Go-Ahead gifts overseas owners over £80m in dividend payouts
Go-Ahead Group has brought back dividend payouts for the first time since the pandemic, gifting its foreign ownership more than £80m.
Britain’s biggest train operator, which runs services including Southern, Thameslink and the Gatwick Express, has paid out £58m to its Spanish and Australian owners.
Corporate Filings reveal an additional £26m was also given to the French transport firm Keolis, which runs a joint venture with Go-Ahead.
Formerly a constituent of the FTSE 250 index, Go-Ahead was taken over by the Australian and Spanish firm’s Kinetic and Globalvia in 2022, in a deal worth around £650m. Kinetic holds a 51 per cent stake in the company, with Globalvia owning the rest.
The bumper dividends, first reported by The Sunday Times, are the first since payouts were paused when Covid-19 wiped out passenger numbers and forced the government to intervene with billions in taxpayer aid.
UK rail operators have endured a chequered recovery in recent years as demand fails to reach pre-pandemic levels. In the latest year, there were 496m passenger train kilometres travelled across Britain’s rail network, down from 558m train kilometres four years ago.
Go-Ahead reported £9.7m in pre-tax profit in the 18 months to December, alongside a revenue haul of £3.8bn.
The firm’s subsidiary Govia Thameslink is expected to be one of the first to UK train operator’s to be brought into public ownership, following the new Labour government’s decision to renationalisation Britain’s railways. Govia’s contract expires in April 2025.
“Go-Ahead has a proven track record for service, and remains committed to connecting communities through bold, innovative market initiatives,” Miguel Parras, Go-Ahead chief executive said in a statement.
“In 2023, we grew significantly with several strategic UK acquisitions and tender wins, and invested over £200m in replacing our diesel fleet with cleaner, greener buses, as part of our EV transition leadership. A further £290m of investment in our fleet is already committed over the next two years.
Rumours swirled in February that Go-Ahead could be put up for sale as part of a wider sell-off by its Canadian pension fund owner, although these were strongly denied by the company at the time.