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For the fourth quarter of 2024, CSX reported net income of $733 million, down 17% from $882 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. For the full year 2024, CSX earned $3.47 billion, down 5% from $3.668 billion in 2023.

Coal

CSX moves more coal than any other material other than intermodal shipments. Coal volumes were down 7% in the quarter, and coal revenue dropped by 20%. For the year, volumes decreased 3% and revenues 10%.

Last year CSX delivered 38.9 million tons of coal to domestic customers and 43.8 million tons to docks for export markets.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œExports represented more than half of our coal carloads for the full year, a first for CSX.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œDomestic shipments were pressured during the quarter, driven by lower natural gas prices and ample utility stockpiles,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Kevin Boone, CSX executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in ThursdayÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s conference call.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œMore recently, we have seen colder winter weather that has begun to reduce utility stockpiles, providing incremental opportunities as we move into the summer months.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œAs we look into 2025, we anticipate a decline in coal volume with the weakest year-over-year performance in the first quarter. This includes temporary production outages at a couple of its CSX-served mines that will mainly impact the first half of 2025 from a year-over-year volume perspective.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

Later he added, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWe also see a couple of plant closures at domestic utilities that are scheduled for later this year. Despite these challenges, our utility customers are facing accelerating growth in power demand across areas of our service network, where data center build-outs are in progress. Lower utilization rates at existing CSX-served utilities does provide opportunities to work with customers to meet increased demand.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

Leer South mine outage

Toward the end of the call, one analyst asked about the temporary production outages Boone mentioned, specifically if Boone was referring to a fire at a mine served by CSX. Boone said it was.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWe expect that to come back online in the second half of this year. I will say that the team is doing a great job of looking for other sources, and we do expect some of that to be made up at other mine locations to basically backfill the demand that still remains out there,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Boone said. ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œWe donÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t expect that to be a full loss. WeÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™ll find other opportunities to offset hopefully a lot of that.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

While the mine was not identified specifically, it fit with the fire at the Core Natural Resources Leer South Mine in Taylor County, West Virginia.

On Jan. 16, Core said it was taking steps to temporarily seal the mineÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s active longwall panel ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œto extinguish the combustion-related activity there.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

Core said it expects to resume development with continuous miners within the next three months and to resume longwall mining mid-year.

Autos

Joseph Hinrichs, CSX president and chief executive officer, said the automotive market is also down this year in part because of high interest rates.

Hinrichs said industry estimates show auto sales could be a little above 16 million this year and production to be around 15.5 million, which would adjust inventory to the market. Those numbers are lower than pre-pandemic levels around 17 million units, he said.

ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œAnd so thereÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s a lot of potential there. We just have to see it realized and that means interest rates have got to come down and (there) has to be a balance between all those things. So we have an administration now that is very focused on autos and U.S. manufacturing and interest rates. So letÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™s see how that plays out.ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥�

That probably wonÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥™t be a big issue for the administration this year, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œbut what could it look like for ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥˜26 and ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥˜27 is a big opportunity,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Hinrichs said.

While the overall economy has been growing, ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥œthe industrial side of the economy has been flat or down over the last couple of years,ÃÛÁÄÖ±²¥� Hinrichs said.