CSX (NASDAQ:CSX) shares fell about 5% in pre-open Friday despite the company’s solid Q2 results.
EPS came in at $0.49, in line with the consensus estimate, while revenue fell 3% year-over-year to $3.7 billion (vs. consensus of $3.73B).
The company blamed the revenue weakness on lower fuel prices, reduced supplemental revenue, a decline in export coal benchmark prices, and a decrease in intermodal volumes more than offset the effects of volume growth in coal and merchandise and solid gains in merchandise pricing.
“The ONE CSX team continued to build momentum this quarter as our merchandise and coal businesses continued to demonstrate significant volume gains,” said CEO Joe Hinrichs.
The company provided a 2023 guidance update, expecting low single-digit revenue ton-mile growth for the full year, driven by merchandise and export coal.
Bernstein analysts said that buy-side expectations were too high while CSX is a crowded name, hence a bearish market reaction to Q2 results.
"The stock seems crowded at present — with the short interest coming way down into the print — and there is more bad news coming on the pricing front in 3Q which leaves us where we have been on the name: patiently waiting for the worst of the bad news to be behind us," they said in a note.
Goldman Sachs analysts added:
"We remain Buy rated on CSX as we still think a favorable volume inflection into the 4Q/2024 can further the recent trends in margin improvement, potentially warranting share price re-acceleration against recently low historical valuation levels."
Additional reporting by Senad Karaahmetovic