Ebit climbed 27% to SFr 127 million on operating income of SFr 4.3 billion (+2.1%), while operating expenditure dropped 1.5% to SFr 4.1 billion. The encouraging result was attributed to an increase in property sales, higher revenues from the passenger sector, and a cost-cutting program. Passenger traffic increased 2.2% compared with the first six months of 2014, reaching 9.1 billion passenger-km.

SBB Cargo suffered a loss of SFr 25m, compared with a profit of SFr 15m in the first half of last year. This was mainly due to high fixed costs incurred through wagonload operations and the effects of the strong Swiss franc on international traffic, although net tonne-km remained stable at 7.6 billion.

The infrastructure division's figures improved by 4% although the unit still lost SFr 58m and the negative trend looks set to continue because SBB's 2013-2016 service agreement with the Swiss government will not cover the cost of all upgrades required on the network.