“ In this Missouri Pacific proceeding, the Commission's errors have invariably been underestimates-for the system as a whole, for each part of the system, for different classes of securities, in 1940, again in 1944, and once again in 1949.
This picture is of course drawn with a broad brush. Many other factors would enter into the whole fiscal story of estimated earnings, actual earnings, miscalculations, foreseeable factors left out of account, unforeseeable factors, etc., etc. ”

“ Two of the three have earned, in those eleven years, more than twice as much as the estimates; one earned almost fifty percent more than the estimate.
For the system as a whole, the actual earnings of the eleven post-estimate years averaged $18,000,000 per year more than the estimate on which the Commission's forfeiture plan was based. For every million dollars of underestimate of future earnings the Commission's forfeiture proposals would unjustly destroy twenty to twenty-five million dollars of securities. ”

“ At the present dividend rate, the Commission's finding in effect assumes that the Missouri Pacific system can earn on its present preferred stock not more than $2.15 per share. The actual earnings on this stock, in the eleven years since the Commission first began to issue its plans for the Missouri Pacific, have been $17 per share per year, or eight times the increased estimate made by the Commission in 1949. In the three years since the Commission ruled that the present preferred stock has a value of only $43 per share the company has earned more than $43 on each share. ”