Trainline share offer from iii

dutchism1958

Does anyone have any feedback on this offer,either positive or negative?.
Trainline is to float on The London stock exchange and iii have contacted me to register for their share offer.
No figures as yet.
Thanks.
Gary

babs98

If/when the railways are renationalised this business will disappear like a puff of smoke.

plunt

i personally wouldnt go near it. They charge booking fees and customers can easily go to other sites which dont. Also lots of news about self service machines now having to show best deals (this may be over hyped)

In general i like their layout of how they show trains but i usually go to them to find the ideal train then buy it from free sites

each to their own but think the business is too easily replicated, and them saying they can expand more on mobile or around europe? well they will just hit competition.

Not sure about any other sources of earnings they have, others may be able to detail more

le_loup

Oow, it's internet, it must be worth trillions. Go for it.

dutchism1958

Thanks for all of your responses!.

somethingcorporate

I agree with the rest, I had a long hard think about the offering but couldn't see they had any significant barriers to entry. Their corporate/B2B base may help them in the long term but it's lower margin than the consumer stuff.

Chuck in money you could afford to lose if you really want to but I don't think this is a decent long term bet.

block10

plunt wrote: »

They charge booking fees and customers can easily go to other sites which dont......

Most of the other sities are actually powered by thetrainline. I assume it wouldnt be commercially viable for train operators to develop their own e-commerce infrastructure.

Porcupine

ATOS also have a booking engine, used by operators like East Coast. So if Trainline increase their fees too much, other operators can easily jump ship.

Basically all you're paying for is brand recognition.
Which doesn't seem worth a whole lot in this case.

block10

Porcupine wrote: »

ATOS also have a booking engine......operators can easily jump ship..

That sounds right: It looks like First Group jumped ship recently.

"First Capital Connect and First Great Western moved from thetrainline based booking engine to Atos's WebTIS product in November 2012"

dutchism1958

Thanks for all of the feedback,much appreciated....think I'll invest elsewhere!