Maybe Northampton wouldn't have lost £50,000 if they didn't charge more than competing operators, fail to run at evenings thereby losing a lot of return journeys and didn't operate totally dilapidated vehicles. It doesn't take a top grade industry professional to figure out why nobody uses First Northampton services.
No, they'd probably have lost more than £50k if they either charged less or were running evening services with half a a dozen or fewer passengers on.
Stagecoach's services in the evening frequently have fewer than a dozen passengers on which must be marginal from a viability perspective.
The benefit to making a loss from First's point of view is that they can reduce their tax liability for the profitable divisions.