Michael Ward
Well, thank you, Fredrik. The strong 2014 demand reinforced the importance of freight rail industry and CSX in supporting the global supply chain and American competitiveness. The economic and environmental benefits of freight rail network increasingly serve a country with a growing population and a critical need for transportation infrastructure.To continue delivering these benefits and creating value for its shareholders, CSX has transformed itself by forging new capabilities aligned with opportunities in energy, manufacturing, agriculture and global commerce. We’re generating record results by leveraging the most diverse business mix in the company’s history with new opportunities across nearly all of the markets we serve.
We remain focused on executing our core strategy of delivering service excellence for our customers which drives our ability to grow merchandise and intermodal businesses faster than the economy, price above inflation and continue to drive improvements in asset utilization. The company is poised for a bright future of strong financial returns and expansion, and we thank you for your ownership of and interest in CSX . Now we’ll be glad to take your questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. We will now be conducting our Question and Answer Session. To ask your question, you may press star 1 on your touch tone phone. The first question is from Tom Wadewitz with UBS.
Michael Ward, Chairman, President, CEO
Good morning, Tom.
Tom Wadewitz, UBS
Good morning Michael, Fredrik, David. Wanted to see if you could talk a bit about utility coal and I guess your visibility to stockpiles and also how much risk you see if natural gas prices stay at current levels or go below in terms of switching from coal to gas and how that might affect.
Clarence Gooden, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer
Good morning, Tom. This is Clarence.
Tom Wadewitz
Yeah, hi Clarence.
Clarence Gooden
We’re seeing the stockpiles both in the North and South are pretty much where we expected them to be. They’re at normal levels in both the North and the South. We think the comps in the first quarter will be very favorable for us when you look at what the weather was last year versus what the weather is this year. If these gas prices stay where they are now, which are around $3.00 or sub $3.00, there could be some downside risk out in quarters two and three, from what we have planned. But from right now, it looks to us like the rest of the year should be around flat going forward.
Tom Wadewitz
Okay, great. And then the follow-up question, that we’ve had such a dramatic move in oil prices, I think it’s hard to get your arms around what the impact could be across your book. Obviously there could be some risk accrued by rail or frac sand and pipe and so forth. But I guess given what you see right now, if you look to second half of the year would you expect that to come through and drive weakness in those areas? Or how would you look at — maybe not just first quarter but out a little bit more — in terms of effective lower oil prices on your book of business?
Clarence Gooden
Right now as we look out through 2015 we don’t see any significant impact at all in our Crude Oil by Rail into the Eastern markets, and certainly in our frac sand markets where we go in — where we’re moving into the Utica in the Marcellus area where the natural gas and the natural gas liquids are. We don’t think it will impact the frac sand that we’re moving into those areas at all.
Tom Wadewitz
Okay, great. Thanks for the time.
