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Trainline IPO

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MarlowDonkey

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Various financial websites are reporting that Trainline are considering an IPO. That's an Initial Public Offering where shares are sold to the public on the Stock Exchange.

https://www.ft.com/content/068cb918-7c5c-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

Trainline, the transport-booking app owned by US private equity group KKR, has announced its intention to float on the London Stock Exchange. The company is aiming for a valuation of £1.5bn, people briefed on the matter said.

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley will lead the sale, which would be one of the largest initial public offerings this year in the UK if it is successful.

Chief executive Clare Gilmartin said: “We are the leading independent rail and coach platform globally, selling tickets on behalf of 220 carriers across 45 countries . . . I am especially proud of the team and culture we have created at Trainline and excited by the global growth opportunity that lies ahead for the business.”

The company, which was bought by KKR in 2015 for roughly £500m, doubled ticket sales from £1.6bn in 2015 to £3.2bn in 2019. It said it had plenty of room to grow in a large, fragmented industry and that online bookings accounted for only 39 per cent of tickets in Europe’s top five markets.

They announced this around four years ago, but then withdrew it. As I recall, at they time they made the misleading claim that it's always cheaper to buy in advance (on Trainline) without adding the caveat that it only applies if you don't want or need a choice of train departure tines.
 
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DarloRich

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i detest The Trainline but i would buy shares as their advertising convinces lots of gullible people they can get some special discount or service from ttl!
 

yorkie

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Are they profitable? The margins for retailing tickets has been shrinking over recent years and are now absolutely tiny.

Lower priced tickets make a loss for any retailer; higher value fares can just about break even with only the highest value fares actually being profitable.
 

DarloRich

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Are they profitable? The margins for retailing tickets has been shrining over recent years and are now absolutely tiny.

Lower priced tickets make a loss for any retailer; higher value fares can just about break even with only the highest value fares actually being profitable.

they also offer a very popular business travel platform.
 

Clip

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Presumably they charge businesses fees to access this, but it isn't enough to turn a profit...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/05/22/trainline-plots-15bn-float-route-profitability/

Bits missing from the rest of what you can see before the paywall

h

Saddled with almost £270m of loans, Trainline has racked up £75m of pre-tax losses over the past three years. Its annual bank interest bill is just over £25m but announced alongside its float that the company had turned its first operational profit of...
Get rid of that loan and the interest payments then the business would look a lot healthier for sure.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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They earn money by hosting ticketing fulfilment services for several TOCs - you use them even when you buy direct from those TOCs.
They also have a European arm (trainline.eu), formerly Captrain.
 

Jonny

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Offset to an extent by charging booking/delivery fees, I understand (never used the service myself!).

... which other site operators generally do not. That's the main weakness of the Trainline.
 

Lemmy99uk

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I imagine the corporate/business market is where the money lies.

I always found it strange that other TOCs used Trainline to purchase tickets rather than their own sites.
 

yorkie

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I imagine the corporate/business market is where the money lies.

I always found it strange that other TOCs used Trainline to purchase tickets rather than their own sites.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'TOCs used Trainline to purchase tickets'?

Do you mean some TOCs purchase tickets, for their staff to use on business trips, through Trainline.com?
 
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... which other site operators generally do not. That's the main weakness of the Trainline.

I''d suggest the main weekness of the Trainline is people believe it to be a reliable source of train times, when often what they show is completely different from what is on NRE and other sources fed from Trust. Certainly when there is preplanned engineering work with the STP timetable announced, the Trainline still allows people to buy tickets for services that don't exist.
 

yorkie

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I''d suggest the main weekness of the Trainline is people believe it to be a reliable source of train times, when often what they show is completely different from what is on NRE and other sources fed from Trust. Certainly when there is preplanned engineering work with the STP timetable announced, the Trainline still allows people to buy tickets for services that don't exist.
Do you have a current example of this?

When you say "timetable announced", do you mean the timetable data feed contains the alterations, but Trainline's supplier are not using the latest data feed?

Or do you mean the TOC has announced some changes but has not yet updated the data feed?
 

Lemmy99uk

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Do you mean some TOCs purchase tickets, for their staff to use on business trips, through Trainline.com?

