KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kansas City Southern beat analyst estimates in the fourth quarter in both earnings and revenues, Web site economy.kansascity.com reported.
For the three months ended Dec. 31, the railroad company earned $32.0 million, or 33 cents a share, on 406.8 million in revenues.
Earnings per share were down 17.5 percent from last year. However, Kansas City Southern did better than analysts were expecting.
Eleven analysts on average had forecasted earnings of 29 cents a share and revenues of $397.2 million for the final quarter of 2009.
"KCS management is cautiously optimistic that the company will be able to maintain the positive volume and revenue growth momentum that it experienced in the second half of last year throughout 2010," chairman and CEO Michael R. Haverty said in a statement.
For the year, Kansas City Southern $57.0 million, or 61 cents a share, on $1.48 billion in sales. Those figures were down sharply from 2008 due to a difficult first half of last year.
(The preceding report appeared on the Web site economy.kansascity.com on January 28, 2010.)
