Finance/Leasing

Rail Equipment Positioning Amid a Market Selloff: Cowen

A looming U.S. economic recession—just look at freight rail traffic figures from the past six months—and “cyclical industrial fears” have significantly impacted rail equipment equities, creating opportunities for long-term investors with what Cowen and Company analysts Matt Elkott, Jason Seidl (Railway Age Wall Street Contributing Editor) and Adam Kramer describe as “quality companies with self-forged narratives” like Wabtec, Trinity and Greenbrier.

Wabtec Offering Additional GE Shares

Wabtec Corp. recently filed a 20,485,156 share offering of GE, and expects to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,048,515 shares. Wabtec said it will not receive any proceeds from the sale of the shares in the offering.

LRW Accepting 2019 Outstanding Member of the Year Nominations

The League of Railway Women (LRW) has opened nominations for the 2019 “Outstanding Member of the Year” award. The recipient will be recognized during the LRW Annual Membership Meeting to be held on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at Railway Interchange in Minneapolis. LRW corporate partners and individual members are eligible.

Cowen: Shipper surveys say …

Two 2Q19 surveys of rail shippers on pricing/service quality and equipment needs conducted by Cowen and Company analysts Jason Seidl (Managing Director and Railway Age Wall Street Contributing Editor), Matt Elkott and Adam Kramer indicate that, compared to 1Q19, Class I railroad customers are anticipating somewhat lower rate increases, and little change in demand for new railcars.

Wells Fargo Rail, New York & Atlantic on the Violet Edge

Car and locomotive lessor Wells Fargo Rail and Anacostia Rail Holdings Class III property New York & Atlantic Railway have ordered Wi-Tronix Violet Edge onboard technology, which includes Connected Event Recorder, PTC Event Recorder and Digital Video Recorder (DVR), all based on a robust Internet of Things (IoT) platform designed specifically for the rail industry. “Advanced technology enables remote access to synchronized information, in addition to a suite of analytic tools and actionable alerts that make rail operations safer,” Wi-Tronix noted.

Alberta looks to dump multi-billion-dollar tar sands trains

Government oil trains were to start running Alberta’s glut of sludgy bitumen to foreign markets July 1 under a US$2.8 billion contract committing provincial taxpayers to the leasing of 4,400 tank cars and guaranteed payments to CN and Canadian Pacific. For the time being, they will be costly ghost trains that earn the railways real money for no haulage.

Baun joins MULR as CCO

Rail industry veteran Theodore W. “Ted” Baun will be joining MUL Railcars, Inc. (MULR), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance Company Limited (MUL), as Chief Commercial Officer, effective July 1. He will be responsible for fleet utilization, revenue generation and customer support operations, as well as “playing an integral role as part of the corporate leadership of MULR in planning and architecting the growth of the platform and the fleet as we drive toward our near-term objective of having a 25,000-car portfolio by the end of 2020,” the company said.

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