Exactly. I used to work for a TOC not connected to Trainline but we used them for business travel. I know from discussions with colleagues that other TOCs did the same.
 

ForTheLoveOf

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Exactly. I used to work for a TOC not connected to Trainline but we used them for business travel. I know from discussions with colleagues that other TOCs did the same.
Seems utterly ludicrous they'd not just issue a sort of 'staff ticket'?
 

tomwills98

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I'm not sure what you mean by 'TOCs used Trainline to purchase tickets'?

Do you mean some TOCs purchase tickets, for their staff to use on business trips, through Trainline.com?

Some replies differ from my TOC. We use the Trainline as the retailing backbone of our website and app however it's a different Trainline to what the public sees. They give us a TOC only, dedicated call centre and website to check a customer's booking reference and contact details to check the tickets they have bought.

For business travel, we just use our business travel team upstairs. Seems a bit silly not to use a service your TOC already provides.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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I assume people realise that trainline provides the underlying retail IT platform for a number of TOCs, including Virgin, TfW, Northern, Scotrail and others.
There's a veneer of branding on top which tailors it to the particular TOC, I don't know who provides that layer but trainline might well do.
Their business and its profitability has next to nothing to do with them charging booking fees on their own dedicated site (trainline.com).
I booked some domestic SNCF TER tickets (print at home) with trainline.eu last year, and there was no booking fee.
They are also in industry groups developing e-ticketing technology which they then license onwards.
 

Lemmy99uk

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Seems utterly ludicrous they'd not just issue a sort of 'staff ticket'?

Actually, it was quite a neat solution to the issue of getting tickets. Obviously a pass was provided for travel on our own TOC, but for journeys with other companies a normal travel ticket was required.

Trainline do not charge for corporate accounts, their money is made on the commission, and so it relieved our TOC of all the accounting problems and costs involved in the previous internal warrant method.

It also meant you could book a ticket for collection from anywhere rather than having to use our own booking offices.
 

route:oxford

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If you get 20% back from Loco2 then I am telling you Loco2 are making a considerable loss on those transactions.

upload_2019-5-23_20-9-54.png

20% Cashback + an addtional £5 off when I spend £25.

It's great. Especially when trains are delayed and I get a 100% refund!

So for a £50 fare, I'd earn 1000 WOWPoints - which equals £10 by BACS transfer or can be used to buy Giftcards at 95% of face value in points.
 
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When you say "timetable announced", do you mean the timetable data feed contains the alterations, but Trainline's supplier are not using the latest data feed?

Or do you mean the TOC has announced some changes but has not yet updated the data feed?

I don't know the technicalities of how it works, but when we tell a customer there isn't a service for another hour and they say "It says online there is", when we ask where specifically online they are looking, it's always The Trainline.

About three Sundays ago there was an example where a route was being partially being replaced by a bus service due to preplanned engineering work. The times Trainline were showing for end to end journeys matched neither the buses or original non-engineering train times. More critically, they were advertising a service later in the evening than either timetable actually had.
 

yorkie

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I don't know the technicalities of how it works, but when we tell a customer there isn't a service for another hour and they say "It says online there is", when we ask where specifically online they are looking, it's always The Trainline.

About three Sundays ago there was an example where a route was being partially being replaced by a bus service due to preplanned engineering work. The times Trainline were showing for end to end journeys matched neither the buses or original non-engineering train times. More critically, they were advertising a service later in the evening than either timetable actually had.
If you get any examples that are current, please do create a new thread and tag me in, but it's not possible to look back now.

View attachment 63474

20% Cashback + an addtional £5 off when I spend £25.
I don't know who is paying for that, but surely it can't be Loco 2 as they'd make a huge loss on the transaction if that was the case.
It's great. Especially when trains are delayed and I get a 100% refund!
Do you mean a refund if you choose not to travel or a compensation claim?

The former puts the burden on retailers, but the latter doesn't.

The point I was making - which is valid - is that selling tickets isn't as lucrative as some people think it is, as the rate of commission is lower than it ever has been before.

Transactions of low value definitely make a loss for retailers (even more so if you collect the tickets from a ticket office window, rather than a TVM).

The unfair Ticket on Departure (TOD) collection charges also affect CrossCountry (not just third party retailers), as they do not have any ticket offices or machines of their own to recoup any of the costs.
 
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