How to buy, sell and short Trainline shares

How to buy or invest in Trainline shares

Investing in Trainline shares means that you’ll own them outright. Buying Trainline (TRNT) shares means that you’re speculating on the Trainline share price increasing with spread bets and CFDs.

Investing in the shares gives you ownership of them. You’ll become a shareholder in Trainline, meaning you’ll be eligible to receive dividends if the company pays them and you could be granted voting rights in company decisions.

Buying shares by speculating on their price with spread bets and CFDs means you’ll be opening positions on leverage. You won’t need to pay the full value of the shares upfront. Instead, you’ll open a position with margin – giving you full market exposure for an initial deposit.

To buy or invest in Trainline shares, follow the steps below:

How much would it cost to invest in Trainline?

Since Trainline is a UK company, you’ll be eligible to receive our best commission on UK shares when you invest directly in Trainline shares with our share dealing service. Our best commission is available to clients who opened three or more positions on their share dealing account in the previous calendar month.

If share dealing doesn’t sound like it’s for you, you might prefer to speculate on the Trainline share price with spread bets and CFDs. You’ll be able to:

• Get full exposure with a 20%-25% deposit on almost all of our tier-one shares¹
• Trade spread bets without paying any tax²
• Offset your losses against profits for tax purposes with CFDs²

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How to sell and short Trainline shares

Selling Trainline shares means that you’ll be exiting your investment position. You’d do this to realise your profits or cut your losses – depending on how the share price has moved.

For example, if the Trainline share price increased above the price at which you bought the shares, you’d make a profit. But, if the price fell below the price at which you bought the shares and you decided to sell your investment position, you’d incur a loss.

Shorting Trainline shares is different to selling. It’s made possible through financial derivatives like spread bets and CFDs. You’d short Trainline with these products if you felt that – based on your analysis – the price was going to fall. In doing so, you’d make a profit on a falling market, providing the Trainline share price decreased as you’d predicted.

To either sell or short Trainline shares, follow the steps below:

Trainline shares: the basics

Trainline shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) under the TRN ticker. The company is a constituent of the FTSE 250. Trainline completed its initial public offering (IPO) in June 2019 – which put a £1.68 billion valuation on the company after its first day of trading.

You can see a screengrab from our trading platform of the Trainline share performance from 22 June 2019 to 22 May 2020 below.

Trainline: a brief history

Trainline began life as thetrainline.com in 1997. This was the company’s name until 2015, when private equity firm KKR bought the company and rebranded it as Trainline. KKR kept a stake in Trainline until November 2019, when it cashed out its holdings – a total stake of 68 million shares – for upwards of £279 million in profit.

The sale came five months after Trainline’s IPO in June 2019, which was what enabled KKR to cash out at a tidy profit. Since then, Trainline’s revenues, profits and share price have all been hit by the coronavirus pandemic in the early and middle stages of 2020.

National lockdowns in the UK and Europe – where Trainline runs the majority of its operations – meant that customers were less inclined and less able to take journeys via rail. That said, at the time of writing (26 May 2020), the share price was recovering as lockdowns began to be lifted and governments attempted to achieve a partial return to normality.

Trainline key personnel

There are nine people on the senior leadership team at Trainline:

Trainline business model

As a ticket purchasing and journey planning company, Trainline is paid commission by rail and coach operators for ticket sales. It also generates revenue through booking fees, travel insurance, advertising and through white label products developed for rail companies.

The company is looking to expand its operations in the coming years, particularly in Europe. It is also looking to expand the number of rail carriers and journey providers that it works with.

Trainline share price analysis: how to analyse the Trainline share price

You can use both technical and fundamental analysis to analyse the Trainline share price.

Technical analysis can help you to attempt to determine a future price movements of Trainline shares based on chart patterns and price action. Popular technical indicators include moving averages, the parabolic SAR, the Williams %R and the stochastic oscillator.

Fundamental analysis will look at factors like news reports, government announcements or company leadership changes. These could be good or bad news for the Trainline share price, depending on the circumstances. For example, when governments announced national lockdowns the share price fell, but when lockdowns were slowly lifted the share price increased.

Footnotes

¹Deposits on leveraged trades are 20%-25% for 99.14% of tier-one shares (correct as of 1 June 2020). For more information, view our share trading margin rates.

²Tax laws are subject to change and depend on individual circumstances. Tax law may differ in a jurisdiction other than the UK.