National Express Group PLC

Full Year Results for the year ended 31 December 2012

National Express Group PLC ("National Express" or the "Group"), a leading international public transport group, operates bus and coach services in the UK, continental Europe, North Africa and North America, together with rail services in the UK.

Trading for the Group remained robust in 2012, as we overcame a number of challenges by focusing on improving the quality of our services and continuing to deliver on our strategy. Recent significant contract wins have demonstrated the strength of our operating expertise and future prospects.

However, the Group was unable to overcome the decline of one million in the number of elderly and disabled passengers our UK coach business carried as a result of the UK Government's removal of its concessionary scheme. This significant drop in coach passengers has driven the year-on-year decline in Group profit.

Business highlights:

·      Third successive year of margin growth, up 150 basis points to 11.6%

·      Third year of growing non-rail profit, at £185.2 million (£181.8 million in 2011)

·      Delivered £34 million of cost savings in year

·      Improved operational performance with industry-leading businesses

·      Delivered a Group non-rail ROCE improvement of 14% over 3 years to 10.6%

·      Generated £140 million of free cash flow (before rail franchise handover) and funded over £125 million of organic capital investment

·      Won nearly £2 billion of new contracted revenue in the last 12 months

·      Successfully integrated Petermann with annualised synergies of $10 million delivered

·      Diversified our risk by broadening our product range and entering new markets

·      Strong balance sheet with long-term funding maturity

·      Final proposed dividend of 6.6p; total dividend for year 9.75p, up 3% year-on-year