(28 Jul 2014, 10:31 pm)Andreos Constantopolous wrote Champagne flavoured caviar was possibly order of the day!
Money was spent replacing assets and because of the need to gain additional investment to pay for these purchases - dividends were not only greater than in years gone by, there were more shareholders to satisfy.
The money leaving the company to these shareholders generally increases year on year.
Investment in assets or customer perks, doesn't always increase.
http://www.go-ahead.com/ir/shareholderin...d_cal.aspx
Once you invite shareholders into a company, they naturally want their investment to increase year on year.
Sometimes, a company will need additional shareholders to help the company move onto the next level and help appease the first lot.
It gets to the stage, where the second lot need appeasing after things start to stagnate - so an additional batch are asked to come on board and the cycle continues.
In the meantime, passengers are asked to contribute that little bit more, year on year - based on the grounds fuel costs are increasing - yet overall profits continue to increase, revenue increases and fuel costs decrease (£1m less in 2015 compared to 2014 as it stands) and the (local anyway) fleet decreases in size.
I am not going to suggest some of us re-assess our opinions on Go ahead's shareholders.
I will leave it up to each individual to decide.
Ahh, ignorance is bliss, isn't it?
Many of the shareholders in the transport groups are pension funds - they need cash dividends to pay out pensions. And I don't know many caviar-eating, champagne-swilling pensioners - do you?
Dipping in to profits is like dipping into your grannies' purse when she's not looking, so you can have 50p for extra sweeties that you haven't earned.
But I'm sure Andreos knows best....
