Good morning and welcome to our 2023 full-year results and Q1 update. Thank you again for your understanding in waiting for this. We are pleased to have completed the supplementary inquiries around German Rail that were deemed necessary, and James will walk you through the conclusions of that and the overall group performance in a few moments. Before that, I would like to share the key messages that we have taken from what has been a more challenging 2023 than we have hoped or expected. In short, our story is one of continuing positive demand drivers, but with profit recovery and therefore reduction in net debt somewhat slower than we had hoped. Yet, 2023 has been a year in which important underlying progress has been made in the context of an evolving and challenging market where Mobico has adapted and acted decisively.
The fact that demand and revenue growth remains healthy is certainly encouraging, and we see that continuing. As well as delivering a strong new business conversion and healthy margins and robust, we're also retaining and successfully mobilizing important contracts that both drive revenues and validate our customer-centric offering. Nonetheless, financial results have been disappointing. The lag between the time when wage rates are agreed and implemented and their subsequent recovery through higher prices does have an impact on our results today, albeit those higher costs will be covered. The profile of inflationary pressure followed by pricing recovery is likely to be similar but somewhat tempered going into 2024. We'll now also absorb higher costs in relation to our German Rail business than we had previously budgeted. In that mixed environment, the actions we have taken are crucial to progress and to successfully leveraging our strengths.
New leadership in North America's school bus and in U.K., Germany have already made a notable impact. In both businesses, there is a new ambition and commercial rigor being brought to bear through a much clearer direction and leadership and stronger and more effective execution. Behind these specific pressures, it is also important to understand that our three businesses are at different stages of recovery. ALSA has produced another record result in its centenary year and is expanding its interests successfully. The team has delivered spectacularly over a number of years. North America is making real progress, having launched its most successful school year startup for many years and is already moving towards another. Transit and shuttle have been successfully combined into one operation, while also managing to navigate a sharp decline in revenue from a key technology customer, partly by establishing a presence in new segments and geographies.
UK Coach has also been encouraging, having benefited significantly from rail strikes. As we will discuss later, NXTS, which is part of UK Coach, has suffered from continuing weakness in its key markets, and the ambition is at least to stop losses during 2024. We're addressing all options to achieve that. UK Bus is refining its model to ensure our business delivers for all our stakeholders, including our shareholders, to ensure that the risk-reward balance of the model is sustainable. I'll come back to that later in the presentation. German Rail remains under pressure from what are industry-wide challenges, particularly regarding driver availability and energy cost. Our very successful Accelerate Efficiency and organizational design programs have delivered to plan in 2023 and are on track to deliver their targeted savings in 2024 and beyond.
We believe there is continued scope to address the structural cost base of some operations further and thus the launch of Accelerate 2.0. Markets constantly evolve, and we need to be leading ahead of those changes, and that's another reason why management changes were so important and why they have already made such a big difference. Preparations for the sale of the North American School Bus division are progressing well. Key outcomes which underpin the continued recovery in that division, such as the result of the current bid season, the level of agreed rate increases across the contract portfolio, and further progress on driver recruitment will be known by the end of the bidding season. We have taken the conscious decision that this will be the optimal time to run a process and crystallize value with a view to conclude the process by the end of the year.
Finally, for now, we will describe how full-year 2024 Adjusted Operating Profit is now expected to be between GBP 185 million and GBP 205 million, and why the Q1 trading performance supports that outlook. With that, I'll hand over to James to walk you through more of the detail.
Thanks, Ignacio.
Okay. Thanks, Ignacio. Good morning. The story of this year is a group with passenger growth and pricing really driving the top line, but we can't escape from the fact that we have a portfolio of businesses at different stages of recovery and that inflation has not yet been fully recovered. So while revenues grew by over GBP 340 million or 12%, we saw adjusted operating profit reduce by GBP 29 million on prior year. This is the net result of significant benefits from pricing and volume and the in-year benefits from our Accelerate Restructuring program not being enough to fully offset both a reduction in COVID funding of over GBP 100 million and inflationary cost increases of around GBP 130 million. Note that adjusted operating profit of GBP 169 million is after a one-time, non-cash, IFRS 15 contract asset adjustment of GBP 10 million in German Rail, which I will address later.
What's clear from these results is that costs have risen more quickly than revenues. We're beginning to address that with both pricing actions and Accelerate, and I'm confident that the actions we're taking will recover profitability in future. However, the impact of lower Adjusted Operating Profit, higher interest costs of approximately GBP 25 million, and an increased effective tax rate has resulted in a reduction in earnings per share of GBP 0.105-GBP 0.045. Free Cash Flow remained healthy and broadly stable on prior year, and net debt was also stable, although Covenant Gearing increased as a result of reduced EBITDA to 3.0x but still well within our covenant test limit of 3.5x. ROCI was down slightly on prior year at 7%. Although significant progress has been made with new wins, as Ignacio will discuss later, we need to see profits on our existing portfolio increase.
On a statutory basis, the group's operating loss was better than the prior year because, as expected, there was no impairment charge for Alsa this year. However, statutory profits continue to be impacted by restructuring charges and the impact of onerous contract provisions. So this slide sets out in more detail the big building blocks of the movement in adjusted EBIT from GBP 197 million in 2022 to GBP 169 million in 2023. Working from left to right, the first orange block shows the reduction in COVID funding of GBP 105 million. Now, this has been more than offset by underlying growth in the business. The next two grey bars show the operating profit impact of volume increase, essentially more passengers and increased service levels from contracted work, and the impact of pricing recoveries, which includes three main things.
