National Express 2018 financial results

[47550]

Might be a silly question here, but.....

I was doing a bit of digging into the financial results of the National Express UK bus results. They have recently released the 2018 results (statutory accounts) for the individual subsidiaries.

The group accounts paint a rosy picture for the UK performance - operating profit up from £71m to £80m, noting a particularly strong performance from National Express coach operations and a one off £5m profit on the sale and leaseback of the WM depots.

However, the individual company accounts present quite a different picture - in WM (which is about half the UK bus business) reported a big drop in operating profit from £30m to £23m (effectively a £12m profit drop as the £23m included the one off £5m profit on sale of the depots) - a 2% drop in turnover and a 13% increase in staff costs stand out in the results.

If you add the operating profit of all the subsidiaries then you dont get anywhere near the profit in the PLC accounts - £23m from WM, £21m from NX, £3m from Tayside, £2.5m from Kings Ferry less £3m loss in Altram comes to £47m profit - a far cry from the £80m in the PLC accounts. I have heard of PLC spin but surely I am missing something here. Is anyone able to help ?

 

[WatcherZero]

£43m of separately disclosed UK restructuring costs, but I cant find a proper breakdown.

 

[47550]

Wow that's a lot ! Where does that appear ?

 

[winston270twm]

Might be a silly question here, but.....

I was doing a bit of digging into the financial results of the National Express UK bus results. They have recently released the 2018 results (statutory accounts) for the individual subsidiaries.

The group accounts paint a rosy picture for the UK performance - operating profit up from £71m to £80m, noting a particularly strong performance from National Express coach operations and a one off £5m profit on the sale and leaseback of the WM depots.

However, the individual company accounts present quite a different picture - in WM (which is about half the UK bus business) reported a big drop in operating profit from £30m to £23m (effectively a £12m profit drop as the £23m included the one off £5m profit on sale of the depots) - a 2% drop in turnover and a 13% increase in staff costs stand out in the results.

If you add the operating profit of all the subsidiaries then you dont get anywhere near the profit in the PLC accounts - £23m from WM, £21m from NX, £3m from Tayside, £2.5m from Kings Ferry less £3m loss in Altram comes to £47m profit - a far cry from the £80m in the PLC accounts. I have heard of PLC spin but surely I am missing something here. Is anyone able to help ?

The latest accounts for WMT Limited are reported to comply with new IFRS accounting standard format, that didn't come in to force until 1st Jan 2018 i.e. after previous the WMT Limited accounts were published, that may account for some of the big differences in figures on the previous year due to the change in the way they are now reported & certain things are treated. Same applies for this supposed £43 million of restructuring figure for NX UK ops.

 

[Volvodart]

A rough look at 2017 has a similar discrepancy. The central functions deduction shown below the segment figures probably accounts for at least some of the difference.

 

[47550]

A rough look at 2017 has a similar discrepancy. The central functions deduction shown below the segment figures probably accounts for at least some of the difference.

Thought that might account for some of it. Makes it quite hard to see the underlying profitability or not of the individual ops with these large (probably arbitary) recharges of central of costs.