Trainline H2 2026 Earnings Report

Trainline EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 23.60
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Trainline Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $452.68 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Trainline Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2026
• Date: 5/6/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, May 6, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Trainline (LON:TRN)’s ambition is to bring together rail, coach and other travel services into one simple mobile experience so travellers can easily find the best prices for their journey and access smart, real-time travel information on the go. By making rail and coach travel easier, our aim is to encourage people all over the world to make more environmentally sustainable travel choices. As most rail and coach tickets continue to be sold offline at the station, and as customers and governments commit to more environmentally friendly modes of travel, we see significant growth opportunities for Trainline over the long term.

Trainline H2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Strong financial delivery and shareholder returns: adjusted EBITDA rose 11% to £177m, EPS has more than quadrupled over three years, and the company has repurchased £294m of shares with a further £150m program (£350m total) planned, boosting cash generation and per-share earnings.
• Negative Sentiment: Near-term UK regulatory and commercial headwinds: uncertainty around GBR procurement, ongoing operator self‑preferencing (and limited access to loyalty schemes/Delay Repay APIs), Project Oval impacts and expected white‑label contract losses (eg ScotRail) are constraining UK growth in the near term.
• Positive Sentiment: International momentum and path to profitability: international net ticket sales grew 3% to £1.1bn with strong growth in Southeast France and Spain, and management expects the international business to break even on a headline post-transaction fee basis in the coming year.
• Positive Sentiment: Commercial scale in B2B (Trainline Partner Solutions): Partner Solutions now generates over £1bn of net ticket sales, with B2B distribution up 36% and European Global API sales up 58%, driven by 47% growth in business clients to ~35,000.
• Neutral Sentiment: AI is a strategic differentiator but impact is still emerging: features like Travel Forecast and the Trainline Assistant show strong early adoption (3m users/2m conversations) and integrations with AI channels (ChatGPT), yet GEO sales remain small (<1% of new international customers), leaving the near-term revenue impact uncertain.

Presentation

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our results presentation. It's great to be here. I'm Jody Ford, CEO of Trainline, and I'm joined by Pete Wood, our CFO. Let's first go through the disclaimer. Onto the agenda for today. I'll give an introduction briefly discussing the progress we've made this year and updating you on the regulatory backdrop in the U.K. Pete will talk you through our financial performance. I'll update you on how we're progressing against our strategic priorities, and we'll finish with an overview of our AI strategy, which is becoming a core part of how we compete. After that, we'll open up to the floor for questions. Trainline is Europe's number one rail app, built on a market leading customer experience.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Our core purpose is to empower greener travel choices, and each of the three business units is a leader in its market segment with clear opportunities to scale. In the U.K., we are the number one travel app. We are helping to grow the rail market and increasing the value of our 18 million customer base. In International, we are the largest rail aggregator in Europe. We will deploy our proven aggregation playbook across France, Italy and Spain. Markets expected to be worth EUR 23 billion by 2030, including EUR 12 billion on aggregated high speed routes. In Trainline Partner Solutions, we have the leading B2B rail platform across the U.K. and Europe, which now generates over GBP 1 billion of net ticket sales. We plan to grow further into the EUR 6 billion business travel opportunity in European rail.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

This year, we've made strong progress in each of our business units. In the U.K., we've delivered growth while strengthening customer engagement through new rail disruption features and digital railcards. In international, our aggregation playbook drove positive momentum in the Southeast France following Trenitalia's expansion. In Trainline solutions, B2B sales grew strongly, particularly in Europe. We delivered robust net ticket sales and revenue, as well as double-digit growth in profitability. We've delivered strong EPS growth, further accelerated by ongoing share buybacks. Before I hand over to Pete, let me update you on the U.K. regulatory and industry backdrop. A key focus for investors in the U.K. is the U.K. government's intention to launch GBR online retail, its consolidated app and website, as well as the design of the future retail market. In November, the government published the output of its GBR consultation.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

This included plans to develop, for the first time, a code of practice owned and managed by the independent regulator, the ORR. This will codify how GBR should interact with third-party retailers. In December, the government published pre-tender documentation outlining procurement plans for the launch of GBR online retail. It included a stated aim to award a contract by January 2027. The tender process has yet to begin. We'll engage positively with both processes and maintain our assertive stance with government deliver on its commitment to a fair, open and competitive retail market. Today there are instances where operators self-preference their own retail channels. Through our sustained engagement, we are making progress to remove these instances. The government has confirmed our access to all temporary fares and granted our ability to advertise in stations and on trains.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Furthermore, in March, they announced that once GBR is established, passengers will be able to claim Delay Repay compensation from wherever they purchase their ticket, including through Trainline. This was a meaningful step forward. However, it will take some time for this change to come into effect, so Delay Repay remains a pain point for our customers. Similarly, we remain unable to offer customers access to train operator loyalty schemes. We continue to engage government stakeholders and the wider industry to remove examples where we are discriminated against.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