First, the benefits from repricing our US school bus contracts effective from the new school year startup in September 2023 and the annualization or run rate benefits from the equivalent increases in September 2022. Second, the ticket price increases in UK bus effective from July 2023, 2023, sorry. And third, continuing effective yield management across the rest of the business but predominantly in our UK and Spanish coach operations. So pricing and volume together benefited adjusted EBIT by GBP 202 million. However, cost increases added GBP 130 million to our cost base, of which approximately 55% is driver wage inflation. We've made good progress in recovering this cost through pricing and the in-year impact of our cost reduction programs, with phase one of Accelerate delivering GBP 15 million of in-year benefit in line with our expectations.
Finally, the impact of the adjustment to the German Rail IFRS 15 contract asset in the year means that full-year EBIT of GBP 169 million was after absorbing approximately a GBP 10 million charge. Note that this charge principally relates to the impact of changes to assumptions about future profitability of our RME contract, and GBP 10 million is effectively the in-year catch-up, which we do not expect to reoccur. However, overall, there is clearly more work to do as we have not made sufficient progress to allow our strong top line growth to flow to the bottom line. So this slide shows the divisional breakout of revenue and profit performance, and I think it illustrates that we have businesses in varying states of recovery. Alsa delivered another excellent performance in its centenary year, with the business going from strength to strength.
Revenues were up 19%, an operating profit of 29% to GBP 137 million, with growth across all lines of business and with exceptional performance in long haul as the business quickly adapted to capture the benefits of multi-travel voucher and Young Summer discounts. North America saw top line growth of 7% as a result of pricing recovery and route reinstatement in school bus. Now, pricing benefited from 13% uplifts on the 40% of contracts up for renewal in the year and the annualization of the price increases pushed through in FY 2022. However, profits lagged prior year as a result of 2022 benefiting from GBP 44 million of CERTS funding. Margins for the year in North America and particularly school bus are clearly far below where we expect them to be.
But importantly, the final quarter of FY2023, which is the first quarter that benefits both from school year 2023/2024 route reinstatement and the benefits of pricing on 40% of the portfolio at the beginning of that school year, showed a significant improvement and is much more representative of our expectations for the school year 2023/2024. In fact, the improvement in Q4 was approximately $8 million net of wage increases and additional driver training costs, better compared to Q4 of 2022. That Q4 exit rate and a further expected pricing benefit of approximately $4 million for school year 2024/2025 translates into a $20 million annualized upside for financial year 2024 compared to financial year 2023, noting, of course, that the school bus business is highly seasonal.
In the U.K., we saw revenues increase by 15% as a result of passenger growth in both scheduled coach and bus, with the bus division reaching 90% of pre-COVID commercial passenger levels. However, profits in the U.K. division were down by GBP 2.1 million, impacted by a driver strike and the subsequent 16.2% driver wage settlement in UK Bus effective from January 2023 and the delay agreed with TfWM in pushing through ticket price increases, which were actually implemented in July of 2023. And finally, the continuing losses in the NXTS division. GBP 15 million of additional benefit during rail strikes in U.K. coach did mitigate that downside to some extent, however. Our German Rail division saw revenues drop by 5%, with profits down GBP 17.4 million year-on-year. And let me turn that to that now.
In Germany, the audit is now complete, and while the delay was not welcome, it was important that we had time to complete our work. As we said previously, the main reason for the delay to the audit in the context of the significant movements I will talk about in a minute was additional work required to validate that the assumptions made in prior years remained valid given what was known at the time. This work has resulted in a restatement and an increase to the prior year onerous contract provision of GBP 25 million. In addition, there was a further delay to allow time to assimilate to the impact of the German Federal Statistical Office publishing in March 2024 restated values for the years 2021 to 2023 of energy indices that are used to calculate our energy cost recoveries.
Before we come onto the financial impact, I think it's helpful to understand the commercial context. There are three main issues fundamentally impacting our German business. First, energy market volatility. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, electricity prices in Germany have been extremely volatile, peaking at over five times 2021 levels. Although our contracts are intended to provide energy price protection, the effectiveness of that protection depends on how certain published energy indices behave. In FY22, we had a good understanding of the relationship between the contract indices and the energy price. However, in late 2023, these indices started to decouple from previous expectations, resulting in lower expectations for energy cost recovery. Secondly, there's been industry-wide labor disruption to the train driver market. The rail industry in Germany is experiencing significant driver shortages that are compounded by reducing driver productivity due to adverse changes to productive hours.
This impact accelerated during the second half of 2023 with a significant increase in the activity of driver agencies who can pay drivers more while charging a premium to the operators for their supply. And third, we are seeing persistent levels of inflation in Germany. In response, we're in active discussions with our customers, the Passenger Transport Authorities or PTAs, to reduce the impact of these structural issues. And we are well progressed with our plans to recruit more drivers with a significant increase in driver training courses. I think it's important to note that the PTAs are also motivated and, in fact, contractually required to reach an equitable and sustainable solution regarding arrangements with operators. And our discussions with them have been pragmatic and constructive. So what this all means in financial terms is as follows. First, the Onerous Contract Provision in respect of RRX Lots 2 and 3.
