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Research Outline

Prepared for Adam | Delivered August 11, 2019

Brightline/Virgin Trains

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

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.