VSit was quite an adventure to cross America by bus. Three days of driving between New York and San Francisco, thirty-seven hours towards New Orleans. Squeezed like sardines on an endless road punctuated by soulless stations, at the speed of the greyhound running on the side of Greyhound buses. But time has passed. For half the price today, low cost airlines connect the east and west coast in seven hours instead of three days.
You have to really love the road to stay faithful to the bus. This is probably why the famous company, founded in 1914, regularly changes owners. And when he is no longer an American, it means that there is not much money to be made out of it. After two bankruptcies, in 1991 and 2001, the Canadian group Laidlaw threw in the towel in 2007 and sold the company to the British First Group, in turn in difficulty.
Little greedy in capital
Yet, there are still enthusiasts out there to board the icon of the American road. This Thursday, October 21, the German group FlixMobility (FlixBus) announced the acquisition of Greyhound. He will not pay very much, 170 million dollars (about 156 million euros). FlixBus is the improbable success of a Munich start-up which conquered Europe with its green buses and very low prices thanks to the liberalization of the markets.
FlixBus now holds nearly 90% of the market in Germany and has methodically cleaned up in Europe
He had already put a wheel across the Atlantic by opening a few lines. Its success is largely due to its economic model which does not consume much capital. The buses are owned and operated by local operators. As at McDonald’s or in distribution, it provides the brand, logistics and customers. It directly employs less than 2,000 people.
This time, it will recover nearly 1,300 own buses (with their drivers), 2,400 destinations and 16 million customers. The only way to get by in a business with such a small margin, especially if you use subcontractors, is to be alone. FlixBus now holds nearly 90% of the market in Germany and has methodically cleaned up in Europe. In particular, it bought in 2016 the European activities of Megabus, its main competitor on the continent, and in 2019 Eurolines from the Transdev group in France.
Since 2017, it also operates rail lines. To finance this spectacular growth, the company, still controlled by its three founders, called on new shareholders. The last funding round, in June 2021, allowed him to raise $ 650 million, four times the price of Greyhound. Ironically, these generous investors are called Blackrock, Silver Lake, General Atlantic… Americans to finance the conquest of the United States by a German.