When a contract is classified as onerous, all of the future losses have to be brought onto the balance sheet, discounted, and revalued at every reporting period. The onerous contract provision has increased to GBP 118 million from GBP 47 million restated at the end of December 2022, with a GBP 99 million charge to the profit and loss account through adjusting items. This means we expect FY24 will see a cash outflow of approximately GBP 30 million, but that this will drop thereafter to approximately GBP 11 million per annum over the remaining nine years of the contracts. In FY23, profits on our RME and RRX lot one contracts were down GBP 17 million on prior year to just above break-even. This reduction comprised two key things. First, a non-cash adjustment to the IFRS 15 contract asset of about GBP 10 million.
Now, this principally reflects impact of changes to assumptions about future profitability on that contract. And all other things being equal, we would not expect this to recur. And second, the balance of approximately GBP 7 million is the in-year impact caused by driver issues and lower energy cost recoveries. We expect the driver issues to be resolved in the main by the end of FY25, with the RME and RRX Lot 1 contracts generating a loss of approximately GBP 5 million in FY24 but returning to profitability thereafter and generating approximately GBP 20 million of profit over their remaining contract lives. Work has also been done to strengthen the financial controls in the German business. So let me turn to adjusting items. Total adjusting items had an adverse impact of GBP 190 million to our statutory operating loss in FY23.
Although this is down on prior year, this is because FY2022 was impacted by a non-cash impairment charge of GBP 260 million relating to ALSA. Now, disappointingly, the cash outflows relating to adjusting items increased to GBP 71 million in FY2023, up from GBP 49 million in prior year. If I just take the three main buckets of adjustment in turn. First, the non-cash charges are significantly down as we return to amortization of intangibles as being the main adjusting item and no repeat of the ALSA impairment. Secondly, outside of Germany, charges relating to the remeasurement of existing onerous contracts, including North America driver shortages of GBP 12 million and losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic of GBP 2.1 million, have together reduced from GBP 39 million in FY2022 to GBP 14 million in this year. We expect this to further reduce in FY2024.
However, the 2023 impact of the German rail onerous contract provision is significant, representing a GBP 99 million charge with GBP 28 million of cash outflows in the year. The third bucket of costs includes the repayment of the UK furlough money of GBP 8.9 million and ongoing costs associated with our Accelerate programmes, as well as costs in association with the sale of school bus, which together are around GBP 30 million. The future cash outflows associated with adjusting items are expected to be primarily in respect of the restructuring and German onerous contract costs. This, unfortunately, is a key reason why we are going to be slower than previously expected in returning to our gearing target range. So turning now to Free Cash Flow. We are changing our medium-term cash flow targets to be a measure after M&A and growth capital expenditure.
The core components of this measure are shown above, with our previous measure of free cash flow shown for consistency. In FY23, we generated GBP 163.7 million of free cash flow, which was consistent with the GBP 160.5 million delivered in prior year and represents a conversion from EBIT of 97%. EBITDA was down on prior year as a result of the EBIT reduction I've just talked about. Maintenance CapEx of GBP 136 million principally relates to purchases in North America and ALSA and is approximately GBP 50 million down on prior year as the group accelerated CapEx to secure production slots in FY22. So while no CapEx has been intentionally delayed in FY23, we do expect that CapEx will return to an average level of approximately 0.9x depreciation in the future, noting that depreciation is in the order of GBP 200 million.
Working capital remains well controlled, and tax and interest costs have increased as a result of higher interest charges in line with previous guidance. Growth CapEx and M&A of GBP 77.5 million includes GBP 46 million for the final 20% tranche of WeDriveU and is down on prior year because of significant payments made for Moroccan fleet in 2022 and the benefit of a fleet subsidy received in 2023. On this basis, i.e., after growth CapEx and M&A, free cash generated was GBP 86.2 million as compared to GBP 37.9 million in FY2022. This next slide shows how the cash flow generation I've just spoken about has been used in the business. It demonstrates that closing net debt has remained stable at approximately GBP 1.2 billion on a reported basis, with covenant net debt also stable at approximately GBP 990 million.
As a result, because EBITDA is slightly down, covenant gearing, which is covenant net debt divided by covenant EBITDA, has increased 0.2 times to 3.0 times, albeit well within our covenant test limit of 3.5 times. Just running through the other items in this funds flow. Adjusting items cash flows represents the cash costs associated with adjusting items in the income statement. The key components of the GBP 71 million of adjusting items cash flows in the year are GBP 28 million in respect of the German Rail onerous contracts, GBP 10 million due to the North America driver shortages - we do not expect significant cash costs beyond 2024 - and GBP 7 million due to other COVID-related onerous contracts, which will reduce to GBP 5 million in 2024 and with limited amounts thereafter. We've then got GBP 26 million in respect of restructuring and other costs, including the costs associated with our Accelerate programs.
Dividend and hybrid coupon service costs were GBP 62 million. As we've said previously, we took the decision to suspend the final dividend when it became clear that we were not going to make progress with de-leverage in the year. So overall, I'm clearly not satisfied with the progress on de-leverage, which has been compounded by the cash flows associated with the onerous contracts. Our focus is to make sure that those contracts are managed and, where possible, renegotiated and with active cost control across the group to ensure that the benefits we are seeing to the top line flow to profit and cash. And on that note, growing earnings and allowing revenue growth to flow to the bottom line means we have to be relentlessly focused on cost of delivery.
