London Midland profit

[buckdancer]

An article on a good pre-tax profit for London Midland - http://www.expressandstar.com/business/2016/09/02/london-midland-operators-profits-soar/

[woodenhead]

Is that the group profit or the profit from London Midland, I suspect it is the former.

[jjb1970]

This is the groups profit, not LM. And in fairness to them, whatever has happened to Southern their LM franchise is very good in my experience.

[Clearwater]

In typical hyperbolic journalism, £100m profit is "raking it in." That is actually a pretty low margin on 3.3bn turnover. Go-Ahead isn't even a FTSE 100 listed name . The profits are reflected in the low market capitalisation of just under £1bn. Even in Uk terms, that's not a large company

 

David

[dmustu]

Although this article is over 12 months old, it gives some perspective on fares and profits - 

 

http://www.citymetric.com/transport/everything-you-know-about-british-train-fares-wrong-704

[lmsforever]

This shows how much of a risk running a franchise is the profits are hard come by with low returns and moans by the usual suspects are shown to be rubbish ,the bus constituents of Go Ahead are all good units.Bus companies in the UK are by and large suffering low profits only First and Arriva seem to be ok but the rest are not doing well .

[jjb1970]

In typical hyperbolic journalism, £100m profit is "raking it in." That is actually a pretty low margin on 3.3bn turnover. Go-Ahead isn't even a FTSE 100 listed name . The profits are reflected in the low market capitalisation of just under £1bn. Even in Uk terms, that's not a large company

 

David

 

Unfortunately tabloid journalism and political sound bytes mean that many people "know" that TOCs are fat cats bleeding us all white while they make obscene profits. Very few of those peddling this idea have any idea of the role of DafT, franchise agreements or understand what a figure like £100million means relative to turnover etc but it is an easy political sell. So easy in fact that even politicians who apparently don't understand how seats work can understand the basic premise of private=bad, train companies=greedy parasites, nationalisation=magic wand to make it all better.

[Richard E]

Interestingly this was 'headlined' as Southern making £100m profit by, amongst others, the Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/southern-rail-owners-reveal-profits-of-100m-after-months-of-cancellations-hfgntvckq), the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37253789) and the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/02/southern-rail-owner-reports-99m-pounds-profits-go-ahead).

 

So that just shows that there are news reports and there are news reports. All are factual but they have spin on top to suit the agenda of the publication (political or otherwise), the reporter or the Circulation department.