| Rail Data Points to Slight Improvement, But Recession Still Reigns The latest data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) showed marginal signs of improvement, but with yearly comps becoming very easy the rail data is still showing a very weak real economy.Total carloads were down 12.2% year over year and almost 20% from the same period two years ago. Intermodal traffic declined 9.5% year over year and 15.2% from two years ago.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Truck Tonnage Improves in December The Pragmatic Capitalist submits: The American Trucking Association’s truck tonnage index climbed 2.1% in December and continues to show modest signs of economic improvement. The latest reading of 108.4 is the highest since November 2008. Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Ford Still Financially Troubled Despite Q1 Earnings Daryl Montgomery submits: Debt ridden Ford Motor (F) earned $2.1 billion in the first quarter or 50 cents a share. Mainstream media reported this as "another sign the economy is improving as people spend more on big-ticket items like cars." Unstated was which economy was improving or that those people were in China. Nor did any report mention that Ford stock has a negative book value of minus $2.32 per share.What struck me immediately about Ford's 2010 Q1 earnings report was a major inconsistency with the Q1 earnings report for 2009. Ford lost $1.4 billion, or 60 cents per share in the same period last year. This implies that there were 2.3 billion shares outstanding twelve months ago. Based on today's earnings numbers there appear to be 4.2 billion shares outstanding. Ford did issue an additional 300 million plus shares of stock last May and exchanged $4.3 billion in convertible debt for 468 million shares of common stock in the first half of 2009. News reports in May 2009 indicated it had 2.9 billion shares outstanding before the new stock was sold. Today, Ford supposedly has 3.4 billion shares of stock. Off hand, I would say these numbers don't appear to match up.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Rail Traffic Continues to Chug Along The Pragmatic Capitalist submits: Another strong week of rail data (via the AAR): The Association of American Railroads today reported that rail traffic remains steady with U.S. railroads originating 284,716 carloads for the week ending June 26, 2010, up 11.4 percent compared with the same week in 2009, but down 13.2 percent from 2008. In order to offer a complete picture of the progress in rail traffic, AAR now reports 2010 weekly rail traffic with comparison weeks in both 2009 and 2008.Intermodal traffic totaled 227,229 trailers and containers, up 20.5 percent from a year ago and down only 1.1 percent compared with 2008. Compared with the same week in 2009, container volume increased 22.1 percent and trailer volume rose 12.3 percent. Compared with the same week in 2008, container volume increased 7.7 percent and trailer volume dropped 32.2 percent.Complete Story » seekingalpha.com |
Forward Air Corporation CEO Discusses Q3 2010 Results - Earnings Call Transcript Forward Air Corporation (FWRD)Q3 2010 Results Earnings Conference CallOctober 21, 2010 9 AM ETComplete Story » seekingalpha.com |