Our unit cost of delivery, that is cost per mile, have increased faster than our revenues have when compared with 2019. The clear focus of our Accelerate programs has been on how we deliver our services, ensuring that the business model is appropriate and competitive, starting with the back office and support functions. Accelerate One, which was launched in Q1 of 2023, delivered GBP 15 million of in-year savings, which is expected to result in at least GBP 30 million of run rate savings in FY24 and beyond. This is in line with our previously announced target. Accelerate Two was announced in late FY23 with the stated aim of generating GBP 20 million of annualized savings, beginning in the second half of FY24, when we expect to deliver GBP 10 million of those savings in the year. This program is focused on more fundamental changes to the business model.
Addressing the unit cost challenge remains an important and continuing priority. So now let me turn now to our 2024 guidance. Our FY24 adjusted EBIT is expected, as Ignacio said, to be in the range of GBP 185 million-GBP 205 million, reflecting significant actions to offset a number of headwinds. This is supported by the Q1 trading experience to date, whereby revenue has been 6.7% ahead of the same period in FY2023 on a constant currency basis, and which I'll cover next. So the bridge you see there takes us from an adjusted EBIT for FY23 of GBP 169 million to a range of between GBP 185 million and GBP 205 million for FY24. Walking through these in turn - and please bear in mind that these are all approximations, so don't get your rulers out - we do not expect a recurrence of the GBP 10 million IFRS 15 contract asset adjustment in FY24.
So that effectively takes us from GBP 169 million to GBP 179 million. From there, we do see some headwinds, as highlighted by the orange bars on the page. Revenue headwinds include those items that benefited FY23 but which we do not expect to recur in FY24. This mainly comprises the Young Summer Ticket Initiative in ALSA, the impact of fewer rail strikes in the UK, and a reduction in funding received by UK Bus. Inflation and cost headwinds are expected to be in the region of GBP 100 million. Offsetting that are the benefits of significant management actions. The Accelerate programs will deliver at least GBP 25 million of incremental cost savings in FY24 relative to FY23, with at least GBP 15 million more coming from the annualization of the Accelerate One savings delivered in prior year and a further GBP 10 million from the Accelerate Two program.
Pricing actions are expected to add at least GBP 85 million, with around GBP 40 million of this already secured through annualisation of price rises implemented in FY 2023, a further portion guaranteed through contractual escalators, and the remainder to be negotiated in FY 2024. Volume growth and recovery is expected to add at least GBP 35 million, a portion of which is already secured through the new contract wins seen in FY 2023. So you'll have seen this morning that we also announced our Q1 update, with Q1 revenues 3.5% ahead of prior year, or 6.7% on a constant currency basis. ALSA delivered a strong Q1 performance, with revenues up 8.7% on Q1 2023, 12.1% on a constant currency basis. Long haul is continuing to trade exceptionally well, driven by the continuation of the multi-voucher scheme coupled with another strong Easter trading period, with Q1 passenger numbers 25% higher than in Q1 2023.
Our regional business is continuing to trade well, with passenger numbers up by 17% compared to prior year in that part of the business that is exposed to passenger volumes. Our urban operations also continue to trade strongly, with passenger numbers up 11% versus Q1 of 2023. In addition, the acquisition of Canaryb us, the leading operator in the Canary Islands, completed on the 1st of March 2024, has had a positive start to the year and further diversifies the ALSA portfolio. In North America, revenues are down by 0.8% versus Q1 2023 on a reported basis, 3.5% up on a constant currency basis.
School bus revenues were broadly consistent with Q1 2023 on a constant currency basis, with the impact of price rises and route recovery being offset by the consequences of unusually poor weather, whereby lost operating days are expected to be recovered at the end of the school year, i.e., in Q3 2024. Route reinstatement has been marginally ahead of expectations to date, and there is a strong focus on contract pricing increase as we progress through the bid season, with above-inflation price rises expected on the remaining portion of the portfolio whose contracts fall for renewal. In transit and shuttle, revenues were up 13% compared with Q1 2023 on a constant currency basis, reflecting new growth wins from FY2023 and additional service volume with some of our existing customers.
The business continues to pursue strategically compelling bids in line with the evolved strategy, and Ignacio will pick up on some of those important wins later. Finally, in the U.K. and Germany, U.K. revenues were up 9.5% compared to Q1 2023, predominantly driven by U.K. Bus. Ticket price rises and passenger growth, including the non-recurrence of FY 2023 strikes, led to an increase of 18.3% in revenue compared to Q1 of prior year. U.K. Coach revenues are up by 3.4%, reflecting passenger growth of 4% within the scheduled coach business and representing underlying growth of 10% when removing the impact of rail strikes from both years. Progress continues to be made with the turnaround of the NXTS business.
German rail revenues were 8.6% lower than in Q1 2023, 5.7% down on a constant currency basis, reflecting higher revenues in Q1 2023 from the emergency contract award, higher penalties in Q1 2024 for the reasons outlined previously, and the impact of the adjustment to the IFRS 15 phasing asset. I'll hand back to Ignacio.
