CNICanadian National Railway Company
Is it safe?
Nothing alarming, nothing pristine: comfortable debt (A) and steady price behavior.
Investment-grade balance sheet. A rule of thumb on leverage, not a credit rating.
Relatively steady, low volatility. Worst drawdown -29% · now 10% below its 52-week high.
Where this answer is blind. Altman sits structurally low for utilities and pipelines; Beneish runs high for fast growers, since sales growth alone lifts it; banks and REITs are excluded.
Can CNI take a bad year?
Canadian National Railway Company carries $6.11B of net debt at 1.91× EBITDA: a load its earnings can carry.
Net debt · as at Q4 2009 · under two and a half years of EBITDA, comfortable
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 1.91×
Net debt / EBITDA · 2.07× a year ago · the load is coming down
- Interest cover
- 5.84×
Interest cover · operating profit covers the interest bill several times over
- Annualised volatility
- 22%
Annualised volatility · about as steady as the market itself
Details›
- Total debtQ4 2009
- $6.46B
- Cash and short-term investments
- $352M
- Net debt
- $6.11B
- EBITDA, trailing twelve months
- $3.20B
- Operating profit, trailing twelve months
- $2.41B
- Debt / equity
- 0.57×
- Total debt / EBITDA
- 2.02×
- Annualised volatilitytwo years of daily moves
- 22%
- Worst drawdown on file
- −29%
- Below its 52-week high
- 9.8%
Balance sheet from SEC filings; drawdown and volatility from end-of-day closes; Altman Z from the filed statements.