We have a starter for 10 in something that I have forgotten long to update you on, only thanks to a number of messages from friends, colleagues and other bloggers across the patch yesterday. Apologies if you do not speak German, it is not a rant about how Wela Märkets pulled out of Southampton this year, but the ever closing reminder that Stagecoach is now under German ownership.
For those that did not know, or forgot to remember, Stagecoach bus was bought out by DWS Infrastructure over the summer in a deal that valued Stagecoach Bus at £595 Million. During the summer Stagecoach Group was delisted on the London Stock Exchange and with a possible wobble in the investment DWS lost around 10% of its share value across the same time.
I am not a financial speculator and I am not making any specific assertions that the two are linked.
So fast forward, and despite the fact that the Stagecoach Group is now under German ownership, every corner of Stagecoach South seems to be struggling to maintain it’s core timetabled service. Not a day goes by without cancellations to the service in Winchester, Basingstoke, Activ8 and others:
Abisolieren-Time
No. My German relies on Google Translate.
An advert has appeared in a few timelines over the last 24 hours though, and I have to thank the excellent Hants & Surrey Bus Blog for flagging it to me and I spotted it on Steven Knight Media as well; Stagecoach are starting to sell off their vintage fleet.
This, at the moment, appears to be something that is just happening across the South and South East, as all the buses are advertised as being in the South of England.
Some of these listed though, are stalwarts of the vintage scene. Stagecoach use some of them for contracts like the Goodwood Revival shuttle bus, and have used them for weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs (okay, maybe not bar mitzvahs)
What bugs me is that on the balance sheet, the buses will probably only have notional peppercorn values; so DWS must see this as being an opportunity to get money in where none theoretically exists.
So is the value of disposal considered more than the value of using them for private hires and special occasions?
I can’t say I am surprised, although at the same time it was not something I immediately thought of when I originally heard of DWS Infrastructure paying 105p a share earlier in the year. I would not be surprised though if Sir Brian Souter has had first refusal on all of these. The former Stagecoach Bus owner does have his own vintage bus collection somewhere in Scotland, although whether they are / were interchangeable with the transport group I am not sure.
If DWS Infrastructure are being this quick to strip the history of Stagecoach out from within it, I can only wonder what is to come next? I am not convinced that we are not to expect more service cuts in January although registrations should appear imminently if it was to be Monday 2nd January; and with First Solent recently announcing their pre-Christmas service uplift you would have to speculate whether this would impact anything running out of Farlington.
Are we heading straight into the vicious cycle that anything of perceived value is going to go? Leading to more shortages before the excess value is once again stripped? and then despondency and staff leaving to other, more stable operators? If any of the operators at the moment can indeed be big enough to be stable enough not to fail?