Estonian Railways Sees Falling Profits
In an annual earnings report, Estonian Railways reported today that its profit decreased last year by 14 percent, to 16 million euros, compared with the year before.
Operating income grew by 18 percent, to 79 million euros, and sales revenue grew by 9.4 percent, to 66 million euros. The increase in sales revenue was helped by a one-off divestment of rolling stock, valued at 8.1 million euros.
The company underwent a division in 2012, put in charge solely of the rails and infrastructure, while a second company, EVR Cargo, deals with freight flows.
"The updated railroad infrastructure will allows us to serve significantly greater goods flows than today. Estonian Railways continues to consider it important to support the growth of transit throughout Estonia through reasonable investment activities and quality traffic management. It is also important to take advantage of everything the open market has to offer to transit businesses," CEO Ahti Asmann said.
In 2012, Estonian Railways infrastructure facilitated the transport of 26.1 million tons of goods, including 19.9 million tons was transit goods, 0.8 million tons of exports and 1.4 million tons of imports.
The volume of goods declined by 14.4 percent compared with 2011, and Estonian Railways is projecting further decreases for 2013.
The company received investments of 40.2 million euros, including 17.9 million euros in EU support. This included renovations on the Rail Baltic route, and the bringing platforms to standard EU heights.