December 2019 Amtrak Financial Report
These are the items that I noticed in the report that were interesting to me:
The report was date January 29, 2020 and posted no later that January 30, 2020.
The NEC generated for the first three months a cash operating surplus of $318.7 million (at least by their idea of a fully allocated accounting system) and the remainder of the system had a fully allocated cash loss of $117.6 million. Combined the entire system had for the first quarter a cash operating surplus of $66.3 million. This cash flow was needed since the Trump Administration has not yet paid a single penny of FY2020 appropriations to Amtrak. The $26 million it has received is from previous years.
For the fiscal year to date, the NEC made debt service payments totaling $82.8 million and capital expenditures, counting all capital sources, the NEC Account has a slight positive balance of $1.2 million plus the cash reserves from FY2018 and FY2019. The receipts from operations on the NEC were strong enough to wipe out the negative balance that existed at the end of November.
For the rest of the National System, only $9.0 million was needed for Debt service and $162.2 was spent on Capital Expenditures. The Negative Carryover balance increased to $242.5 million. Keep in mind that as of September 30, 2019 Amtrak had $2,497.6 million in Available-for-sale securities as well as Cash and Cash Equivalents. This amount exceeds Amtrak’s direct appropriations for all of FY2020.
Capital Spending so far has been Infrastructure: $129.2 million, Stations & Real Estate $16.0 million, Fleet Maintenance $69.8 million, Technology $26.1 million, ADA $20.0 million ($4.3 million from the previous record year), System Support: $3.6 million, Acela 21 (including Milestone Payments) $15.1 million, Fleet Acquisition $28.8 million, and Gateway $5.3 million ($3.3 million being spent in December). The Acela Milestone Payments are only $0.5 million out of a planned $133.3 million. Probably due to delay in getting the test model to Pueblo. Without the Fleet Acquisition total capital spending would have been less than the comparable spending in the previous fiscal year.
The GAAP Loss for the first quarter appears to be $109.9 million which is $64.8 million better than the previous 1st Quarter of FY2019. The operating earnings for the first three months were $44.3 million better than October-December 2018. In fact December 2019 had an overall cash operating surplus of $32.8 million.
The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period zoom from 12 to 17 with 3 others breaking even. The six with surplus over $1 million were:
Acela $103.7 million
Northeast Regionals $83.2 million
Washington-Lynchburg $1.7 million
Washington-Norfolk $1.7 million
Carolinian $1.3 million
Washington-Newport News $1.2 million
The four Virginia product lines generated a total of $4.9 million
Ridership for the first three months was more than 143,400 over the comparable period in FY2019. For the year to date, it stands at 8,500,500 (Amtrak rounds to the nearest 100). The situation with the long distance trains still show loss of riders for all but three of the product lines: Cardinal +5.5%, Lake Shore +4.6%, and Crescent +0.5%. The Palmetto is still the biggest loser at -9.2% followed by the Silver Star at -7.9%.
Amtrak has received the last of the 10 baggage dorms. It has also received a few of the new Viewliner Sleepers. It is expected that some will be put into use relatively soon. Where is the big question.
Amtrak has still not posted any individual station ridership statistics. It has just posted the audited financial figures for FY2019.
The Trump Administration is signaling that it will release its budget for FY2021 on February 10, 2020.This is usually when Amtrak files it legislative request.
Steve Musen
Representative to NARP’s Council of Representatives from the state of Rhode Island