Despite sharply increased revenue, the train company MTR Express made another, heavy loss last year.
One of the reasons is that the company is not allowed to sell tickets via SJ's website, claims CEO Mats Johannesson.
”"The players who are excluded will have very high marketing costs," Johannesson tells TT.
Earlier this year, he reported the state-owned main rival to the Swedish Competition Authority, which is now investigating whether SJ is abusing its dominant position. But Johannesson would ideally like to see the government step in and force SJ to open its platform.
”"This issue can be resolved through an ownership directive. And that's actually the solution I'm hoping for."”
MTR Express has been operating on the Stockholm–Gothenburg route since spring 2015, and passengers are flocking to it: Revenues grew by 25 percent last year compared to 2016 and approached a quarter of a billion, the annual report shows.
”It's clearly going in the right direction,” says Mats Johannesson, who is also satisfied with both punctuality and customer satisfaction.
But costs are still greater than revenues. After financial items, the result was a loss of SEK 94 million, which can be compared with the loss of SEK 118 million the year before.
When asked when there will be a profit, Johannesson replies that his focus right now is for MTR Express to become "cash flow positive", that is, the income from ongoing operations should be greater than the expenses.
”"We see that we will be able to be that next year, given all the investments we are making," he says, pointing to investments in better wifi on the trains, among other things.
Next year, the company will also start operating the route between Gothenburg and Halmstad with stops in Varberg and Falkenberg, but only during the summer. But MTR wants to enter more long-distance train lines and, according to Johannesson, there are ”a handful” of routes that are interesting. He does not want to say which ones these are today.
”But it is clear that it primarily concerns the larger cities in Sweden.”
Source: TT