Thank you, James. As you can see, it has been a very busy year with much of our time concentrated on addressing some significant challenges. However, the business has also been very careful to continue with our focus on delivering against the evolved strategy and, more importantly, against the specific ambitions embodied by that strategy. Achieving the highest standards in safety, reliability, environmental standards, customer satisfaction, and being the employer of choice will ultimately deliver repeatable commercial success. Across these categories, the business continues to improve, and we are confident the financial returns will follow. Moving into how we have delivered on pipeline and how excited we are that this will be a key building block to sustaining the top line growth, let's start by retention. Well, before you can win new business, you first have to retain the business you already operate.
Our overall contract retention rate across the group is approaching 100%, with only non-regretted losses in the school bus business taking that figure down very slightly. This, I believe, is a great achievement. ALSA alone delivered EUR 165 million in key retentions, with the U.K. business also winning strategically important agreements serving both Luton and Dublin airports. Winning has to then be followed by successful mobilization and execution. So it is important that we have maintained our track record in that too. When we look at the pipeline conversion, I am very pleased that we're also winning new business as we gradually convert the opportunity pipeline into contracts and revenues. These slides give a snapshot of the projects we have won and, most importantly, describe continuing momentum both in the number of projects secured and the margins achieved.
Conversion rate continues to be high at 20% with 43 new contracts won, with annual contract value of EUR 126 million and EUR 1 billion of total contract value at 12% EBIT margin and 23% ROCI expected. Although it might appear as though 2023 was a weaker year, 2022 results did include the award of RRX Lot 1 with an annual contract value of GBP 90 million. I would also draw your attention to the important acquisitions we have made for ALSA. These are relatively small but strategically important additions to their business, where ALSA leadership has identified clear strategic and synergistic opportunities. Since the year end, in March of 2024, as mentioned, we have completed the acquisition of Canary Bus, significantly increasing our presence in the Canary Islands. It represents another important step into the adjacent tourism market, which accounts for about two-thirds of its EUR 70 million revenue.
They have 800 vehicles, and they transport 13 million passengers per year. Finally, when we look at the existing new business pipeline, all of this means that we have constantly replenished the pipeline of opportunities, and it remains significant, at EUR 2.5 billion, comprising a mix of contract bid opportunities and selected M&A targets. Again, as we have mentioned before, the largest balance of organic pipeline involves asset light prospects, a direction the group has been moving in over recent years. Which brings me neatly onto ALSA's performance in 2023. While celebrating its 100th year, ALSA delivered another record performance with growth across the business. It serves as a benchmark for the rest of the group. Passenger numbers reached a new high at EUR 589 million, up 13% on 2022.
We retained and won significant business while strengthening our key hubs and expanding in new sectors, including the healthcare, transport, and new cities as well. More than 65% of our long-haul revenues are now digital sales, with a new center of innovation established through the year. The key differentiator at ALSA over a number of years has been the quality of the team, from senior leadership right through the organization. The good news for the wider group is that we now believe we have strong management teams across all the three divisions, the first of those being North America. Despite the announcement of our intention to sell school bus, we remain just as ambitious for this business as we are for any other business that we have, and it has been actively managed to deliver against those ambitions.
The new team continues to drive for excellence and has already brought more rigor around operational effectiveness. School bus, therefore, has made a big step forward operationally, delivering the best-ever school year startup for school year 2023-2024, and it's heading for another successful bidding season this year. The additional early wins of new business for next year, circa 450 new routes, offsetting expected churn, is testament to the progress. The successfully implemented 13% price increase in the year is a measure of their strong relationship with customers and the quality of our service. I am truly delighted at how Tim and his team have been able to make such early and important improvements in what is a large and complex business. That work is continuing at pace to improve the platform and its inherent value.
In our North American operations, the combination of the transit and shuttle businesses into one operation was also an important milestone successfully completed during the year, as it establishes a strong platform for growth and improved profitability. Offsetting significant weakening in revenues from a large technology customer, the transit and shuttle team have also grown successfully into other segments and delivered some encouraging momentum on the underlying basis. Transit and shuttle has delivered 32% of the group contract wins and 46% of the total contract value at expected 10% EBIT and 31% ROCI. Also, the restructuring of the sales teams and the introduction of the evolved, reinvigorated sales processes have led to building a stronger pipeline of new opportunities and delivering solid conversion rates.
It is very encouraging to see that from a historical growth in transit based on acquisitions, we are now delivering growth in transit with new contracts won like the ones in Charleston, North Cook, River Valley. This is a testament of what Evolve is delivering and of Mobico's strong credentials in bidding, planning, mobilizing, and delivering safe and reliable mobility solutions. Additionally, all operational KPIs have shown improvement year-on-year. If I move to the U.K., where we made our other key change in leadership when Alex Jensen joined us to lead U.K. and Germany in September, Alex has already made an impact both in our business and the wider industry. The U.K. bus and coach market is a dynamic and competitive sector, which often requires a different approach to deliver the sustainable, profitable growth that we target.
I'm pleased to report that the fresh view and considerable experience in managing complex businesses that Alex brings is already having an impact. In July, the U.K. bus and coach businesses were combined into one U.K. structure, allowing important practical efficiencies to be realized. As is the case elsewhere in the group, the U.K. has succeeded in attracting new users to its services, with coach delivering a 25% increase in passenger numbers along with an improvement in yields. Coach also retained two crucial contracts that I mentioned for Luton and Dublin airports in a very competitive segment. In U.K. bus, the successful implementation of the 12.5% rate increase has helped to mitigate inflation, albeit after a lag. Aside from dealing with Germany through the year end, much of Alex's time has been spent on revisiting the strategy and its assumptions in the business model in the U.K.
