Bias has nothing to do with it. Those figures are for the entire First Scotland East operation. It doesn't break down into areas, so you can't tell whether the loss of revenue is specifically in West Lothian, or in other areas. First operate a lot of routes in very rural areas around Stirling, Falkirk and Balfron, and some of those may have impacted their performance. Some of the losses may be related to the ongoing costs of terminating Borders operations - it was a complicated deal and involved a lot of issues with property and vehicle leases. You absolutely cannot conclude that the entire cause of that loss was increased competition in West Lothian.
We don't know anything about Lothian's costs in setting up LCB. We don't know anything about what targets they've set, how long they've given LCB to move into profit, or whether they're achieving the sorts of loads they expected. They probably are making a loss, but if they are, it's going to include the setup costs, and presumably their customer numbers are growing (my own observations suggest they are).
To say "First lost three million last year, therefore Lothian must be losing similar amounts of money" is nonsense. Lothian's core city network is a licence to print money and the number of people using it has been going up for years. If they're happy to use that money to finance an expansion, they can't be doing badly. FSE have contracted enormously in the ten years I've lived in the area, so they're not even remotely similar.
First's figures tell us how First are doing. They tell us nothing about how Lothian are doing. Only Lothian's figures will tell us that, and we don't have them.
No - you're misrepresenting what I said.
Clearly the West Lothian operations have lost c.£0.9m of revenue during the period. Assuming that there hasn't been some massive growth in patronage, then that will represent the majority of LCB's revenue during that period. That is a reasonable conclusion to draw.
Now you are, of course, correct to mention things like start up costs and the like but they will have been amortised, I would imagine. Wouldn't you agree? If they don't, and they take them to the bottom line, then the trading will have been worse. Hence, I've assumed that that doesn't happen.Therefore, we are looking at the industry average cost of running a vehicle. In your experience, what figure would you be looking at? How many vehicles they were running during that period? On that basis, you can begin on a broad brush level begin to see directionally how they (LCB) performed in that period.
Note that I say, in that period. I did say that it indicates how things went but not how things are going now. You can't simply extrapolate the figures for a full year etc. I have
always said that LB will have factored in a period of loss making into their business plan. I
never said the £3m was a quoted figure. You've taken it rather literally but to be absolutely clear, it was as a balancing statement. That is, if that sort of figure is being used as a reason for First to be worried (and they will be), then IF a similar sort of figure were to be experienced by LB, then that too is equally concerning if the views are that it is now a fairly even picture in WL.
Put it another way.... If First lost that sort of sum in that period when they were at their strongest position, why would you think that LB would not have lost a substantial figure on the comparable, competitive operations?
