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Research Outline
Prepared for Adam | Delivered August 11, 2019
Brightline/Virgin Trains
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Goals
To provide a business profile of train company Brightline, including information on key executives, as well as gain further details about their partnership/deal with Virgin Trains, and their upcoming projects in California and Las Vegas
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Early Findings
Brightline is the only
privately owned passenger train company
in the US, and currently operates only in Southern Florida.
Key executives are
CEO Patrick Goddard, President Ravneet Bhandari, CFO Myles Tobin, and CCO Gary Smith.
The company was rebranded as Virgin Trains
in late 2018
, after Virgin Group CEO bought a minority stake in the company in
November of 2018
. Virgin Group already owns a high speed rail line in the UK.
Brightline/ Virgin Train’s
new line
between Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando, which will be completed in 2022, will make them the fastest rail travel in the US. The line is anticipated to have
a sustained speed of 125mph.
Their Orlando project has been praised
for bringing thousands of jobs
to the area as well as improving Florida’s economic and transportation infrastructure, potentially creating over
10,000 jobs and $650
million in tax revenue.
In Sept 2018,
Virgin Trains/Brightline also acquired another rail company, Xpress West. The company was planning to build a rail between Las Vegas and California. Following the buyout, the company announced plans to
build this line by 2022.
As related to the project, the company applied to sell
$200 million in private activity
bonds to cover part of what is estimated to be a
$4billion+ project.
In
2018, Brightline (now Virgin Trains)
saw losses, with a posted loss of
$28.1 million
in the first quarter, and loss for the first nine months of 2018 were approximately
$87 million.
In their first
2.5 months of operation
, Brightline generated
$663,700
in ticket revenue from
74,780 riders
.
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