CN maps recovery following protets and Covid-19

摘要

CANADIAN National Railway (CN) got off to a poor start in 2020. A protest in February by indigenous people against the construction of the 670km Coastal GasLink pipeline in British Columbia led to blockades in several key locations, which caused more than 1400 trains, including most of Via Rail's passenger trains, to be delayed or cancelled and forced CN to shut down parts of its network. Just after services started to return to normal in early March, the coronavirus pandemic struck causing severe disruption to the economy and forcing CN to introduce measures to protect its employees and the business. Despite these two blows, CN achieved a 13% increase in operating income to $C 1.22bn ($US 875.5m) for the first quarter of 2020. CN's operating ratio improved 380 basis points to 65.7%. Although revenue remained flat at $C 3.55bn, the railway managed to reduce operating expenses by 5% to $C 2.23bn, mainly due to lower staff, fuel and depreciation costs.