Trainline Q1 sales soar as train travel starts to recover

The rail-and-coach online travel platform said sales for the three months to May 31 rose to £334m from £79m a year ago. However, it was still well below the £906m reported in 2019 before the pandemic struck.

UK consumer net ticket sales were £237m, 269% higher year on year and 49% of the same period in the 2020 fiscal year. Net ticket sales improved week on week throughout the quarter, exiting in May at 70% of full-year 2020 levels, its highest level since pre-Covid.

Ticket volumes in May were 92% of 2020 levels as Trainline exited the quarter “a significant outperformance vs wider industry passenger volume, which was at 44% of pre-Covid levels in the month”.

Trainline said ticket sales have reached its highest level since the start of the pandemic, with U.K. consumer sales significantly outperforming the wider market.

"It's very encouraging to see people returning to train travel as lockdowns and restrictions gradually ease. By the end of May we were selling more tickets than we were in the same period two years ago," said chief executive Jody Ford.

The company saw its share price plunged last month after the UK government said it would launch its own ticket-booking app. Trainline hit back at the time, saying any competitor would take years to produce and its own product was “hard to replicate”.

Ford said he remained “confident in Trainline's long term growth prospects in the UK and across our international markets”.

“Our highly-rated mobile app delivers a simple, consistent and friction-free booking experience to a huge installed base, with over 37 million cumulative app downloads.”