Abellio ScotRail suffered pre-tax losses of £2.6million in its first full year of operating train services in Scotland, new accounts show.
It had previously reported profits of £9.5million for the nine months to December 2015, prompting accusations that it was “profiteering” from the train services.
Abellio, an arm of the state-owned Dutch railway operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), took over the ScotRail franchise in April 2015 .
New figures for 2016 show the business was loaned £10million by Abellio Transport Holding, another branch of NS.
They also show no dividend was paid to its parent company in either year.
Abellio ScotRail said turnover of £610.1million last year was affected by tough trading conditions and the impact of the partial closure of Glasgow Queen Street station for 20 weeks.
The company highlighted investment of £475million in the railways, the introduction of a new fleet of Hitachi-built electric class 385 trains and the “extensive” refurbishment of high speed trains to serve Scotland’s cities from 2018.
A spokesman for Abellio ScotRail said: “We’re investing nearly half a billion pounds building the best railway Scotland has ever had, as part of our delivery of a highly specified Scottish Government contract.
“In doing so, we will deliver more seats and faster journey times for passengers, significantly improving customer service standards.
“We are making good progress with the recent independent national rail passenger survey revealing that nine out of 10 customers are satisfied with ScotRail, equalling our best ever score.
“ScotRail is also the best performing large operator in the UK.
“However, it is not surprising that the challenges of last year have had a negative impact on our financial performance, and we are disappointed to be recording a loss.”