John D. Boyd | Jul 28, 2010 5:49PM EDT
RailAmerica, a major operator of short line railroads across the United States, said it lost $4.2 million in the second quarter after charges totaling $8.5 million for early debt retirement and the cost of ending some interest rate swaps.
That bottom line performance compared with an $18.2 million profit a year earlier. But the company said its operating income in the latest quarter was $22.5 million, nearly even with the $22.9 million operating income for its 2009 quarter.
And it said last year’s quarterly number was swelled by monetizing a tax credit for short line track work; this year it has no such credit as small railroads wait for Congress to act on legislation that would renew it.
RailAmerica news from JOC:
RailAmerica Buys Rail Construction Firm
John Giles, president and CEO, said that in the April-June period this year "we made progress on each of our strategic priorities of organic growth, balance sheet strength and external growth. Our solid operating performance was driven by significantly higher revenue and further improvements in our underlying cost structure.”
It also took a recent step to diversify its business some beyond freight rail operations, by acquiring Atlas Railroad Construction Company early in the third quarter.
RailAmerica’s second quarter revenue was $117 million, up 17.7 percent. Carload traffic rose 10.5 percent to 216,113 units hauled, and average revenue rose 5.7 percent to $446 per shipment.
--Contact John Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.
