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Investing.com -- FirstGroup PLC stock edged up 1% after the UK’s Office of Road and Rail (ORR) approved extensions to the company’s Hull Trains and Lumo open access services starting from December 2025.
The regulatory approval includes extending some of Lumo’s daily services to Glasgow Queen Street, adding approximately 19 million seat miles of capacity with stops at Falkirk High and Edinburgh Haymarket. The company will also add an additional daily Lumo service between Newcastle and London (76 million seat miles) and an extra Hull Trains service between London and Hull on weekdays and Saturdays (23 million seat miles).
These extensions will add approximately 118 million seat miles to FirstGroup’s open access capacity, which currently stands at around 967 million. Combined with previously approved new Stirling and Carmarthen services, the company will more than double its existing open access capacity.
However, the ORR rejected FirstGroup’s application for a new Hull Trains service between London and Sheffield, which would have added approximately 92 million seat miles. The company stated it will continue to explore opportunities for this route.
"Although the rejection of the service of the new route between London and Sheffield is disappointing, we did not expect all applications to increase capacity to be approved, particularly following the WCML rejections. There are further open access applications to play for," RBC analysts commented on the development.
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