We're also engaging with the industry to protect and grow the U.K. rail market. We are trialing our Digital Pay-As-You-Go technology with East Midlands Railway. Our technology is performing strongly, and we've received excellent customer feedback. The trial is due to end in the summer, and we'll look to update you thereafter. We continue to take steps to protect industry revenue by blocking fraudulent processes and refunds, and we're sharing data with operators to enhance their revenue protection while assisting their fraud prevention measures. With that, I'll hand over to Pete to talk through our financial performance.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Thanks, Jody. Good morning, everyone. Before I step into the financial performance for the group, let's briefly unpack the performance of each of our business units. Starting first with U.K. consumer, net ticket sales grew 6% to GBP 4.1 billion. This reflected market recovery within the commuter segment in the first half, as well as growth in leisure travel sales. Growth slowed in the second half, reflecting the impact of Project Oval, as well as operators self-preferencing their own retail channels with features such as one-click Delay Repay. Turning next to international, where we maintained a disciplined focus on our core markets. Net ticket sales grew 3% to GBP 1.1 billion. We saw strong momentum on newly aggregated routes in Southeast France.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Growth in Spain moderated, reflecting a more balanced approach to growth and profitability, as well as a series of tragic rail accidents, the impact of which is ongoing. In foreign travel, growth re-accelerated to 5% in the second half as we lapped the headwind from changes to Google search results page. As a reminder, Google made a series of changes that suppressed organic results while increasing the prominence of paid ads. This disproportionately affected foreign travel sales, which rely more heavily on web acquisition. Growth rates varied across our international markets as we prioritized marketing investment on routes with carrier competition. Starting with Spain and Southeast France, which together represent 22% of international net ticket sales, growth was up 9%. Elsewhere in France and in Italy, growth was more modest, up 2%.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

These markets account for around two-thirds of international net ticket sales and are expected to benefit from an expansion of carrier competition in the coming years. Germany and the rest of Europe declined 6% as we prioritized our core markets, with these regions representing longer-term growth opportunities. Overall our international business is becoming increasingly profitable. It's benefiting from higher margin foreign travel, strong growth in ancillary revenue, and disciplined marketing investment, including in Spain as we balance growth and profitability. Two years ago, our international business broke even on a pre-transaction fee basis, and in the year ahead, we expect international to break even on a headline post-transaction fee basis. Now turning to Trainline solutions. Net ticket sales grew 14% to GBP 1.1 billion. Growth was led by B2B distribution, which grew 36%. This reflected new and expanding travel management company partnerships.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

It was particularly evident in Europe, where B2B sales through our Global API grew 58%. Sales growth was partly offset by the loss of Trainline's white label contract with U.K. rail operator CrossCountry, and we expect the loss of our ScotRail contract this year as they seek a different partnership to better align their online and offline sales. In the long run, the rail industry anticipates that operator apps and websites will be replaced by GBR online retail. Bringing this together, group net ticket sales grew 7% to GBP 6.3 billion. Revenue grew 2% to GBP 453 million, given the reduction in the U.K. commission rate. Gross profit was up 6% to GBP 374 million, outpacing revenue growth.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

This reflected lower cost of sales given step reductions in U.K. industry costs and group-wide efficiency savings in customer service and payment processing. We continue to drive strong cost discipline across the business. Our cost-to-income ratio reduced 4 points to 70%. This represents operating leverage, cost optimization in the prior year, and ongoing cost discipline. Importantly, these efficiencies have more than offset the impact of the U.K. commission rate reduction. As a result adjusted EBITDA grew 11% to GBP 177 million, outpacing revenue and net ticket sales growth and landing within our previously upgraded guidance range. We continue to execute our share buyback program at pace, supported by strong cash generation. Since September 2023, we have repurchased GBP 294 million of our shares, equivalent to 23% of issued share capital.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Upon completion of our current GBP 150 million program, we will have returned a total of GBP 350 million to shareholders over a three-year period. Together with strong earnings growth, this has driven a significant increase in earnings per share. EPS has more than quadrupled over the past three years with a compound annual growth rate of 62%. Altogether, I'm pleased with our performance, particularly the strong earnings growth and cash generation. Looking forward, we see opportunities for growth alongside some near-term headwinds. In the year ahead, we expect net ticket sales of around GBP 6.2 billion-GBP 6.45 billion, revenue of around GBP 440 million-GBP 455 million, and EBITDA of around 2.9% of net ticket sales, which would represent a 10 basis point increase reflecting the benefit of international consumer breaking even. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Jody.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Thanks, Pete. Let's now talk about the progress we're making against our strategic priorities. We are the U.K.'s number one travel app. Our app is designed to meet the everyday needs of rail users. Rail is a high-frequency mode of transport, but booking can be complicated and travelers often face journey disruption. Our app provides end-to-end booking flow and travel companion features that support customers on the go.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

It has become central to our customer experience and our core customer touch point. In fact, the app is used for over 90% of our customer transactions in the U.K. Our U.K. customer flywheel is strengthening the competitive position of our app. It focuses on unlocking value, solving customer needs, building loyalty, and increasing engagement. Let's look at some examples from the year. In terms of solving customer needs, this year we launched AI-powered disruption features in the app, helping customers navigate the rail network.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

They include Travel Forecast, our AI travel assistant, and Delay Repay notifications. We supported the launch with a targeted brand campaign highlighting a better way to train for our customers. I'll talk more about these features later in the AI section. Trainline has cultivated strong brand affinity with customers over many years. We are the most trusted brand in U.K. rail retailing, and our brand consideration significantly outperforms all other rail retailers.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

This has supported Trainline's continued growth in the U.K., even in the face of strong competition, and it's becoming increasingly important in an AI-driven search world. We are scaling in-app railcards as a way to drive customer engagement. We've enhanced upselling within the booking flow, highlighting to customers how much they could save by buying a railcard alongside their ticket. We've improved the renewals process too. As a result, we now have 2.7 million digital railcard users, up 16%. We're gaining good traction with younger cohorts. Our share of the 16 to 30-year-old railcard segment has now increased to 45%. This is driving greater customer engagement, with railcard users transacting four times more often than non-railcard holders. We increasingly focus on growing our ancillary products and services.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

