Company holds cautious optimism on the result of the financial year
Go-Ahead has announced its interim management statement for the period from July 3, 2011 to October 26 2011.
The firm said trading in the first quarter has been robust and its expectations for the full year to June 30, 2012 remain unchanged.
David Brown, group chief executive of Go-Ahead, said: “I am pleased to report growth across all our businesses. A range of factors, including the quality of our services and high motoring costs for car drivers, has attracted passengers and we continue to perform well.
“Our bus services continue to perform robustly and our efforts to make travel simple and straightforward are being embraced by passengers. We are already witnessing significant take-up of our new smartcards, with over 200,000 passenger journeys a day now taking place using smartcards outside of London.
“Our rail businesses are performing strongly. We are also seeing some interesting passenger trends with our high speed services in Kent and the Gatwick Express showing good growth – demonstrating that passengers want to use fast rail links.”
According to the statement, outside of London, the majority of growth in Go-Ahead’s bus operations came from fare paying, rather than concessionary passengers, raising deregulated revenue by over 4%. Passenger numbers were consistent with the same quarter last year.
In London, Go-Ahead’s revenues were marginally up, with reductions in quality incentive contract bonus payments due to road works in central London being largely offset by additional contract work. Mileage was slightly down compared to the equivalent period in the previous year but is expected to increase as new contract wins begin in the second quarter.
Speaking of the firm’s outlook, the Go-Ahead statement said: “While we are encouraged by our performance in the first quarter, our expectations for the full year to June 30, 2012 remain unchanged as we continue to be suitably cautious about the medium term wider economic outlook.
“We continue to emphasise service quality. Our balance sheet and cashflow generation are strong and we remain focused on cost reduction and maintaining financial discipline.”
Go-Ahead’s operating companies include Brighton & Hove, Go North East, London Central, Oxford Bus Company, konect bus and Thames Travel. Visit www.go-ahead.com
