NSC
NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORPEvidence as of 2026-09-03Overview · NORFOLK SOUTHERN CORP
Norfolk Southern Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the rail transportation of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished goods in the United States. The company transports agriculture, forest, and consumer products comprising soybeans, wheat, corn, fertilizers, livestock and poultry feed, food products, food oils, flour, sweeteners, ethanol, lumber and wood products, pulp board and paper…
Management team
- Mr. Timothy J. Livingston · Senior Vice President of TransportationFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Josh Raglin · Chief Sustainability OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Jason M. Morris · Senior Vice President & Chief Legal OfficerFind on LinkedIn
- Mr. Claude E. Elkins Jr. · Executive VP & Chief Commercial OfficerFind on LinkedIn
Start your 7-day free trial to see the full management team.
Links open LinkedIn searches, not verified profiles. Team data from our market-data vendor's company profile.
Moneyta sentiment
Where the published evidence leans after the desk debated it — not a rating or a recommendation.
+0.5 on a −2 to +2 scale.
What builds the score
Solid bars are analyst rubric scores; faded bars are computed directly from data. Claims dropped in debate count for nothing; weakened claims count at half weight.
Editor's note
Written after the debate settled — the rest of the page is the evidence behind it.
The desk’s evidence balance is Constructive (+0.5 of a possible +2; was +0.5 before debate) with high confidence. Revenue rose from $ 2,998,000,000 in fiscal Q1 2026 (quarter ended 2026-03-31) to $ 3,465,000,000 in fiscal Q2 2026 (quarter ended 2026-06-30). Operating income increased from $ 877,000,000 to $ 1,124,000,000 over the same two quarters, and net income went from $ 547,000,000 to $ 734,000,000; diluted EPS moved from $ 2.43 to $ 3.26 while weighted‑average diluted shares remained at 225,000,000.
The balance sheet and cash-flow snapshots also survive: cash and cash equivalents fell from $ 1,341,000,000 as of 2026-03-31 to $ 1,069,000,000 as of 2026-06-30; total liabilities edged lower from $ 29,309,000,000 to $ 28,869,000,000 and stockholders’ equity rose from $ 15,804,000,000 to $ 16,253,000,000. Valuation and market data include market cap $ 74,134,239,592, enterprise value $ 83,302,239,592, trailing P/E 26.92, EV/EBITDA 14.8, P/FCF 49.84, and FCF TTM $ 1,490,000,000 (FCF per share $ 6.6222). Coverage notes show merger progress reporting, operational work with Wabtec, some institutional buying in Q2, and a divergent DCF valuation published at $ 158 versus a market price reported at $ 333.
How this note was made
every stage ran before the note was writtenAnalyst desk
Mercer, Oakes, Nash, Ellis, Yates, Talbot and Archer. The desk: named AI agents, not people. Each reads one slice of the evidence and nothing else — no outside knowledge, no browsing — so every finding traces to a source you can open.
Reads the XBRL figures companies file with the SEC — revenue, margins, income, debt and share count, quarter by quarter — and reports which way the trend is running.
Revenue was $2,998,000,000 for the quarter 2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31 (fiscal Q1 2026) and rose to $3,465,000,000 for the quarter 2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30 (fiscal Q2 2026).
XBRL companyfacts · 0001628280-26-027051Operating income was $877,000,000 for the quarter 2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31 (fiscal Q1 2026) and increased to $1,124,000,000 for the quarter 2026-04-01 to 2026-06-30 (fiscal Q2 2026).
XBRL companyfacts · 0001628280-26-027051Reads the filings themselves, above all the year-over-year diff of Item 1A risk factors: which risks a company added, dropped or quietly reworded since its last annual report.
Nothing in this slice of the evidence rose to a claim — a quiet read, which itself is information.
Which filings the desk reads
The desk reads the annual 10-K in full — its risk factors, and how they changed since last year. Quarterly 10-Qs and event filings (8-Ks, insider Form 4s) are listed for context but not read line by line: the 10-K is where the material risk disclosures live. A brand-new company, or one we have only just begun tracking, may have no annual report on file yet — its risk analysis fills in once that lands.
Reads the signal panel above — momentum, volatility, drawdown, relative strength and beta — and ranks each against the whole research universe rather than judging it in isolation.
No computed signal history for this symbol yet — signals need roughly 70 trading days of price history.
Reads which funds hold the name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings, to show the exposure you may already carry through index funds.
As of 2026-09-02T13:45:47.228469+00:00, Norfolk Southern Corp (NSC) is held in the IVV ETF with a reported weight of 0.11% of that fund.
ETF constituents · market dataThe provided evidence lists a single ETF membership record (IVV) for NSC with the timestamp 2026-09-02T13:45:47.228469+00:00.
ETF constituents · market dataReads recent headlines that are genuinely about this company, ignoring rating chatter and market-wide stories. Findings argue in the debate but never move the sentiment score.
Multiple outlets report progress on the proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern merger and that the parties are advancing the Surface Transportation Board review toward the merits phase (coverage notes filing updates and customer/safety protections), with articles published 27 July–1 September 2026.
