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The first half of this financial year marked significant progress in delivering our strategy for the Group, namely:

Highlights

• Retention of the Southern rail franchise
• Successful launch of the UK’s first domestic high speed rail service
• Investment of £29m in three UK bus acquisitions
• Establishment of a Yellow School Bus joint venture in North America
• Disposal of the majority of our loss-making aviation ground handling and cargo operations

We are also pleased with the operational and financial achievements in the period, despite the difficult economic environment, and we remain confident in our expectations for the full year results.

Revenue for the period was £1,097.0m (H1’09: £1,148.7m) and operating profit* was slightly ahead of our expectations at £54.2m (H1’09: £65.6m).

* Before amortisation of £6.1m and exceptional items of £31.9m

+ One-off change in proportion of full year dividend paid at interim

Commenting on Go-Ahead’s outlook, Chairman, Sir Patrick Brown said:

“At this stage of the year, we have not changed our expectations for the full year results.

“We remain cautious on the outlook for the UK economy and will continue to take management action accordingly.

“Second half results for our bus division are expected to remain robust, albeit at levels below the record first half of this year. This primarily reflects an expected reduction in London operating profit* due to both lower expected QIC revenue and the natural expiry of a number of contracts with relatively high operating margins which have been renewed at more normal margins. The following financial year is expected to benefit from a full year of contributions from acquisitions and a fully hedged fuel benefit of around £6m.

“The outlook for rail continues to be difficult to predict, although we believe that we have a good portfolio of three, carefully selected commuter franchises. The Southern franchise was secured on current and prudent economic assumptions; we are making good progress with our bid initiatives and continue to target passenger revenue increase of around 5% for the full year in line with our bid. In Southeastern, it remains too early to assess the impact of the new timetable, including high speed, but trends to date are broadly in line with expectations. We continue to target mid single digit percentage increases in passenger revenue for the full year in this franchise and expect to receive revenue support in Southeastern from 1 April 2010. Improvements in our smaller London Midland franchise are ongoing.

“Overall, recent strategic progress means we are now well placed to focus on our bus and rail operations. Our devolved management structure supports strong local attention to organic growth and makes us a potentially attractive acquirer of locally branded UK bus operations. We will seek to replicate a similar structure as we carefully build our Yellow School bus operations with our joint venture partner in North America. We believe that UK rail remains a fundamentally attractive market and will continue to work closely with stakeholders to deliver high quality services.

“Our cashflow and balance sheet remain strong and supportive of our dividend policy, and our financing is secure through to 2012. We will continue with our focus on service quality, cost savings and financial discipline and remain confident in the underlying strengths of our business.”

Half Year Results in full

For further information, please contact:

Keith Ludeman, Group Chief Executive, and Nick Swift, Group Finance Director, will be hosting a presentation for analysts at 11:00am today (25 February 2010) at Investec, 2 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7QP, Tel: +44 (0) 20 7597 5970

A live audio webcast will be available for analysts to listen to the presentation from Go-Ahead’s website – www.go-ahead.com

The presentation slides will be added to Go-Ahead’s website (www.go-ahead.com) at around 7:30am today.

A pdf copy of the Group’s Half Year Report for the six months ended 2 January 2010 will also be available to download from the website today: http://www.go-ahead.com/goahead/ir/presentations/

Notes to editors

Go-Ahead

Go-Ahead is a leading UK public transport operator, providing high quality services in the bus and rail sectors. Employing around 25,000 people across the country, almost one billion passenger journeys are undertaken on our services each year. We are committed to operating our companies in a socially and environmentally responsible way and are proud to have been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard after taking action on climate change. In addition to the travelling public, our customers include the Department for Transport, Transport for London (TfL) and local authorities.

Bus

Go-Ahead is one of the UK's largest bus operators. With a fleet of over 3,500 buses, we carry, on average, around 1.6 million passengers every day. Our operations are focused on high density commuter markets. We have a strong presence in London, with around 21% market share, where we provide regulated services for TfL. We operate deregulated services in the North East, Oxford, the South East and Southern England. We recently expanded our bus operations with the acquisition of Plymouth CityBus in the UK, and have established a Yellow School Bus joint venture in North America.

Rail

The rail operation, Govia, is 65% owned by Go-Ahead and 35% by Keolis. It is the busiest rail operation in the UK, responsible for nearly 30% of all UK passenger rail journeys through its three rail franchises: Southern (which includes the Gatwick Express), Southeastern and London Midland. In December 2009, Southeastern began operating the UK's first high speed domestic rail service between Kent and London, significantly reducing current journey times.

For further information about our rail franchises please visit our factsheets:
http://www.go-ahead.com/goahead/aboutus/our_markets/uk_rail_market/

Aviation Services

The Group also provides car parking services through Meteor, which includes the ‘Meet & Greet’ and ‘Pink Elephant’ brands and operates limited ground handling services at Terminal 1, Heathrow.

For further information visit www.go-ahead.com