National Express is a leading player in the sector and is in a great position to grow as the market evolves. However, as James has outlined, unit cost has been allowed to grow faster than revenues. It is imperative that we keep a clear focus on efficiency without damaging our differentiated offering if we are to prevail in any market. Now, I'll talk a little about the challenges facing our U.K. business. The greatest challenge facing the U.K. bus business is rebalancing the risk-reward structure in a way that delivers more equitable and more sustainable commercial arrangements. For example, the Bus Operators Group is working to establish a pricing mechanism that will automatically look to cover industry-related inflation factors.
But more fundamentally, our business is preparing for a possible move to greater franchising across the UK, making sure that we are best placed to prosper in that market structure too. Whatever the market structure, we continue to focus on the commercial viability of our network. After stemming some losses at NXTS, UK Coach is resetting its structural cost base with a clear focus again on cost and revenue per mile and is executing on a plan to take NXTS to break even at worst. A review of the NXTS resulted in a decision to close two depots. At the same time, the business is leveraging its strength in the market to accelerate the model shift from trains and cars to coach. Finally, Germany. We have already talked a great deal about Germany.
The impact that higher-than-expected cost had on profits, particularly driver shortage-related penalties, has been clear to see. The good news is that our customers, the Passenger Transport Authorities, PTAs, are also keen to find an equitable solution to what has been an industry-wide problem, and we remain committed to supporting them. The conversion of the RRX One contract from being on an emergency award basis onto normal terms has gone well, although margins are impacted temporarily by driver shortages that result in penalties. In Germany, the clear priorities are already being actively pursued. Plans to recover the driver shortage are well advanced, but it will take some time for the issue to be finally resolved, with the training typically lasting 12-18 months. Discussions with the PTAs are well underway.
As James mentioned, actions have been taken to reinforce controls over all aspects of a very complex, long-term contract accounting business. That brings me to the conclusions. 2023 has been a challenging year, but a year in which important underlying progress has been made in the context of an evolving market where Mobico has adapted to the reality of the post-pandemic world and addressed notable external headwinds, acted decisively to adjust the business model and cost structure to be fit for purpose. Accounting issues in Germany are closed and behind us. Evolve is delivering significant organic growth, and we are well positioned to capture future growth opportunities. Most importantly, we also continue to believe that ALSA is a truly world-leading business, consistently delivering strong organic growth in revenues and profits, as well as gradual and successfully diversifying into adjacent markets.
North America is already in an encouraging recovery trend. Operational improvements being delivered across the group, but particularly in those businesses with new leadership, are already making a difference. Communities around the world will increasingly depend upon good-quality transport infrastructure being provided by companies like Mobico. As we lead the model shift from private cars into public transport, we are determined to remain a prominent solution provider in this market, but also make sure those highly rated services generate appropriate returns for all the stakeholders. To conclude, I'm very confident in the long prospect of the business. Finally, before we go to Q&A, you will have noticed that James Stamp, our CFO, is leaving us. James has been with Mobico for seven years and has been a great colleague whose commitment and contribution I have always valued enormously. I would like to thank him for that.
The last 18 months or so since James took on the CFO role has been an eventful and challenging period for Mobico. A lot of good work has been done to put Mobico on a more solid foundation than it was before. James, as announced, will stay with us to complete a smooth handover to our new interim CFO, Helen Cowing, who you will have the opportunity to meet in due course. With that, I thank you for the attention. We will go now to Q&A.
Start here, Gerald. Yeah, Gerald Khoo from Liberum. Three, if I can. Starting in the U.K., profit margins pre-pandemic were comfortably in the double-digit % range, obviously well below that at the moment. Is there a path back to double-digit levels?
If so, what do you see as the key building blocks, and what's the sort of rough timeline? Secondly, in North America, in relation to shuttle, I think you made reference to I think you said a loss of revenue from a large tech customer. I wasn't sure whether I heard that correctly. Could you sort of elaborate on what that was? Was that a loss of the entire contract or a loss of one of a number of contracts, or what was the reason behind that loss of reduction in revenue? And finally, on CapEx, you made reference to 0.9 times depreciation going forward. Why is below 1 times sustainable?
So first, three questions. So the first one on the U.K. Clearly, the building blocks is for one the fares one is the fares increase. And the second building block is the network, the size of the network. The first one, you know that within the Enhanced Partnership, we took the decision we had the mutual objective with the Transport for West Midlands to, once we had the funding, to freeze the fares to allow that passenger growth. And actually, it was quite successful for the time because we were well ahead of the rest of the industry. Now, with that pressure that we saw last year in terms of the wage inflation, obviously, that was not sustainable. And this is why we had to renegotiate, and we had that fares increase on July 3rd.
So right now, as I mentioned, the bus operating group is working with an external party to make sure that there is a process to increase the fares. And that is part, by the way, of the Enhanced Partnership agreement that needs to be resolved. The second one is the network. We do have in 2024 a constraint because of funding not to reduce more than 90% of the existing network pre-pandemic. That constraint will disappear December or January 2025. And therefore, we're working to have plans in alignment with TfWM on what that network should look like to make sure it's well balanced, the risk and reward. That's the U.K. The second question.
North America.
