THE scars of its Scottish bus wars with Stagecoach were about the only sore points in FirstGroup's annual results yesterday.
Furth of Scotland, bus passenger numbers are rising and profits are motoring ahead. The numbers coming through from passenger train subsidiary Great Eastern Railway are good. And Great Western Holdings, now owned wholly by FirstGroup, is also proving an extremely valuable addition to the company's profit-and-loss account.
And FirstGroup is confident about the prospects for Bristol International Airport, which contributed #400,000 to operating profits between its acquisition by the company in December and March 31.
In the longer term, FirstGroup sees its joint venture with Hong Kong's New World Development Company, which will operate 88 bus routes and some 700 vehicles in Hong Kong, as a useful platform from which to launch an assault on the massive public transport market in mainland China.
But much more significant developments are likely to come closer to home and much sooner.
City transport analysts are on tenterhooks ahead of an impending, and possibly radical, Transport White Paper.
Shares in some bus and train companies, including FirstGroup, have doubled in recent months on hopes that this will contain significant measures to get people out of their motor cars and on to public transport.
Such measures would be very much in line with the philosophy of FirstBus's Aberdeen-based chief executive, Moir Lockhead, but it remains to be seen what Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and his department will come up with.
Whatever happens, the impact on transport companies' bottom lines of even a small return to public transport cannot be underestimated.
As Nigel Davies, transport analyst at stockbroker Panmure Gordon, said of FirstGroup's near-1% increase in passenger volumes outwith Central Scotland: ''If you can sustain that level of ridership increase for 10 consecutive years . . . the impact on bus company valuations is very dramatic.''
The White Paper may be the icing on the cake. Or it may be an anti-climax. We'll find out soon.
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