How much cash is LNER making?

[Nicholas Lewis]

This is spot on. I haven't seen any reduction in prices on LNER, quite the opposite in fact.

The real watch out here is fares regulation which caps the price of leisure travel on long distance services. DfT/RDG/TOCs would love this to be removed, they would call it simplification and say it's what passengers want. They will even claim there will be lots of cheap Advance tickets for leisure travel (there will be for a short period of time and then they will slowly be withdrawn). Then watch the price of leisure journeys at popular times absolutely sky rocket.

The industry needs to maximise yield where it can thats what supports the routes that will never cover their costs

 

[Hadders]

The industry needs to maximise yield where it can thats what supports the routes that will never cover their costs

I am more concerned about affordable fares for passengers.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I am more concerned about affordable fares for passengers.

There needs to be balance though to maximise income across the whole industry and it shouldn't be priced out of reach but its clear that at some times of the day/week LNER could leveraged a few quid more per passenger without driving them away and this is on a route with more competition than anywhere else in the UK. It shows how the operators have to work hard to attract passengers and they are clearly prepared to pay.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Dec 2022 ==

LNER released there 2022 accounts yesterday

LNER 2021/22 Accounts

Headlines:

they needed 248m in govt subsidy - not surprising as covid was still in prevalent
passengers paid them 470m
it cost them 728 to run the service although some of this is accounting trickery and not real money so its cash costs were

153m on staff
80m to NR but looks like they made back 47m on sch4/8
40m on traction electricity and a stonking
185m on rolling stock costs

so at an operating level it was paying its way despite ridership being impacted by covid still.

 

[Dr Hoo]

The Accounts link doesn't seem to work.

Whilst recognising that the calibration of Schedules 4 and 8 (the Possessions and Performance regimes) has obviously been knocked out of kilter by Covid since the last Periodic Review; in principle the £47 million back is not really 'extra' cash, rather to cover the likely loss of revenue, loss of future goodwill and extra bus costs from levels of disruption much higher than anticipated. Not a good sign at all.

 

[cactustwirly]

There needs to be balance though to maximise income across the whole industry and it shouldn't be priced out of reach but its clear that at some times of the day/week LNER could leveraged a few quid more per passenger without driving them away and this is on a route with more competition than anywhere else in the UK. It shows how the operators have to work hard to attract passengers and they are clearly prepared to pay.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Dec 2022 ==

LNER released there 2022 accounts yesterday

LNER 2021/22 Accounts

Headlines:

they needed 248m in govt subsidy - not surprising as covid was still in prevalent
passengers paid them 470m
it cost them 728 to run the service although some of this is accounting trickery and not real money so its cash costs were

153m on staff
80m to NR but looks like they made back 47m on sch4/8
40m on traction electricity and a stonking
185m on rolling stock costs

so at an operating level it was paying its way despite ridership being impacted by covid still.

How is it paying it's way when it needed 248m in subsidy?

 

[HSTEd]

Do those figures include a suitable portion of network grant subsidies being assigned to LNER?

 

[ainsworth74]

The Accounts link doesn't seem to work.

Companies House website is good in many respects, but it's terrible for linking to things. I've attached a copy of the accounts to make things a bit easier

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Do those figures include a suitable portion of network grant subsidies being assigned to LNER?

No they don't include the direct grant than NR receives. I guess somewhere there is an analysis of what the additional costs are that each operator would face if it fully funded NRs costs.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Companies House website is good in many respects, but it's terrible for linking to things. I've attached a copy of the accounts to make things a bit easier

Thank you for posting this 69-page accountancy download.