CSX profit slips 2% in fourth quarter on weak demand, severance costs

CSX Corp. reported its fourth-quarter profit slipped 2% as weak shipping demand and one-time severance costs weighed on results, the company said.

In the quarter, the Jacksonville, Florida-based railroad earned $720 million, or 39 cents per share. CSX said the profit figure compares with $733 million, or 38 cents per share, in the prior comparable period.

CSX said results were weighed down by about $50 million in one-time costs that reduced profit by 2 cents per share. The company said that without those one-time costs, its results would have matched the 41 cents per share that analysts surveyed by FactSet Research predicted.

“This has been a challenging year for CSX and for our industry overall, with subdued demand and limited growth opportunities,” Chief Executive Steve Angel said. CSX also said its revenue slipped 1% to $3.51 billion in the quarter.

Angel said he was not too worried about the competitive implications of Union Pacific Corp.’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern Corp. because the Surface Transportation Board’s formal review of the deal has not even started, according to the report. The AP article said most observers believe a merger would put CSX and BNSF at a competitive disadvantage.

At the same time, the company said CSX and BNSF are focused on improving delivery times through cooperative agreements rather than a merger. Heading into 2026, Angel said CSX is working on improving productivity while limiting costs, and he predicted only modest growth, with revenue expected to increase in “low single digits.” CSX also pulled its 2027 targets that it had established a couple of years earlier, the report said.

“The focus is just making sure that we can be as competitive as we can. But at the end of the day, we can create value by running CSX better every day,” Angel said.

CSX also cited operational progress after completing major projects last fall that disrupted its network and limited its flexibility. The report said CSX finished a major tunnel renovation in Baltimore and completed repairs from Hurricane Helene, and that those efforts helped raise trains’ average speed to 19.6 mph in the fourth quarter while delivering 87% of shipments on time.

The tunnel work is also expected to support additional service changes this year. CSX said the project will allow it to begin hauling metal shipping containers stacked two high across its network, and the report said Norfolk Southern announced a similar double-stacked service in the east earlier this week.