This year, we delivered strong double-digit growth in hotel bookings and insurance sales, having enhanced their prominence within the app. This includes visually engaging placements as well as improved benefit-led copy for our insurance products. We'll continue to broaden our ancillary products, testing adjacent services like car hire and investing behind those we see resonating with our customers. We are taking steps to enhance advertisements within the app. We are shifting from traditional ad placements to integrated, targeted, and contextual advertising through the customer journey. This improves relevance for our customers and effectiveness for our partners. Now, turning to international, where we are positioning ourselves as the aggregator of choice ahead of the next wave of liberalization, increasing our focus on foreign travel and driving improved profitability. Starting first with Southeast France, where Trenitalia significantly expanded their services this year. As the region liberalized, we rolled out our aggregation playbook.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

We leveraged our highly rated mobile app to showcase all the fares from high-speed carriers. We launched Sponsored Search, a paid service that allows carriers to increase their prominence within our search function. We deployed features to unlock value for customers, like TopCombo, which allow customers to stitch together different carriers for return and multi-leg journeys. We've also resumed brand marketing in Southeast France. Through innovative campaigns and sponsorship deals, we've increased brand awareness to 50% across Paris, Lyon, and Marseille. As a result, we've grown net ticket sales by 26% in the region. Our success in Southeast France builds on the aggregation playbook that we refined in Spain over recent years. As a result of our investment, we've significantly scaled net ticket sales. This has given us considerable lead versus other market aggregators.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

While we continue to see runway for further growth in Spain, this year we evolved our approach to strike more of a balance between growth and profitability. We are normalizing brand investment while placing more emphasis upon customer engagement and monetization. As a result, Spain's EBITDA took a big step towards break even in the second half of the year prior to recent rail disruption. Spain and Southeast France represented the first wave of carrier competition in Europe. We're now preparing for the second wave, which will sweep across Italy and the rest of France. This is set to commence from late 2027, with SNCF's entry into Italy, followed by several new entrants launching in France from 2028 onwards. This includes Velvet, Le Train, and Ilisto, who are due to launch domestic services, and Trenitalia and Virgin Trains, who are due to launch services between London and Paris.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

The second wave of carrier competition in Europe will open a considerably larger market for Trainline over the coming years. By 2030, the French and Italian rail markets are set to be worth around EUR 20 billion, EUR 10 billion of which will be from aggregated high-speed routes. The market opportunity from newly aggregated routes may expand further. News flow last week suggested that from 2028, Italian operator Italo are planning to launch high-speed services in Germany, one of the largest rail markets in Europe. Foreign travel represents a large and attractive growth opportunity. It comprises global customers from the U.S., U.K., and the rest of the world traveling in Europe by rail, alongside intra-EU cross-border travel. The foreign travel market in Europe today is estimated to be around EUR 4 billion, so offers significant headroom for growth.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Foreign travel provides favorable economics with a less price-elastic customer base and a greater skew towards long-distance travel. It's also a higher margin business, generating double-digit revenue take rates, given higher attach rates for ancillary products and carriers willing to pay higher commission rates for inbound customers. As a result foreign travel is a major contributor towards international profitability. We see signals of generative AI playing an increasing role for foreign travel, given its ability to inspire travel plans and compress research time. Trainline is the early market leader in GEO, which currently contributes around 3% of new foreign travel customers. Foreign travel is an area of competitive advantage for Trainline. We combine broad inventory coverage, including recently onboarding Poland and Ireland, alongside helpful travel content to inspire customers' travel plans.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

That's delivered through our market-leading user experience, offering a wide range of features tailored to international travelers, such as multi-language support, flexible payment options, and consistent post-sale support, so foreign travelers can plan, book, and manage their journey seamlessly and with confidence. Moving on to Trainline Partner Solutions, our fastest-growing business unit, which now generates over GBP 1 billion in net ticket sales. Business travel is our main growth opportunity here and represents over 50% of Trainline Partner Solutions sales. This is primarily generated through our B2B distribution business and our own branded channels. B2B distribution allows travel management companies and other business travel platforms to offer rail tickets to their respective customers. We increasingly support our partners to sell tickets from multiple European carriers as well, diversifying ourselves into a truly international business.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

They can do all through one simple seamless connection, our Global API, rather than tackle the complexity of connecting to multiple different carriers. As a result, international B2B distribution grew 58%. Trainline branded business travel also performed well too. We invested to improve the experience for users and client companies over the past few years, now serve over 35,000 business customer clients, an increase of 47% year-on-year. Let's now move on to AI, which is rapidly becoming a core capability for Trainline, powering our product, our distribution, and how we operate. Before we start, it's worth spending a minute discussing the barriers to AI disintermediation. Rail retailing is inherently complex. Customers expect a simple, consistent, and reliable user experience with end-to-end transaction capability from search, to purchase, to post-sales.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

