Norfolk Southern Corp (NSC)

[Dividend Watcher]

Some Background (REVISED)

Now that I'm retired, I've been slowly going through our portfolios and taking a closer look at who & what we're invested in. I have to admit, however, there were times over the last couple decades when I did not follow or periodically review any of our investments. The major things I watched for were dividend freezes, cuts, and eliminations, companies being acquired or split up, and bankruptcies.

In addition, I am now looking through the Dividend Champions, Contenders & Challengers lists, collectively referred to as the "CCC List", to evaluate new companies to consider adding to or replacing companies in our portfolios.

For those that have happened to stumble onto this forum and are unfamiliar with the CCC List, it was a spreadsheet created in the 2000s by the late David Fish of the Moneypaper newsletter. The Moneypaper was dedicated to dividend investing and reinvestment long before brokerages began offering automatic dividend reinvestment on their own. He produced a new version monthly as new data became available. 

I had used the CCC List extensively to begin my dividend growth journey. After his passing, the list maintenance was taken over by Justin Law of the Portfolio-Insight web site. Justin Law discontinued updating the CCC list in October 2025 and there are no follow-on maintainers that I can find. You can access the last version for free here.

What I Am Doing

Since the CCC List was taken over, I've found mistakes in the "new" CCC List and some of the data I found helpful in Mr. Fish's original version has been removed or summarized.

I am now in the process of selecting companies I want to research, going to their investor relations web site and downloading all their annual reports and/or Form 10Ks back to 2007 where possible and building my own spreadsheets. Why 2007, you say? Well, I wanted to include data going through the Great Recession of 2008-2009 so I (and now you) could see what happened to a company's financials during what was one of the worst economic downturns since the 1973-1974 Stagflation recession and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Since Yahoo Finance now requires you to have a paid membership to download pricing history, I am now downloading pricing data from Nasdaq.com. Unfortunately, Nasdaq.com only offers the last 10 years of pricing data for general consumption and I am hand entering data as needed to get history back to the end of 2014. Ten years of pricing data seems to be enough to get an idea of how Mr. Market is viewing the company.

The spreadsheets contain the data I feel would help me make decisions on whether I should invest or not. I have several templates for different industries and I modify each as necessary to include or remove certain information specifically as warranted.

What Is This

Attached to this thread is a copy of one of these spreadsheets. It is created in LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/), an open source software package that is compatible with Microsoft Office/Office 365. The format is Open Document Format (ODF) which Microsoft Excel can open natively. You shouldn't see much difference except for any formatting glitches in the translation. If you want to look, I recommend downloading the spreadsheet to your computer and opening it from there as there may be some issues with your browser and the data format passed to Excel.

Once it is open, you can create your own graphs or add your own statistics to supplement the data that is already there. I've tried to include the most common ones.

Disclaimers:

• I can't guarantee every number is correct. After looking through a ton of pdf files and hand copying data, errors are bound to creep in. If you find any errors, feel free to let me know about them so I can correct it.
  
  
• Sometimes data from a prior year is restated in a following document due to accounting rule changes, data changing or clarified through the reorganization process, etc. When I enter it in the spreadsheet, I generally use the numbers published in the original data for that year. I DO NOT go back and modify prior data since it is my opinion that the pricing of a company's stock is dependent on the data that was available at the time it was published.
  
  
• I am not a financial planner nor a degreed accountant so any misstatement or calculation of statistics are as I best understand it. Often statistics can be calculated in several different ways depending on how that data is being used. I've used Investopedia extensively to double check my calculations using the data specifically available to me and focusing on the investment viewpoint.
  
  
• When a company is going through some financial hardship or reorganization, some of the numbers don't make any sense; i.e., a negative P/E ratio or ROE. Other rating services usually mark it as "Not Measureable" or set it to zero. I will usually leave it as calculated so I can judge how drastic the change is from the norm.
  
  
• Do not use this information as the sole source to make investment decisions. I highly recommend you at least skim a couple years of annual reports to become familiar with the company. I make no guarantees along with all the other disclaimers other organizations usually list.
  
  

I will post more spreadsheets and company information as I get through them and find an interest.

Lastly, I don't need a bunch of thanks as a result. If any of these spreadsheets help, please join in the conversation. You can also send Kerim a donation to help with the upkeep of this site. I still believe in one of the original uses of the internet as a medium to share information with other people without trying to sell you something or selling your information to others to make a buck off of you. You'll notice there are no annoying ads on this web site.

[Dividend Watcher]

Norfolk Southern Corp.

GICS Sector: Industrials
Sub-Industry: Railroads

In this installment, I am looking at Norfolk Southern as part of the railroad industry in general. In 2025, Union Pacific  (UPN) announced its intention to acquire or merge with NSC to create the first transnational railroad company in the U.S.

My wife and I own shares in both companies and I'm not so keen on the merger of 2 of the 4 remaining class 1 railroads. What is it going to do the competition in the field and also the inflated costs involved with the merger. As a result, I've started a closer look at all the public railroad companies in North America.

About Norfolk Southern

From their latest annual report for 2024:

Quote:Since 1827, Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) and its predecessor companies have safely moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today, it operates a 22-state freight transportation network. Committed to furthering sustainability, Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid approximately 15 million tons of yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. Its dedicated team members deliver approximately 7 million carloads annually, from agriculture to consumer goods. Norfolk Southern also has the most extensive intermodal network in the eastern U.S. It serves a majority of the country’s population and manufacturing base, with connections to every major container port on the Atlantic coast as well as major ports across the Gulf Coast and Great Lakes.

The Merger

The proxy statement about the merger is available on both the NSC and UPN investor relations page. Basically, a NSC shareholder will receive 1 new share of UPN along with a cash payment pf US$88.82 for each share of NSC you own.

My Spreadsheet

Attached to this thread is the latest copy of my analysis spreadsheet on NSC. I've added a few features from previous additions.

• I've added railroad specific statistics for any railroad analysis sheets. Unfortunately, NSC does not provide these in their annual reports. The only one in this spreadsheet is the Operating Ratio which is simply Operating Expenses divided by Revenues and is easily calculated. This is supposedly used to evaluate their efficiency but I'll argue you can get that information elsewhere in the financial statements. Other railroads may provide more relevant information that I will include.
  
• Revenue is broken down into the different categories of products transported. Usually this does not total 100% of GAAP reported revenues as there are miscellaneous other sources also. I just wanted to get a feel for which sectors of the economy make up their sales.
  
• Lastly, I've added a graph to the share price history tab. This is a rough version of the FastGraphs graph with data points based on the previous years' results. If you don't like it, you can just delete it. It just helps me look at valuation.
  

I'd appreciate any feedback or thoughts on improving these spreadsheets.

Disclosure:

My wife has shares of NSC in her IRA. We've sold some since the merger was announced to diversify her portfolio.