(The following report appeared on the Globe and Mail website on July 29.)
TOROTNO — Canadian Pacific Railway Co.’s sales surpassed the $1-billion mark in the second quarter as the company says its expects freight volume to remain “robust” for the rest of 2004.
The Calgary-based company said its profit jumped to $83.7-million or 53 cents a share, compared with $34.1-million or 22 cents last year.
Revenue rose to $1-billion from $914-million a year ago.
CPR said its quarterly results were helped by higher volumes and benefits from its moves to improve productivity.
In the quarter, the railway company said it has a foreign-exchange loss on long-term debt of $20-million, compared with a gain of $98-million a year ago.
Last year’s second quarter included a $215-million charge for job cuts and other restructuring.
“I am pleased with our performance this quarter. We handled significantly higher volumes of freight and still maintained a fluid level of operations,” Rob Ritchie, CPR’s CEO, said.
“There has been steady improvement in most of our productivity measures and the overall results we expected to see are materializing.”
Looking ahead, CPR said it still expects its earnings per share growth to be between 5 per cents and 10 per cent.
“We expect freight volumes to remain robust for the remainder of 2004. To help handle the workload, we added 41 fuel-efficient, high-performance locomotives in the second quarter, and will bring another 34 on line in the fourth quarter,” Mr. Ritchie said.
“We will continue to pursue value pricing opportunities created by the favourable conditions in our markets.”