That's across multiple carriers with all fares, ticket types, and rail cards available. With no GDS for rail, online retailers must deeply integrate into a wide array of carrier APIs to offer full functionality. Those carrier APIs are non-public, so the retailer needs commercial relationships and accreditations with those carriers supported by bonding obligations. This complexity creates a clear barrier to disintermediation. That's exacerbated by the relatively low commission rates offered by carrier partners. In that context, we see AI as less of a threat, more of an opportunity. We've been on the front foot for a number of years, building our foundational investment in data and our broad application in machine learning. Our strategy centers on bringing AI capabilities to rail around three core areas: AI-powered products and features, extending distribution through emerging AI channels, and AI-enabled acceleration across the group.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Let's discuss each area in turn. We increasingly use AI together with industry and first-party data to enhance the user experience of our app. This is reflected in our new rail distribution disruption features, which are underpinned by our scalable multi-agent AI system. To bring our AI disruption features to life, let's take the example of Callum, a Trainline customer who has booked the 9:30 A.M. LNER train from London to Edinburgh. Unfortunately, there's disruption elsewhere on the rail network. Our Travel Forecast feature notifies Callum that his journey is likely to be affected, estimating his train will arrive in Edinburgh an hour later than scheduled. This feature is powered by our proprietary algorithms trained on complex datasets. As a Trainline customer, Callum gets more accurate real-time insights.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Travel Forecast also provides a map view interface powered by our Signalbox technology, so customers can see the location of their train in real time. Since launch, Travel Forecast deliver updates to over three million users. Given the expected delay, Callum consults the Trainline Assistant, our in-app conversational support feature. It provides real-time travel advice, giving Callum options for alternative trains he can take. It offers agentic refund processing, allowing Callum to get his money back at the click of a button. Our AI assistant has handled over two million conversations since launch, reducing workloads for our customer services team. Callum decides to stick with his original booking. As predicted, his train arrives in Edinburgh an hour late, and Callum receives a Delay Repay notification.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Trainline's AI system identifies the delay, calculates he's entitled to compensation of GBP 37, and provides a punch-out to LNER's website to complete the claim. Since launch, we've redirected over one million customers to complete their claim. Moving on to emerging AI channels, which serve a new way for Trainline to attract customers and drive incremental demand. We've made a strong start, we are showing clear leadership in GEO. In fact, we're the most cited rail app in Google AI search in all core markets, as well as in ChatGPT across all but one core market. This reflects our strength in SEO and the power of our brand. Building on this progress, we've recently integrated the Trainline app within ChatGPT. Users can now seamlessly search for routes and compare options, all within a conversational interface before completing their booking with Trainline.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

While we've made good early progress, GEO still represents relatively low levels of sale traffic, making up less than 1% of new customers within international. As mentioned earlier, though, it's playing more of a role in foreign travel. Moving on to AI-enabled acceleration, driving faster execution, greater agility, and more scalable innovation across the group. Our software development teams increasingly use AI to code, as well as to accelerate auxiliary tasks like updating documentation, generating tests, and reviewing code. Their focus is increasingly shifting towards AI agents, moving from experimentation to scaling agent capabilities. In marketing, AI agents now generate around 20% of our in-house studio content, creating and applying imagery and copywriting that's aligned to Trainline brand. This enable us to scale the production of performance marketing ads to 19x our previous output using traditional design methods.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

In customer service, we'll soon roll out voice AI in partnership with ElevenLabs to progressively automate inquiry handling. We've also introduced Zendesk, a new CRM system providing AI agent tools and language translation. Taking all of this together, AI is enhancing our product, expanding our distribution, and increasing the velocity at which we execute. Before we open the floor for questions, let me summarize the key takeaways from today's presentation. This year, we have delivered a robust operating performance, double-digit growth in EBITDA, and a significant increase in earnings per share. We've maintained our assertive stance with the U.K. government to deliver on their commitment to a fair, open, and competitive retail market. We've made strong progress against our strategic priorities. In U.K. consumer, we are strengthening our app proposition while deepening engagement with our 18 million customers.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

In international consumer, we are positioning ourselves as the aggregator of choice ahead of the next wave of liberalization, increasing our focus on foreign travel, and driving improved profitability with the business set to break even this year. In Trainline Partner Solutions, we continue to grow business travel sales within B2B distribution, enabling partners to expand their rail offering across Europe. Finally, we're increasingly leveraging AI to power our products and services, extend our distribution, and accelerate our execution. Thank you very much for listening. I'll now open the floor for questions. Raise your hand if you'd like to ask. When asking, please state your name and your organization.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Start down the front, please, Jules. Maybe Tim, can you?

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you. Good morning. Thanks. Good morning. It's Tim Ramskill from Bank of America. I'm gonna try and tackle three, if that's okay. Just firstly, in terms of the guidance for 2027, and specifically with regard to NTS, there's obviously a lot of moving parts, whether that's overall self-preferencing kind of dynamics. I guess if you think about it long term, you've pretty much always grown ahead of the market. It's likely that in 2027 that might not be the case. Just your observations around how much of that kind of guidance you think is a reflection of known factors like Oval versus kind of that slipping, slippage in market share.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Secondly, in terms of international, obviously very encouraging to see the guidance around break even. What do you think the key drivers of that are gonna be to get from the, you know, GBP 11 million of loss to flat? How much of that's likely to be marketing expenses or other cost actions versus growth in revenues? And then thirdly, you obviously referenced the kind of the TopCombo product in international, which I guess is effectively the same as SplitSave. Just interested to know, are the kind of consumer saving opportunities kind of very similar to what we see here in the U.K., or do they differ?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. Thank you very much for the questions. I think we'll be tag teaming through these ones. Pete, do you wanna start with the guidance up front and then I'll take the other two?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Certainly. Inevitably U.K. consumer is a significant driver in the overall guidance, and the way I think about it is there are some nearer term headwinds that will affect this year, and we've been talking about them for a while, but they unwind over time. The expansion of Oval will eventually cease. There's a little bit more to go. We're what, halfway through or so. The rail fares have been frozen this year. Our base case is that won't extend beyond March 2027. That will again provide some uplift going forwards. Finally, the self-preferencing. I think the Delay Repay announcement that we had a month ago or so is clearly a good step forwards.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

