SHARES in transportation business Stagecoach rose by 2.4 per cent to 168.3p during trading yesterday after the Perth-based company announced that its growth expectations for the current year remain unchanged.
In a trading update the firm said that the muted outlook it outlined for its bus and rail arms in its 2016/17 accounts has been borne out in the first four months of 2017/18.
The revenues generated in the firm’s London bus business fell by 0.1 per cent as a result of what it described as “a small net reduction in contracts with Transport for London”.
The company said it continues “to anticipate an increase in the rate of revenue decline later on in the year, reflecting the timing of contracts expiring”.
Revenues in its North American business, meanwhile, were hit by a decline in its megabus.com inter-city services, which have been losing customers to air and car travel. The North American division reported growth of 0.8 per cent.
Stagecoach’s rail divisions, which have been impacted by the loss of the South West Trains franchise to rival FirstGroup, showed revenue growth for the period that the firm said was ”broadly consistent with the trends seen in the second half of the prior year”.
The business is in discussions with the Department for Transport regarding its operation of the Virgin Trains East Coast route that should result in the franchise becoming profitable.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here