NSC
Norfolk Southern Corporation
Is NSC Halal?
Permissible freight transportation activity, but the current filing-based debt/assets ratio fails the examined asset-based limits.
What You Should Know
Norfolk Southern is an eastern U.S. Class I freight railroad carrying merchandise, intermodal and coal across a 19,500-route-mile network. General-purpose transportation is generally permissible, while coal, chemical and customer end-use mix require qualitative review. The March 31, 2026 Form 10-Q gives total assets of $45,113 million, debt of $16,492 million, cash of $1,341 million, receivables of $1,123 million and quarterly revenue of $2,998 million. Debt/assets is 36.56%, liquidity/assets is 2.97% and receivables plus cash/assets is 5.47%, so the examined FTSE, MSCI and Malaysia asset-based financial screens fail; the filing does not provide a usable interest-income or prohibited-revenue numerator.
⚠️ Concerns
- •The current filing-based debt/assets screen is 36.56%, above the examined 33.33% limit
- •Coal-haulage revenue is a declining but meaningful component of the commodities mix; some scholars apply additional environmental-stewardship scrutiny
- •The 2023 East Palestine, Ohio derailment created litigation and environmental-remediation liabilities
- •Crude-oil and petrochemical haulage is a portion of the merchandise commodities mix
- •The filing does not separately disclose a usable interest-income or prohibited-revenue numerator
Current quantitative Sharia screen
Based on 10-Q figures for the period ended 2026-03-31; calculated 2026-07-15.
16,492 / 45,113
1,341 / 45,113
2,464 / 45,113
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets is 36.56%, above the examined 33.333% limit; liquidity/assets is 2.97% and receivables-plus-cash/assets is 5.47%.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets is 36.56%, above the examined MSCI 33.33% limit; liquidity/assets is 2.97% and receivables-plus-cash/assets is 5.47%.
- Financial
- Fails
- Overall
- Fails
Debt/assets is 36.56%, above the examined Malaysia debt limit; transportation activity and prohibited-revenue allocation remain qualitative.
- Financial
- Not calculated
- Overall
- Incomplete
A properly licensed and reproducible historical market-cap series is not stored; filing-based asset ratios remain documented.
Business-activity disclosure
Norfolk Southern transports freight by rail. General-purpose transportation is generally permissible, while coal, chemicals and customer end-use allocation requires qualitative review.
Limitation: The filing does not provide a universal prohibited-revenue numerator across all commodities and customers.
Purification
The filing does not separately disclose an interest-income numerator suitable for a purification calculation; no fixed percentage is asserted.
Inputs, assumptions and primary sources
- Amounts are USD millions from Norfolk Southern's March 31, 2026 Form 10-Q.
- Debt uses the reported $16,492 million long-term debt and capital lease obligation balance.
- Receivables use the reported $1,123 million balance; no unsupported prohibited-revenue numerator is assumed.
- Quarterly revenue is $2,998 million; the filing does not separately disclose an interest-income numerator usable for this screen.
- Freight rail is generally permissible, while coal, chemicals and customer end-use mix require qualitative review.
This is a reproducible financial screen, not a fatwa. A failed total-assets screen can coexist with a pass under a market-cap methodology. ZakatInvest keeps the qualitative assessment separate so numerical thresholds do not erase material context.
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