We don't have that API available today, so we aren't able to wire it in, but the direction of intent is clear, and I do think we will resolve these issues that we've flagged. Those all unwind. Then, you know, looking beyond that, there'll be a moment when we are seeing the GBR shutting down other websites and apps, and that will present an opportunity for us to acquire customers that are then in the market. Of course, with Digital Pay-As-You-Go, we've also created a seed here that could flourish as well. In the longer term, I do see opportunity for further growth, but these headwinds remain with us in the meantime.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. Thanks, Pete. Just to kind of add there, I mean, in terms of where the question is going, absolutely you see these things, over the next couple of years that they lap through. Then we're pretty well positioned going forward vis-a-vis the competition. Worth sort of picking that up. We don't see particular growth from those third-party players in terms of the market. Our sort of primary competition effectively remains the 14 different TOC operators, where a number of those, as we've discussed, have got this self-preferencing, which will be phased out. Then we'll be competing on a kind of level playing field with them.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Coming to your second question on international profitability, look, I think the drivers there really have been this very strong growth we have seen over the last three or four years, which is great. As we look forward there, part of that story is foreign travel, which continues to be a nice growth driver, temporarily impacted by what's going on in the kind of Middle East right now, but that's a relatively small part. We see the kind of appetite for cross-border travel increasing, and you can see new services launching, and we see, you know, opportunity there which helps drive profitability going forward as scale does.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Where we're going on to the marketing point here, I think the way to sort of frame this around Spain is we had a launch period, and as a reminder, we were starting from pretty much zero brand awareness in Spain. That ultimately meant that we had to come out with a strong kind of above the line campaign supported by the usual below the line to get our brand awareness at the point that we had all operators launching on all routes over a pretty short period of time. Having kind of worked through that, we're now by a distance the number one third party player, and we've moved to this kind of position of optimization of that spend having got our leadership position. In France and Italy, we already have that leadership position.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

We already have we shared strong brand awareness. We will invest going forward as it makes sense in a kind of hub and spoke way. You know, in France, of course, we'll invest in Paris, but we'll also invest in the cities where the new operators are going, for example, Bordeaux, when Velvet launches. That will be much more targeted than it was in Spain where we kind of did a whole country at once. We will kind of keep disciplined around that. If really big opportunities arise, we've said before we would lean in behind those as it required. For now, we've kind of got this transition year where we think we're in pretty good shape. To your final question on TopCombo versus SplitSave in the U.K.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yeah, they're slightly different in that SplitSave is really arbitraging the, if you like, the U.K. rail pricing system. TopCombo is really doing a kind of a level above that by taking two different operators and putting those pricing together. You're right, the spirit is helping the customer find value through the inherent complexity of rail. The more carriers that launch, the more of those kind of opportunities become available, and the more rail cards we were on in these markets, the more we're able to kind of support an advance purchase and help customers understand how to navigate, the more we see value for growth in those markets. Yes, and we keep finding those new areas to invest behind.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Bringing TopCombo to life has been one of the kind of compelling points for customers. Thanks for the questions.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Just clarify the.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Get the mic turned on again, mate.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Just wanted to clarify on the point around international-

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yep

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

...breakeven. I recognize you wanna kind of keep options open in terms of what comes next. Are you confident that once you get to breakeven you'll stay above that level?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think our position is at the current, in the current setup, we would say that's right. If a new opportunity comes in in France, and we see multiple carriers launch and it makes sense in that year to kind of go harder with top line marketing, then we would go and invest behind those. We're not constrained by that. The underlying market, which I think is where the underlying business, where the question's going, we feel good about where that's headed. Yes.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Great. Gareth, please. Thank you.

[Gareth Davis, Analyst at Deutsche Numis]

Morning. Gareth Davis, Deutsche Numis. Just following on really from the guidance question again and trying to dig a little more on self-preferencing. If we were to sort of hit the bottom end of the guidance range on revenue, does that assume a meaningful kind of pick up in the impact of self-preferencing? Just trying to really get a context of how big a headwind you're facing from that and what your sort of fear is there. Secondly, just on white label, the pre-close flagged a couple of white labels sort of rolling off. Can you just talk around any potential timeline for other roll-offs or possible roll-offs? In the international white label, what kind of opportunity, if any, are you seeing there at the moment?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Pete, do you wanna pick up the first?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

So as ever at a group level, there are a number of factors for the guidance range. Self-preferencing is one moving part, but there are others. If I think about the foreign travel impact that we're seeing, it's unclear at the moment how the macro backdrop will evolve and what impact that might be. I think we've got first order effects, which are about travel plans and their disruption, particularly from travelers coming from east towards west.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

You know, if there are impacts on jet fuel availability and prices, then that could extend to Western or South American travelers into Europe as well. Spain is another moving part here. You know, we had a, after these accidents, a significant dip in demand. That has somewhat recovered and moderated, but is still year-on-year negative. That exactly how that unfolds and rolls forwards. It's not just the U.K. that is driving this, there are other factors as well.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Do you just briefly wanna speak to the white label when I'm finished on the international part?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah, certainly. We've had these two white label contracts, each with their individual backdrop. One was around the group, owning group wanting to consolidate their supply base. Then ScotRail, as I said, are looking to consolidate their online and offline and wanting a different partnership for that. Our base case on the go forwards is that these will run until the point at which the government turns off these websites and apps. At that point, of course, the contract will cease. That's how I am thinking about it. Then international white label?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yeah. I think on international, that's not a focus for us at the moment. There aren't really the same sort of size operators that we have in the U.K. which we're uniquely positioned for. That's not the priority. However, I would say we are seeing within solutions business very strong demand, as I outlined in the speech, around our broader distribution business. That is ramping up very, very nicely with quite a lot stacked back that we can see over the next few years. This is not kind of a one-off coming through as further businesses will integrate, and then we grow them once they are integrated. Next question.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Great. Ed. Thank you.