North America? Oh, yes. North American Shuttle. That is a very well-known and announced layoffs of a very big technology customer. Basically, it was a declining 50% of the revenue that we had in the past. We have not lost that customer. Actually, we have renewed with that big customer for the next years. And it was around, in terms of revenue, $25 million. But again, Transit and Shuttle, despite that impact, managed to grow above 10%.
Yeah. So I'll just add to that. I think we haven't lost any contracts, Gerald. There was a reduction of volume effectively within a call-off contract. So I think as people do return to the workplace and the campuses, we'd expect that to come back. And there's already some signs of that happening. Your final question, do you want me to pick the one on the CapEx point? Why below 1x depreciation? I think there's three reasons for that, Gerald. Firstly, there is a significant amount of government funding for assets, which significantly reduces kind of the cash impact. Secondly, we have more use of variable leasing and availability-style contracts. With availability-style contracts, particularly in the U.K., they're effectively off-balance sheet solutions, risk transfer. Thirdly, we're seeing an increase in sort of customer funding and asset-light type contracts as well, which does change the mix a little bit.
Those three things are the reason why it's not 1x depreciation going forward.
Joe?
Good morning. Joe Thomas from HSBC. In a statement, you've given some long-term targets, although you didn't talk about them in the presentation. Back on the sort of building blocks you were talking about, can you just talk about how you expect to progress towards those 2027 targets? I'm mindful that there are some that there are sort of puts and takes in there. I was wondering, especially around things like voucher removal in Spain and concession renewal in Spain, what sort of things you've built into there and how that plays through over time. Second thing, US Student, can you just give an idea when you'd expect, normally, if it's held in-house, that business to return to pre-pandemic profit margins or pre-pandemic levels of profit? I'm not entirely clear on that.
And then finally, just on what you were just talking about with respect to the negotiations with the local authority in the West Midlands, I just well, I mean, how does that work in terms of presumably, you've got a profit margin target in mind. Is that the sort of starting point? And then the subsidy negotiations continue around that so that ultimately, if you don't get your desired objective, which is presumably a double-digit, you cut capacity from that network?
Okay. If I go to the long-term ambitions, let me run very quickly through it. So the revenue, nothing has changed. It's GBP 1 billion. We have been clear on what sort of revenue we need to achieve, which is GBP 3.8 billion. And as you see, there's a strong growth. So we're well positioned for that. On the operating profit, it's GBP 300 million, which is very aligned to our original ambition. But in that respect, it's a sequential improvement, what you should expect, not linear, but a sequential improvement. In that context, you mentioned how these sort of things, the concession renewals in Spain, etc., could impact. The way we see it at this moment in time, given the process where it is in the parliamentary discussions in Spain, is that this will not happen until probably 2026, although they are progressing.
So it needs to be approved, the new law, a sustainability law. Then you have the approval of the model. Then you have the remapping. Then you have the agreement that needs to be done with the regional communities, autonomous communities, and then the billing. So it will take until 2026. We do see a lot of increased demand in Spain. It is true that that law, the sustainable law, incentivizes a lot the move from private cars into public transport. We see that somehow, probably the multi-voucher could be changed. But there will be another incentives coming for sure because the government has set very, very aggressive targets for the decarbonization. So we see that underlying passenger demand present. So that was to your questions regarding the sequential improvement on EBIT and how could that be impacted.
Obviously, in that sequential improvement, you will see the improvements in North America and the improvements in the UK. Then if I move to free cash flow, here is where we have changed the definition to make sure that it also includes, for clarity, growth CapEx and M&A. We have a slight change. The original one was GBP 1.25 billion. And now that will be like-for-like GBP 1 billion. And what we expect is to produce cumulative GBP 300 million between 2023 and 2027. And then nothing has changed on the covenant debt, net debt, and covenant EBITDA with 1.5-2 times by 2027.
So just to add to that, I think, Joe, what set out in the bridge on page 14 of the presentation was the development of the FY 2023 to FY 2024. You asked specifically about kind of the headwinds. There are headwinds there, predominantly from UK Coach, rail strikes, from the Alsa Young Summer discount, and a reduction in UK bus funding. Together, that's around about GBP 40 million of headwind. But we more than recover that with pricing and continued volume growth. And it's really clear to me and to Ignacio that as a group, we don't have a revenue or a top-line problem. We've got to make sure that that top-line flows through to the bottom line. With the actions we're taking on pricing and restructuring the cost base, you will see sequential growth in profit in line with those targets.
Would you like to comment on the negotiations with TfWM?
Yeah. So the TfWM negotiations, I think it is you asked again whether we've got a target profit percentage in mind. We don't, actually. We have a target return in mind. And we don't really mind how that comes. It's got to be a return that's in line with risk and reward. Where we are at the moment in FY2024 is we're in the final year of the existing funding agreement where we've had limited ability to cut or make changes to the network and a bit of friction, frankly, in our ability to increase prices. From FY2024 onwards from FY2025 onwards, those restrictions drop away. We're confident that we'll have changed the mechanism that pricing will almost be automatic recovery of inflationary costs. And we do have the ability to reduce the networks. And look, it's not necessarily in anybody's interest to start hacking at a network sustainably.
We've got to find the right balance between the network size and the amount of subsidy that TfWM is going to pay. And I think those discussions will continue, as they have been historically, to be constructive. But 2025 is a bit of a reset year for that point. North America. Yeah. Look, James, do you want to talk about the profit margin one?
