(06 Jan 2022, 7:48 am)54APhotograph wrote Arriva have been on the market for three years, DB want rid of all of it, Bus, Trains the whole shooting match. The big problem is valuation. While it may look like an attractive proposition to Transdev in enthusiast eyes, it isn't. The fleet is ageing and needs massive investment, very possibly more in £s than the actual worth of the shares. Running a company down to the bone is never a good way of selling, despite that being ever so often the case.

Is the valuation argument not an old pre pandemic old one. The pandemic will definitely have put things on hold , maybe things will start moving now. 

In relation to the ageing fleet comment,   I have read in the forums that Arriva has a tendency to run its buses into the ground before replacing them.   Again, due to the pandemic, surely it would make sense to pause any investment in new buses until it could be seen what the long term effects would be. Now that we are coming out of the other end (?) we are now talking about service & PVR reductions.  In which case you have to look at the fleet of the whole group.  Fleet reductions made from the end of life buses and buses redistributed around the country.  No new buses required at the moment. No need to mothball buses that haven’t reached end of life. Maybe the potential attractive financial incentives from the government to aid post covid recovery are worth waiting for.  Surely that is financially sensible. 

There is more to the companies valuation than just buses.  There is the infrastructure and trained workforce to consider. Also the value of any contracts held, and the routes already ran. The start up costs to create a network from scratch would be prohibitively high. 

Having said all that, I won’t argue that DB are bleeding Arriva dry