[Ed Young, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you. Ed Young from Morgan Stanley. Two questions. First, sorry to labor it on NTS growth guidance. On international, you mentioned there the moving parts. I wondered if you could be specific about the assumptions you've embedded in recovery in Spain and in international travel, given you mentioned that, some of those lines just reopened. The impact's been significant. International's obviously uncertainty in terms of forecasting. Are you expecting this to recover this year fully, within the year? How are you thinking about it within the guidance construct? Second of all, with Digital Pay-As-You-Go, you were probably given the most complex trial area. How is that going? Can you give some color on it, and how should we think about the next steps following this round of trials ending in the summer?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. I'll take the second one first, and give some thoughts on the first and pass to Pete. Digital Pay-As-You-Go trial is going, performing very well. We've been really impressed with the technology and kind of proven to ourselves and the industry that we can stand that up. And with the feedback from customers, from the media and from the kind of industry/government has been really encouraging. I think we're putting the government in a place now where they can understand what this technology can do. It's really groundbreaking. For them to begin to work through how they would want to take it forward. Look, I don't think it'd be crazy to expect the trial potentially would continue, as the government think through how it might want to expand it. We're feeling good there.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

We'll kind of come back post-trial and explain where we've got to on that. Let me give you the high level on kind of international and recovery and Pete can speak to any specific points on guidance. Spain, obviously, those tragic incidents, we saw a very significant jump off in the sort of weeks after that, and we're now seeing that it's still down but more kind of contained. I would expect, you know, to see a full recovery, within, you know, probably by the end of the year. It's obviously kind of hard to gauge that. Just to speak to the broader point on international travel, we obviously don't know what the inbound piece looks like.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

There's a number of scenarios, and I think Pete spoke to the kind of within the jaws got to be able to handle those of guidance. Underlying it's very encouraging. You know, we spoke kind of a year or so ago about some of the headwinds we'd had within Google Search. We are seeing those headwinds have effectively stopped and to some degree, a little bit of a tailwind there. Then we spoke to what that looks like within the kind of the more broader LLM platform. We are seeing just a little bit of goodness there coming through, and it speaks to our opportunity there if they do indeed grow going forward. Pete, do you want to add anything on the kind of guidance specifics?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Only really to frame this somewhat as a transitional year. You heard Jody talk about, you know, wave one of aggregation has completed. There is a wave two on the horizon and that will come. The trains are bought, and the safety certificates are being processed, if you like. At the moment, it's adjusting our playbook for the landscape we find, pulling back a little bit, focusing a bit more on profitability and, of course, there's a balance on growth there too.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. Alastair?

[Alastair Reid, Analyst at Investec]

Thanks. Alastair Reid, Investec. Couple from me. You obviously talked about the expansion of the Oyster zone with Project Oval. I think there's been some indications that TfL might be looking at sort of introducing some barcodes. Talk about, you know, the opportunity potentially for you to get into the Oyster zone and how you might think about the opportunity that you'd have if that were to happen. Then secondly, you touched on it in a couple of areas, things like sort of ancillaries and, you know, really strong growth in business clients. How do you think about the future runway for both of those areas? Thank you.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yep. Thank you. Look, I think early days to speculate on barcodes in Oval, but we kind of noticed that as well. I think, we think the future is ultimately the kind of Digital Pay-As-You-Go scheme. If those gate lines ultimately allow barcodes, then that would realize or allow the realization of that vision. There's probably quite a long way before that will actually happen and reasonable amount of CapEx spend on TfL's part. Won't speculate now, but I do think as we look at the future of what this could hold, that's an important part of the jigsaw to come through. It's good to see that it's being talked about.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think on the ancillary products, I'll give quick thoughts on it and pass to Pete. I think the, you know, high level what we're seeing is that we have a very, you know, 18 million customers in the U.K. They are interested in buying other things, and that's what we've proved to ourselves over the last couple of years. Hotels, insurance are the obvious places, and we're seeing that we're getting really good kind of endemic ads and the quality of the ad partners that we've got now is really premium top tier.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

You know, we need to, as ever, this is a playbook that others have done, you know, over the last 10+ years. We need to develop the placements and the targeting that allow them to be able to realize their campaigns, and it allows us to push up the value we get from them. So we're encouraged by, you know, where that goes. So that's very encouraging. I don't know, Pete, if you want to speak to any specifics on businesses more broadly.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah, the ancillary is certainly an opportunity, even within, say, insurance, like fine-tuning, exploring what other products might work. We are testing out this idea of a Trainline Flex product, which combines the, you know, tickets that are available with some flexibility and the insurance around it and how we package that up. I still think there's optimization to do in these areas and further to expand. Yeah, it's interesting to explore that. Then you also asked about the kind of business customer and how we serve them. Look, I think their challenges are much the same as a consumer traveler. We continue to explore how we can best solve some of those.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

At the moment, the API is principally around the transaction and delivering a ticket. That doesn't mean that over time we can't package up other aspects of our proposition in some way or other and to find ways to serve them. In particular in Europe, you know, the growth is fundamentally driven by the fragmentation of the supply and trying to draw that together. Again, as a traveler, not only to buy your ticket, there are opportunities to explore that. Yeah, I think that's an interesting customer set to further explore. Lara, in the middle.

[Lara Simpson, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you. Morning, it's Lara Simpson from JPMorgan. I also just wanted to come back to the guidance and the outlook on profitability. Obviously, we're getting small upgrades, which is driven by international. It feels like there's a small inherent downgrade in the U.K. consumer profitability outlook. Could we just talk a bit about incremental costs that you're expecting to face from costs around GBR Public Affairs there? Are we likely to see a step-up in marketing in the U.K. as we move to GBR standing?

