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Trains at a CSX rail yard in Fairburn, Ga. (Megan Varner/Bloomberg)

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Activist investor Ancora Holdings Group is a “growing shareholder” in rail operator CSX Corp., at a time when the industry is bracing for further consolidation.

The investment firm believes that CSX under CEO Joseph Hinrichs has been “underperforming,” Jim Chadwick, president of alternatives at Ancora, said in a CNBC interview.

“It has to make a decision of whether it wants to find a merger partner or whether it’s going to have to go retool management,” he said. “Whatever action they make from here will dictate what we do. I think they’ll do the right thing, but certainly if they don’t we will be looking to maximize value.”

Shares in CSX are broadly flat over the last 12 months, giving the company a market value of about $65.8 billion.

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Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific freight locomotives in Burnside, Ky. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)

A representative for CSX declined to comment.

Ancora is an investor in Norfolk Southern Corp. and had launched a proxy fight against the company, which this week agreed to merge with Union Pacific Corp. in a deal that could kick off more consolidation in the rail industry. Ancora nominees also sit on the board of Norfolk Southern.

In January, Ancora also nominated Jamie Boychuk, a former senior executive at CSX, to the board of United States Steel Corp.

Every major rail operator in North America, with the exception of privately held BNSF, has been a target of activist investors in the past decade, data compiled by Bloomberg shows.

CSX’s board members include activist investor Paul Hilal, the founder of Mantle Ridge.

Union Pacific has faced activists on two separate occasions, most recently in 2023 when it changed CEO after pressure from Soroban Capital Partners, and before that in 2019 when TCI Fund Management showed up. TCI had also invested in Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.