National Express Group (NEG)

Profile

National Express Group is a leading public transport operator with bus, coach and rail services in the UK, Continental Europe, North Africa, North America and the Middle East. Passengers made 898 million journeys on our services in 2018.

National Express operates transportation services in eight countries (UK, USA, Canada, Spain, Morocco, Switzerland, Germany and Bahrain) with some international coach services to other European countries. We hold the largest market share for long haul coach transport in both Spain and the UK, and are the second largest school bus provider in North America. We also operate urban bus and transit operations in the USA, Canada, Morocco, Spain and the UK. In 2017, we disposed of our final UK rail franchise, c2c, to Trenitalia. Our sole rail operations are now in Germany.

We utilise technology to raise customer and safety standards, drive efficiencies in our business and facilitate growth:

• 2018 performance – New mobile websites and ticketing apps are driving higher online transactions, higher conversion rates and lowering costs; Proportion of journeys through digital channels in UK bus increased significantly to 60%; Our real-time RMS in ALSA and UK coach have driven growth in revenue, passengers and yield; Continued roll-out of Lytx DriveCam technology across ALSA and North America, delivering a reduction in the number of collisions and associated costs; Partnering and investing with local innovation hubs to access new ideas and emerging technology
• Future outlook – Further optimisation and automation of RMS to drive incremental demand and higher fleet utilisation; and hence increased profit; Further enhancements to websites, apps and ticketless payment systems to deliver greater personalisation and improved services; Completion of the roll-out of Lytx DriveCam; rolling out of a Driver Fatigue alerts system in our coach operations; Technology to support our World Class Driver programmes; Building technology platforms, capabilities and expertise to provide integrated transport solutions; Developing multi-modal solutions and on-demand services
• Measuring our progress – A rising proportion of sales transacted through our digital channels demonstrates that our customers value more convenient and faster ways to pay. At the same time, the transfer of transactions away from traditional ticket offices and third party sales agents to digital channels is driving operational efficiencies and reducing costs.