals, and 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 on 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 to 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 service product. If we can see that ahead of time, well, then we can plan that even two hours ahead that says, "I'm going to be in that track.

Let me grab that car then." 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. I'd say in total for the whole company, there's at least eight or 10 really major projects that we're using. I've given you two examples, but they really represent how we're using it to, one, improve our service product and, two, 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 weighing 434,000 lb and how we move it. Fundamentally across the company, whether it's how we're going to be able to communicate with customers, 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, be able to get information out. 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. 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 him. Those are the things, big things. How fast we can change with the difference 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.

We got a whole bunch of snow up at the top of the Donner Pass. We have rather freaking warm weather in other parts of the railroad. The nice part about it is we get a little bit of everything. 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 rail car 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. 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 automate as much of this railroad as we can. Good question, Love it. Hopefully, I answered your question.

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Brian Ossenbeck with J.P. Morgan. Please receive your question.

Morning, Brian. How many pounds do you have on your back now? Lots?

We're up to 65 lb and climbing, so just trying to keep up.

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

Oh, that's more than 60 lbs. You'll need a trailer behind you.

I just might. Well, in terms of just two quick follow-ups on that, Jim, and this question on integration technology kind of dovetailing our last discussion. Are you still assuming first half of 2027 approval? It doesn't sound like it, but just wanted to confirm that you're not really expecting to address some of these concerns from your peers, just more so addressing what the STB has asked for in the-

New application out next week. 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. What can you give us in terms of new ways, new processes, 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. I know you can only do 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. Thank you.

Brian, you are on it this morning. There was about five questions in there. I love it. Let's start with the timing. Yes, we're working off of the timing that we know of that the STB has put out. It'll be second quarter next year, we would expect to be able to be at the place where they approve it, and we can move ahead. That's the timing. Now, it's not finalized. We're hoping that they can speed it up and 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. 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 operated, and it's not affecting what we're doing for the Union Pacific standalone 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 giving 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 TRRA, whether it's market share and the amount of business that we built in. We've done that, and we're absolutely sure that we've answered the questions and how we're going to handle it. We've decided to release 5.8. Really at the end of the day, I've never thought that our competitors should know exactly what that document held.

When we looked at it, listen, at the end of the day, it's not going to make a big difference. That's going to come out. We will answer the three key points, plus the other point that they, in general, wanted some more information. 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.

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 to Toronto. If they want to give up Toronto and the markets in Eastern Canada and into the Canadian prairies, I would love to do that, too. It'd be pretty hard for me to ask for that. 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 railroads, 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 if somebody wants it tomorrow.

Anybody who's listening in that wants to do that, give me a call and I'm ready to do that. I'll run to Toronto, you can run to Denver, okay? We'll match that up. 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. 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 Contrecoeur, 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 to expand the ports in Canada, the Canadian economy 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. 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. 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. Let's hit the most important three items when you look back in time and then think about how we already are planning to do it differently. One of the things that certainly caused challenges in the past was technology, when you had two railroads merging together with two 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 wasn't 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 two years ago, very successfully. Not a blip. No customer was impacted. It was seamless. It was very effective. 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 do on day one, day 90, day 180. I'll tell you, on day one, you're not going to see a lot of difference.

We will operate these two railroads largely independently, at least for the first few months. Then we'll thoughtfully, because of all the planning that we're doing, implement one action. Once that action is implemented, we'll make sure that it worked effectively, and then we'll move to the next. Then I saved 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. 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's pointed out today, the net outcome is a positive for all of our stakeholders. That work is all underway. It's being done very intentionally, and we're going to be the most comprehensive integration of any two railroads that this country's ever seen.

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

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

Thanks. Good morning. Yeah. I'd just like to go back to Kenny's slide. I guess that's slide 11. When I compare that outlook slide to the same slide the quarter before, it looks like you've added three new positives. You've added construction as being a plus, you deleted forestry as a negative, and you improved auto from negative to neutral. Three positive inflections there. Then we're hearing from trucking peers that it sounds like the freight recession might be over altogether. 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? I don't think your team would have an issue getting operating leverage, but that logic kind of implies you are.

I'd just love to get some clarity there on those topics.

Union Pacific (UNP) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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