SCOTTISH Citylink, the long distance coach operator run and part-owned by Stagecoach, saw profits stabilise last year as it launched innovative new services.
A new inter-city express route, an airport link, and an overnight sleeper network, helped boost turnover by seven per cent to £43.8million in 2013, according to accounts for 2013 just filed at Companies House. That followed the nine per cent uplift in 2012 to £40.8m.
Pre-tax profits slipped into modest reverse at £5.64m, following the 24 per cent plunge to £5.69m reported a year ago. The joint venture between Stagecoach and Singapore's Comfort DelGro, which owns 65 per cent, paid out a £5m dividend to its co-owners, following dividends of £5m in 2012, £3.5m in 2011 and £7m in 2010.
The business's shareholder value is put at £8m, down from £8.8m, and it ended the year with just under £5m in cash, down from £6.64m, while employee numbers edged up from 95 to 96, following rapid growth from 67 in 2010.
Sir Brian Souter was a director of Scottish Citylink until halfway through 2013, stepping down when he moved up to chair Stagecoach. Martin Griffiths, his successor as chief executive of the Perth-based group, remains on the board, which has two Singapore-based directors.
Scottish Citylink, which runs its core network using outside contractors, tapped into growing demand for higher quality coach travel when it launched the Citylink Gold service from Aberdeen and Inverness to Glasgow in 2010. In its first year the service attracted 130,000 passengers, two-thirds attracted roughly equally from cars and trains, driving a 45 per cent profit surge.
Last year saw the launch of three initiatives aimed at maintaining momentum. In April 2013 Stagecoach launched a network of overnight sleepercoach services from Scotland to London using a £5m fleet of 10 specially-designed vehicles allowing leather seats to be converted into lie-flat beds.
The seven nights a week service serves Aberdeen, Aviemore, Cumbernauld, Dundee, Dunfermline, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Glasgow, Inverness and Perth, and offers more than 1,700 lie-flat beds a week. It is the UK's first sleepercoach service since the 1920s.
In July Scottish Citylink launched the first coach service between Edinburgh Airport and Glasgow's Buchanan Bus Station, where the company is registered. The one-hour service runs every 30 minutes at peak times and was warmly welcomed by the airport.
Also in July Stagecoach extended the Citylink Gold network to the Aberdeen-Edinburgh route, using new vehicles offering up to four departures a day. The 54-seater coaches boast luxury leather seats, power sockets, and a toilet, while the service throws in free wi-fi and and complimentary refreshments.
In the latest accounts, the directors' "strategic report" says only that expansion may be achieved by launching new services and attracting new customers. A Stagecoach spokesman said: "The new services we launched during the period reflect the continuing popularity of coach travel both within Scotland and in the cross-border Sleepercoach network."
He was unable to comment on Scottish Citylink's performance in 2014.
ComfortDelGro Corporation is one of the world's largest transport companies with a fleet of more than 46,000 vehicles across Ireland, the UK, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.
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