FreightCar America, Inc. (NASDAQ:RAIL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Riordan: Sure. I’ll start with — from a — we’re not going to give specific quarterly numbers, but I will say, we’ll see sequential improvement throughout the year. Q1 will be our lowest, as I mentioned, we didn’t start production on our fourth line until December. So you can understand there will be ramp up production costs, et cetera, going on in Q1 that will mute those results compared to the rest of the year when that fourth line is fully utilized and running at full capacity and the learning curves over from hiring the new crews. So you’ll see that scale up throughout the year with Q1 being the low point from a gross margin perspective.

Justin Long: Okay. And from a delivery perspective, would you expect a similar cadence, 1Q being the lowest and then building through the year?

Jim Meyer: So on that one, as we talked about with the border closure, there’s a hangover from Q4. So deliveries in Q1 will actually be a little higher given how much was kind of sitting on property. And as you look through our financials, you’ll see there was just over $23 million of finished goods or about 200 railcars finished on property that would have been Q4 that are going to fall into Q1. So Q1 deliveries will actually be a little high as a result of the border closure hangover falling into Q1.

Justin Long: Okay. Very helpful. Thank you for the time.

Jim Meyer: Thanks, Justin.

Operator: Thank you. At this time, we’ve reached the end of our question-and-answer session, and this will also conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation, and have a great day.