No. of Recommendations: 2
He mentions $3.96bn in capex for 2023, of which $2.85bn will have been maintenance capex.
Though I haven't looked it up, you can be sure that this period's depreciation on what they were maintaining will be very small compared to $2.85bn, so naive calculations of free cash flow are always off by a mile in rails.
I have long thought the same as Jim - that D&A significantly understated the the real maintenance capex for BNSF. Warren evens said so early on.
But I just looked at the 2023 quarterly reports for BNSF. D&A was $620 million for Q1. Q2 was $653 billion, a 5.3% increase. Scaling forward, 2023 D&A might be around $2650-$2680 if inflation continues.
So the $2850 million maintenance capex for 2023 isn't that far ahead of D&A.
I guess all the heavy total capex in recent years has caused D&A to mostly catch up with real maintenance capex.