News · finance.yahoo.com · 2026-09-01The same merger topic (enhanced joint merger application and customer protections) is carried by at least two distinct outlets, indicating the story is company-specific to Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific but also relevant to the wider U.S. rail industry, with reporting on 28 August 2026.
News · finance.yahoo.com · 2026-08-28Reads parsed Forms 3/4/5 — who bought or sold, at what size, and whether a 10b5-1 plan was involved. Flags clustered open-market officer buying; treats plan sales as routine and never counts a fund or 10%-holder as an officer.
No insider transactions on file in the trailing 180 days.
Reads the implied-expectations math built from the company's own filings (the growth rate today's price would justify, and the multiples beside it) and argues whether the market's bar looks high or low for this business. Never turns the math into a target.
The model shows an implied free cash flow (FCF) growth rate of 0.329 (32.9%) that today's price would justify under the stated discount and terminal assumptions.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeTrailing twelve‑month price-to-free-cash-flow (P/FCF) is 49.84.
Valuation inputs · SEC XBRL + stored EOD closeDebate and risk review
A bull and a bear contest the claims and the chair rules on each; the risk review stress-tests what survived.
A bull and a bear argue the analysts' claims across two rounds, then a chair rules on each one. Only what survives feeds the score — the argument is shown, not hidden, so you can judge the reasoning yourself.
Quarterly SEC-reported fundamentals show clear sequential improvement in revenue, operating income, net income, and diluted EPS from Q1 to Q2 2026, and EV/EBITDA (14.8) sits within a range that can reflect earnings leverage. Company-specific news — continuing merger proceedings with Union Pacific advancing toward merits, a new Wabtec locomotive modernization contract, and reported institutional accumulation in Q2 — provides multiple independent signals tied directly to Norfolk Southern’s operations and industry position. The lone public valuation piece citing a $158 DCF versus a $333 market price appears to be a single-article, model-driven outlier; DCF outcomes are highly sensitive to discount and terminal assumptions and contrast with several firm-level data points above. Taken together, the strongest, directly sourced evidence (SEC filings and multiple media reports) supports a favorable reading of recent company performance and industry relevance, while the bearish valuation claim rests on model assumptions rather than multiple corroborating company disclosures.
Chair's verdict, claim by claim
Fragility · computed, not argued
balanced0.40
22 surviving claims rest on 9 distinct sources; the heaviest analyst carries 36% of them, and 100% of what the desk raised survived the debate.
The surviving read relies on a moderate breadth of source types (filings, valuation models, news, ownership) but a relatively small set of distinct sources overall, and a single analyst contributed a large share of the claims. The fact that everything the desk raised survived debate (100% survival) raises fragility: these conclusions carry useful factual detail but should be weighted with caution for potential analyst-concentration and limited independent falsification.
Disconfirming evidence · base rates · falsifiers
Context
Outside consensus, and where this name already sits in your own portfolio.
Third-party consensus shown for context. It never enters Moneyta sentiment — when the two diverge, the debate above is where the why lives.
What this was built from
Every figure on this page traces to one of these. The desk reads only what is listed here — no outside knowledge, no browsing — and each card shows who read it and what it contributed to the score.
12 filings· 1 cited
SEC XBRL filings
Quarterly figures as filed with the SEC, read straight from EDGAR's structured data — not retyped or estimated.
Read by Mercer+0.5 to the score
1 holdings record
Fund holdings
Which funds hold this name and at what weight, plus insider Form 4 filings.
Read by Ellis+0.5 to the score
8 headlines· 2 cited
News coverage
Recent headlines about this company, rating chatter excluded and nothing published after the report date.
Read by Yatesnothing survived
1 computation
Valuation inputs
TTM cash-flow figures from the company's own XBRL filings, priced with the stored closing price. Implied growth and multiples only; no fair-value dollar figure reaches the desk, by design.
Read by Archercontext only
1 record· 0 cited
Company profile
Sector, industry and company details.
1 record· 0 cited
Analyst consensus
Third-party consensus, shown for context only — it never enters Moneyta sentiment.
Read means we pulled and handed it to an analyst; cited means a claim on this page points at it. Reading twelve quarters to state one trend is normal — the gap is shown rather than hidden.
Written by AI, checked against sources
The analysts, the bull–bear debate and the editor's note are AI agents reading only the evidence listed on this page. They can misread a filing or a headline, which is why every claim cites a source you can open and check yourself. The sentiment score is arithmetic over the claims that survived the debate, not a language model's opinion.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations. Past patterns do not indicate future results.
Get this for the tickers you actually hold
Plus the one thing no sample can show: how each name correlates with your portfolio, and what hides inside your funds.
The full terminal on NSC Gold
Who holds it, who's buying, what the Street thinks: live behind the lock, updated as filings land.
Institutional holders
Net institutional flow, Q/Q
Largest holder position
Insider buys, 90 days
Clustered insider value
Street target range
The real figures are for members. Educational analysis, not advice.
Educational analysis of published data. Moneyta does not give investment advice or make recommendations.