December 2021 December 2021 Financial Report
These are the items that I noticed in the report that were interesting to me:
The report was dated January 28, 2022, but not posted on their web page until February 2, 2022.
The NEC generated for the three months cash operating surplus of $8.1 million (as determined by their accounting system) and the remainder of the system had a fully allocated cash loss of $159.4 million. Combined the entire system had for the period cash operating deficit of $151.3 million.
Year to date, the NEC made debt service payments totaling $19.7 million and capital expenditures of $261.0 million. Counting all capital sources, the NEC Account has a negative balance of $170.1 million not including the cash reserves from previous years.
For the rest of the National System, $0.701 million was needed for Debt service and $198.3 million was spent on Capital Expenditures. The National Network Account Balance is now a negative $147.6 million-plus the accumulated surplus from previous years. Note that Amtrak has significantly reduced the number of funds paid for Debt Service for both the NEC and the National System. Amtrak probably coded the entire year’s debt service into the initial summary and did not care that that was incorrect at the time. Sloppy reporting has been a hallmark of the current management.
The amount of appropriated money for the combined NEC and National Network received for the year to date was $214.1 million. Amtrak has also received from other capital sources $98.2 million for the entire system.
The combined accumulated reserves at the beginning of the 2022 fiscal year totaled $492.0 million in cash and cash equivalents, $390.1 million in short-term investments, and $3.3 billion in available for sale securities. This brings total cash reserves as of October 1, 2021, to $4.1 billion. The current ratio (Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities) was 2.383 which would make Amtrak quite creditworthy for any fresh borrowings.
In October 2021 Amtrak's burn rate (Operating Revenues-Minus Operating Expense-Minus Debt Service-Capital Expenditures) was $446.1 million. However, this included $217.6 million for debt service. That amount has been corrected so the actual burn rate was truly much less. In November, the burn rate was $155.0 million. In December the burn rate was a mere $29.7 million because of the retraction of money spent on debt service which in turn explains the much lower figure.
Capital Spending for the year to date was: Engineering $124.9 million, Mechanical $69.4 million, Operations $5.2 million, Information Technology $25.0 million, Commercial and Marketing $0.1 million, ADA $21.8 million, Real Estate Stations & Facilities $40.6 million, Amtrak Police & Emergency Management $1.4 million, Safety $1.5 million, Environmental $2.1 million, Procurement $0.3 million, Acela 21 $41.0 million ($17.9 million in December), Gateway $7.1 million, Planning & Strategy $22.1 million ($15.5 million increase in December alone), B&P Tunnel $5.5 million, and Intercity Trainsets $90.4 million (an increase of $1.3 million in December).
The GAAP Loss for the first three months appears to be $378.1 million which is $134.4 million better than the same period in FY2021. The cash operating earnings for the year to date was $123.2 million, better than in FY2021.
Amtrak is running $46.9 million ahead of its plan for FY2022 for cash operating losses. The GAAP figure is $41.9 million ahead of plan.
The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period has shrunk to 8. The four with a surplus of over $1 million are:
Northeast Regional $19.7 million
Auto Train $6.5 million
Acela $2.1 million (Note it lost money in December, after being profitable in October and November)
Illini $1.1 million
The four Virginia product lines generated a total loss of $4.5 million.
Ridership for the three months rose more than 3,740,600 from the comparable period in FY2021. For the year to date, it stands at 5,530,000 (Amtrak reports ridership to the nearest 100). In fact, the total number of riders in all of December was 1,776,400. The situation with the long-distance trains shows a gain of riders across the product lines. The biggest losers in FY2021 were the ones with the highest percentage gains. The Crescent was the greatest winner at a 244.6% gain for the new fiscal year to date. The Capitol Ltd. was second at 223.4% gain. The lines that showed the smallest ridership gains were the Sunset with a positive percent of 68.2%, The Cardinal at +73.3%, and the Auto Train at +89.1%. It is no coincidence that all three ran their normal frequencies for all of FY2021. The Acela gained 475.7%.
More likely because of illness at the maintenance facilities than the sickness of the onboard crews, Amtrak had to cut back frequencies on nine of its routes and cut temporarily all of the Meteor runs. Supposedly, the cuts will be reversed no later than the last week of March 2022.
The House of Representatives has passed another Continuing Resolution to March 11, 2022. Fortunately for Amtrak, this is based on its FY2021 basic appropriation which was better than previous years. But it is also bad news because a good portion of the bipartisan infrastructure bill authorized huge increases in Amtrak annual appropriations. The appropriations in the infrastructure bill can be used only for capital projects. The annual appropriations money is to be used for operations and existing capital projects. The other disadvantage of the CR is that it cannot direct money to new items such as interstate compacts, which will delay the implementation of expanded Amtrak service.
The Venture cars for the Midwest may be operating in revenue service soon. The reviews on it are mixed. While it is far more ADA compliant, the seats in the cars are not matched up with the larger windows, and they do not recline very much. Also a negative was the pitch between the seats becoming less than the Amfleet and Horizons. This does not bode well for the “Train Sets” (Whatever they may actually turn out to be) that Gardner ordered for the Northeast Corridor and other places where Amfleet Ones are currently being used.
Amtrak is touting the fact that Forbes has declared Amtrak to be the Employer of the Year. Obviously, the former reservations agents at Riverside and most of Amtrak’s onboard service people were not consulted by Forbes.
Steve Musen, Representative from the State of Rhode Island to NARP’s Council of Representatives