Investors looked past a 22% drop in CSX’s third quarter earnings Thursday and focused on the direction the railroad’s new CEO might take it and the possibility of any strategic deals.

CEO Steve Angel promised to focus on making CSX the best-performing railroad. Without promising a merger, Angel said he would consider any strategic opportunities that make sense for shareholders. He also reminded investors that he ran industrial gas supplier Praxair for a decade before the opportunity to merge with rival Linde came up.

“The way these things work — these strategic opportunities — you’ve got to wait for the right timing. You’ve got to wait for when the conditions are right,” Angel said. “So what you do in the interim, you run the company to the best of your ability every day, and you create

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