Yep.
I'll take it. I mean, I think it is possible, Joe, but it's not possible by doing things in the way that we've always done them before. I think a clear objective of Tim and his team is to fundamentally is to change the way that we deliver our services in the U.S. And that does mean a real rethink, which is part of Accelerate 2, about how the CSC, which is the depot structure in the U.S., is structured to support the delivery. I think that it's a slightly longer burn, but it will be supported by when the rollout of the ByteC urve is finally completed to give us the absolute grip on wage control. So is it going to get there in 2024? No. 2025? No. But I think that it is certainly possible. And it's absolutely what we're striving for.
Yep.
Good morning. It's Ruairi Cullinane, RBC. Firstly, could you indicate how sizable a provision reversal could be if your negotiations with German PTAs were successful? Secondly, I'm interested in learnings from German Rail for future bids and if there's anything you'll particularly aim to avoid signing up for in future contracts. And then finally, could you remind us why school bus remains the best business to sell as opposed to another business or your entire North American business? Thank you.
Okay. Maybe I can take the lessons learned from Germany and then the school bus and then the provisions that are related to.
Yeah.
Okay. Lessons learned, I think there are many. First, in terms of the bidding error that happened in 2015, we did learn a lot. And since then, significantly improvement has been made. In fact, the RRX 1 had a much better protection, which indices that are transparent and reflective of a true cost. And we also need to make sure that we think ahead and try to protect against any radical market structure changes. And again, that discipline came through because there were other lots that we did bid for them. But we remained very, very disciplined. And we didn't cross any lines. I guess it's to expand the levels of controls and understanding of the sensitivities of critical inputs of the models to more people than the local people, so the local, the division, U.K. and Germany, but also the central group.
I guess more frequent review of assumptions. Above all, I think it is having a more robust evidence and documentation of the critical accounting judgment of main inputs. James?
Yeah. I mean, the key learnings here, I think we hadn't expected that the indices gave us decent coverage of energy based on what we were seeing. I think we'd be more skeptical in future about whether indices really do provide you the protection you're asking for. And what you'd be looking for is contractual ways of rebalancing contracts should things that are not outside of your control and which you're not being paid to manage move against you. I would point out that in the new contract that we entered into with RRX 1, in line with that, that has moved to a much more sustainable index already. But also, all of the contracts do contain provisions to rebalance the economics if things move against you. So far, we haven't needed to enforce that legally. We've done that through constructive negotiation with the PTA, I think.
That clarity on what rebalancing really means and what the triggers for it are should be really clear in any contracts we sign in future.
Regarding the school bus, why school bus? First of all, the school bus is a high-quality asset that we have. It is a market leader. But it is capital-intensive. So we believe that as a group, we have other opportunities where we can have a better return on capital employed and that the school bus business can thrive and grow faster with another owner. So that's basically what I would say. Then we move to the provisions.
The provisions.
Yeah. So I don't want to discuss kind of the potential for the outcome of the negotiations with the PTA because they are live. And I'm not going to salami-slice those into all the different bits of the contract we'd like to renegotiate. But to just give you a bit of a sense for what we're looking at here of the increase in the provision, probably GBP 10 million of it was due to a change in the discount rate to a risk-free rate. So that's a non-cash impact. Probably about GBP 20 million-GBP 30 million of it was due to kind of residual bid error. And I wouldn't expect any PTA to compensate us for that. So that's what it is. The balance is really due to the change in inflation into driver shortages and due to various changes in the index.
I think all of that needs to be on the table for negotiation. There's various mechanisms for doing that, which are subject of live negotiation at the moment.
Hello. I'm Othmane Bricha from Bank of America. So I have a question on cost inflation in 2024. How much visibility do you have? How much headroom do you have? And is there a risk that inflation may overshoot your current expectations?
We missed a little bit of that question. Sorry. It was cost inflation 2024. And the question was.
Yes.
Sorry.
How much visibility do you have? I know you gave guidance in that bridge slide 14, if my memory is correct. So just how much visibility do you have in the various businesses that you have? And is there a risk that cost inflation may overshoot that number that you have in mind?
Yeah. I think that actually, what you see in the range is that when we look at the range of GBP 185-GBP 285, inflation is probably an upside from that bottom end of that range. So we've actually taken a pretty prudent view of what we know of inflation already. To a significant extent, a lot of the inflation is already locked in. So I'd say GBP 185 contains a pessimistic view of where inflation lands. GBP 205 is a more optimistic view.
Yeah. The range we've given contains, effectively, reflects the visibility we have over the inflation assumptions in the budget. Yeah.
If there are not further questions in the room, we maybe could go to questions from the line.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question and you've joined us over the phone, please dial star 1 on your telephone keypad now. That's star 1 for any questions if you're joining us over the phone. Final call for any questions if you're joining us over the phone. Please dial star 1 now. Okay. It appears we have no questions on the conference line. So I'd like to hand back to Ignacio Garat for any further remarks.
Well, thank you again for taking the time to listen to us today. We're all well aware that we have covered a lot of ground. But we're confident in the main characteristic of Mobico Group. We have important strategic assets in all of our businesses. The group's revenue performance continued to be very encouraging. And there remain significant opportunities to generate better returns as well. So we are very confident on the future. And with that, I would say goodbye for now. Thank you.