(Reuters circulated the following on January 27, 2009.)
VANCOUVER, B.C. — Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd said Tuesday quarterly net profit dropped along with freight volumes, but stronger pricing and a weaker Canadian dollar helped lift profit above forecasts.
The railway, which operates in both Canada and the northern United States, said it was still too early to say when volumes that dropped off sharply at the end of 2008 would fully recover.
Some factories idled at the end of the year have returned to production, but many customers still cannot predict their shipping volumes for the rest of 2009 because of the global economic uncertainty, Chief Executive Fred Green said.
“We can give anybody a point in time where we are. Our problem is we’re not sure if we can extrapolate that number out and say that’s what you can expect, because we just do not know,” Green told analysts.
Volumes are currently running about 5 to 10 percent below last year’s levels, he said.
Canadian Pacific’s only financial guidance for 2009 has been its planned capital spending of between C$800 million to C$820 million, which it said Tuesday was still its estimate.
The railway Tuesday posted a net profit of C$200.6 million ($163.9 million), or C$1.29 a share, in the final three months of the 2008. That compared with C$342.3 million, or C$2.21 a share, in the same quarter a year ago.