[Lara Simpson, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Just some movement perhaps there I think would be helpful. Maybe one just on capital allocation. I know we still have some way to go on the buyback, GBP 150 million share buyback. Maybe on a 12 to 18-month view, how are you thinking about organic investment needs for the business or any inorganic opportunities we should start to think about? Otherwise, could we expect to see a reload on the share buyback from a midterm perspective? Thank you.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. Thanks for the question. Let me sort of talk more broadly about GBR, and then Pete can pick up on specific guidance and capital allocation. In terms of timelines of what GBR, how we expect that to play out, I think from the kind of app point of view or the delivery of that, the procurement process hasn't started yet, so it begins to look ambitious that that would be awarded before, you know, spring 2027 perhaps, and then for whoever wins it to actually bring the GBR app to life is probably early 2028, probably at the earliest, and these things do have a habit of slipping, and then we expect there to be dual running.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

If there's 14 different TOC apps that need to be consolidated, that's likely to happen through 2028. We're obviously We've got lots of time here. This is very well understood in terms of the opportunity we see. To where you're going on the marketing question, at the right moment, yes. Like, if we feel it's appropriate, we potentially will spend up to acquire what we think is, you know, quite a potentially uplift in number of customers, which is pretty interesting to us because the old app will turn off and the new app will come on. We'll look pretty hard at that, and we've got time to prepare for it. Pete, do you wanna speak to any specific guidance points on the capital allocation?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah. No, I think you've got the right ingredients there. We are certainly taking a step forwards in profitability in international, and that supports the group overall. Our cost optimization program that we delivered 18 months ago, I guess now, that's washed through. Yes, there are some additional costs. You know, this is a once in a generation shift for GBR, really changing the backdrop of the U.K. industry. You know, it's important that we are appropriately advised as we engage with the governments and other stakeholders through this transition. You know, those costs, there were some last year, there will be some this year.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

At some point they will drop away and there will be a kind of a new landscape that will be there, and we'll take the benefit when we reach that point. You asked about capital allocation as well. Certainly on the organic side, we will ensure that we're well-funded. We have the cash flows to do this. And as Jody's articulated, there will be moments potentially in the U.K., potentially in international, where we'll lean further in on the marketing side. From an inorganic perspective, we do the homework.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

There aren't that many opportunities out there, though, and so, not expecting that won't necessarily see that much there, but we will keep that under review. Thereafter, you know, returning capital to shareholders, we've really favored the buyback to date. We like the flexibility it offers. Nothing new to announce right now. I expect this program to run through to September, all other things being equal, and we'll provide more color then.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Hi. Sean at the back.

[Sean Kealy, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Morning, everyone. Sean Kealy from Panmure Liberum. Thank you for taking questions, Jody and Pete. I've got just a couple today. First of all, Jody, you mentioned Italo potentially launching in Germany from 2028. I was wondering if you could just remind us of what the landscape currently looks like in Germany. I think you had that legal case in the past with Deutsche Bahn. I just appreciate an update on how things stand there. Secondly, I think at the back of partway through the RNS, you talked about the proposed Mobility Package in Europe, and that this may force talks to sell each other's cross-border tickets. I appreciate it's all really nebulous at this stage. It's just a proposal from the European Commission. You've got the tripartite, lots of different bodies that get to weigh in.

[Sean Kealy, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Can you just maybe give us a bit more color on how you're expecting that to unfold, timeline, and maybe even if you, if you have any detail on what level of support that currently has with the other bodies as well? Then thirdly, this is just, this is probably a smaller question. I think it's the first time U.K. rail fares have been frozen in some time. Are you guys or have you seen so far any level of sort of volume stimulation from that price freeze? Appreciate the price freeze means the price just hasn't changed, would you normally expect a short, a small drop-off or something like that? Just interested on that. Thank you.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Sure. Thanks for all of the questions there. Starting with Italo in Germany, I think that's helpful speculation is the way I'd frame it at the moment. Germany is a pretty interesting rail market for us. It's, you know, of the same scale, if not slightly larger than the U.K. and France. As we've said, Italy and France are very much the next three years where we're preparing for. I'd be surprised if Italo are able to actually launch trains in 2028. Great if they can and we can support that. As a reminder, in the German market, we don't have the brand awareness that we do in France or Italy or now Spain.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

However, we do have significant inbound traffic, which is our sort of secret source, if you like, of working with the operators 'cause we aggregate that from all the other markets in Europe and around the world. We obviously also have inbound B2B, and these are the sort of pump priming customers that make our entry into those sorts of markets, you know, pretty interesting for the operators and ourselves to start with. Over time, if should that happen in Germany, which I absolutely expect it will, at some point we'd be able to deploy our sort of playbook on marketing and so forth.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think I take this as, you know, the next three years really about the markets we've identified, but it gives us real, you know, conviction that what we've said will happen throughout Europe will, and Germany's clearly the next most important market. It's encouraging to see that speculation. Yeah. In terms of the broader point around various proposals, whether they be in Brussels, or in other national markets, there's in France as well, there's potential for some form of policy that it sort of feel like forces or instructs that incumbent operators need to show inventory from other operator from the challenger brands.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think our expectation there, is that these things take real time and, you know, who knows quite how it will play out. Some of those proposals actually have, you know, pretty interesting pieces on the commission that we would get paid like a French proposal, which would be very helpful if that part came through. Exactly how they will come through, no one really knows yet. The best we can point to is what's happening in Germany with DB, where they need to show FlixTrain, and that means that they show the train service, but they don't show, and you can't transaction, actually buy the ticket 'cause it doesn't show the pricing.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

That we think is actually pretty helpful, in terms of bringing visibility to customers that they have choice and then they can come to Trainline to buy the ticket. If it was to go in a direction of actually, allowing the purchase, where we get to on that is the complexity inherent in providing, you know, multiple other carriers, and all of their tickets and all of their rail cards and, you know, that's what we do and it's taking a long time. Is the incentive structure aligned that they would do it in a way that customers would trust them?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think it's kind of pretty unlikely we'll get to that point. Look, we keep an eye on that, and we're very focused on France and how we bring that to life. Finally, in terms of U.K. rail fares and volume stimulation, it's pretty hard to assess at this early stage what that looks like. It wasn't particularly, you know, the timing of it meant there wasn't a huge amount of marketing. There was a small amount of marketing on that, but I don't think we would yet say we're seeing any kind of volume increase there.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah, the only add I'd put is that, many journeys are not discretionary, and so you don't really get signal from those. I agree with Jody, it's pretty early days, to see anything on the discretionary journeys. Of course, there are more other pressures on household wallets as well, and that's evolving and changing over time as well. Yeah, no clear signal at this point. Alastair.

