Western Railroad Discussion > Thoughts on UP Annual Report

Received the UP's annual report today. Couple of things caught my eye:

1-No photographs in the annual report, for the first time in a real long time.
<G>You heard me right fellow foamers - no pretty train pictures in the
UP Annual report. The nerve of those #%&%$##'s...</G>

2-In a sign of the new political times, I see that Mack McLarty was added to the
board in 11/06.

At least they send out the calendar still but I hear ya on the pics - zzzzzzzzz boring.
I mean Caterpillar roams the planet taking photos of weird and bizzare shtuff for theirs, I guess "Building America" (which building IS America by the way ?) doesn't have the time to show investors anything remotely indicating what business they are in.


TCS - rant over, going back to looking at bnsf annual

Couldn't find a clean unit.

The units for the pictures did not make it on time, they were park around the system... :P

Ac4400cwgevo
http://www.trainsondvd.biz

Cool set going up San Tim on Saturday, four SD-60's, lead unit had
been on fire, all running though. Would have made a nice synopsis
of the present UP.

This is part of the general trend in annual reports. The new BNSF report is out and all pics are in black and white.

The trend is toward minimal cost to produce the report. No one wants to have a flashy annual report in these days where shareholders are looking for controlled costs all the time. A flashy annual report could lead to questions about costs, including salaries of top level executives.

Just the way it is right now.

I dunno, we're not as big as UP (we only do 2 bil/yr) but we're the
darlings of Wall Street as far as industrial distribution and our
reports are full of pretty pictures and are very slickly prepared.
Our stockholders know that when you're the #1 seller of bearings
in the US that a nice report is the antithesis of your boring
everyday business. I would think that railroading fits the same
bill.

Since my investments are virtually all in mutual funds, I don't see a lot of annual reports. But I did get the annual report for one company and the bulk of the report was their Form 10-K filing with the SEC. This provides a lot more information than the typical annual report, including a lot of detail on the compensation of individual officers and directors. The covers provide both some nice color pictures and some summary three year information. All in all probably a good change for people who are serious about reading the reports, and a bummer for folks like me who like the pictures.

JBW