[Alastair Reid, Analyst at Investec]

Thank you. If I may add one extra. Feels not been enough talked about AI, so thought I'd help. Great to hear some of your thoughts around the difficulties of disintermediation and the like. Could you perhaps just like dig into that a little bit more? I mean, in a world where the GBR existing as the train operator, how hard really is it for generically some form of agentic AI to try and get some accreditation to be able to talk to the train operator directly and not go through yourselves or even their ticket retailing app? How hard is it really to replicate things like your Signalbox technology and the like?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think the way we think about it, and I outlined it to some degree, the kind of moats we've got, we've got this sort of two moats here, which I think actually make it quite hard. There's the platform moat, which, you know, when you think, look about the money that is being moved, whether it, the GBP 4+ billion in the U.K., coupled with doing all of the carry integration and the sort of full stack platform, not just sort of showing the availability of tickets, but actually processing the ticket, issuing the ticket in real time so that people can use it, and then providing customer service. That's a pretty complex set of things that any sort of challenger would need to do, AI or not.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Then from a customer point of view, I think, you know, the 18 million customers is a heck of a distribution moat to start with in terms of brand and scale, and trust that we have there, where we're increasingly layering over a kind of verticalized AI in terms of doing that. But what I would really call out, right, we've had Uber competing in this market for four years, where they were effectively giving 10% back to Uber One customers, and I think at the launch it was 5% to any other customer, and their market share has remained, you know, around 2% or below.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Look, our job and the way we framed it internally is to use AI to drive our competitive advantage because we have scale, because we're not just doing it in the U.K., we're learning across all markets, and to do it in a way that the customers get benefit from that. Look, we're gonna be competing against GBR, and I think we would back ourselves to kind of outcompete GBR, a kind of ultimately government-sponsored rail app where we've got the talent and the scale, and we've got basically what will end up being a four or five-year head start on their jump there. We think AI will ultimately be something very much as part of our advantage in that market. James?

[James Lockyer, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thank you. Hi, it's James Lockyer here from Peel Hunt. One of the points that GBR might play on is potentially being able to offer better pricing if they're somehow able to, say, not charge a booking fee or to do some equivalent of SplitSave. Historically, you've focused on your tech being best in class as well as the incumbency, and that's why you hope to continue to win there. I wondered if you ever thought about your ability to actually be cheaper, sort of wholesale be cheaper. For example, if someone books a hotel to then not charge them a booking fee, for example. Even given your ability to forecast demand, even taking ticket inventory risk in advance at lower prices and then offering those to customers, say, even on the day at a bigger discount. Thanks.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Sure. Just to sort of speak to the high level part of the question. We expect GBR to launch without a booking fee. I think we've proven, using the Uber example, why the, you know, vast majority of customers in the U.K. have seen real value in Trainline, helping them find the cheapest ticket for what they want to do, helping them have a UX that supports them, and increasingly disruption features they are prepared to pay for. Expect us to sort of test and experiment around fee structure and what that might look like and where we're adding value, how can we kind of go there and support.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think that's, it will be an area of innovation going forward, but we're very confident in our premium position and what that will look like. In terms of the things that you kind of offer up there in terms of how we might look at pricing, I think those are very interesting areas, particularly the area around kind of hotels and putting packages together. That's an area where there's lots of innovation in other industries outside of rail, and it would seem very natural for us to do that. I think the kind of buying volume tickets and taking inventory is pretty unlikely, and certainly in the short, medium term for us. I think that's how we're kind of approaching it. Pete, any add you want to make?

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah, I think Trainline Flex, by using insurance.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yeah.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

As a product is probably. It's not necessarily cheaper per se as a headline price.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Yeah.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Ability to give customers a more expanded choice where the rail ticket is at the heart of it, but there are other flexibility options that we could build in. That could be an interesting vector that we explore further.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

I think that is all we've got time for.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

To me there's one question.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

One short, Tim.

[Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Sorry, it might be a bit of a dull one to finish on. I guess just a couple of numbersy things. There was quite a big working capital outflow. Again, just Pete, maybe just some senses to might that reverse and what was driving that. Also, you touched on kind of the regulatory spend, the cost in the U.K. Again, just looking H1, H2, admin expenses in the U.K. were, I think, GBP 8 million greater in the second half, having been pretty flat in the first half. Is that really all to do with that regulatory sort of factors at play, or is there anything else you want to call out?

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

It's going to bring us home on working capital.

[Pete Wood, CFO at Trainline]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll take the second one first. There was a balance sheet cleanup, which also fell into H2, mid-single digit GBP millions. That's another part of the equation to consider. On working capital, yeah, it's a good, it's a good question to end. The year ended on a Saturday, the credit card creditors was building. Next year it's going to end on a Sunday, it's going to be compounded again, but it is simply down to the timing effects, yeah.

[Jody Ford, CEO at Trainline]

Great. We'll finish here. That's all we've got the time for today. Thanks for all the questions and for attending today's presentation. To recap, we've had another strong year. We're making really good progress against our strategic priorities for growth, and we remain confident for the long-term growth opportunity. I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thanks, everybody.

Participants

Executives

• Jody Ford, CEO
• Pete Wood, CFO

Analysts

• Alastair Reid, Analyst at Investec
• Ed Young, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Gareth Davis, Analyst at Deutsche Numis
• James Lockyer, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Lara Simpson, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Sean Kealy, Analyst at Panmure Liberum
• Tim Ramskill, Analyst at Bank of America