The bus and train company, which last week appointed former FirstGroup chief operating officer Dean Finch as chief executive, said revenues had risen in areas such as UK coach and bus and elsewhere cost efficiencies had offset falls in income.
National Express has been the subject of several takeover attempts this year. It gave up its East Coast Main Line franchise running between Scotland and London in November after revenues were weaker than expected.
It recently conducted a £360m rights issue in a bid to help reduce its near-£1bn debt pile.
One takeover attempt was backed by its biggest shareholder, the Cosmen Family, who also opposed the rights issue.
National Express executive chairman John Devaney said: “This has been a challenging year for National Express but, as it draws to a close, I am pleased that we have tackled and resolved our significant issues.
“We have eliminated the loss-making elements of our rail business and restored our balance sheet through a well-supported rights issue.
“National Express will enter 2010 on a sound basis, enabling our new group chief executive Dean Finch and the team to focus on improving the performance of our market-leading businesses and delivering shareholder value.”
National Express said its UK coach business has returned to growth with a 4% increase in revenues over the fourth quarter.
In UK bus, which operates in Dundee and the West Midlands, it reported “resilient” revenue growth of 2% in the year to date despite the impact of higher unemployment in the regions in which it operates.
In the rail business, its East Anglia franchise is receiving revenue support from the government.
It also said it had managed to strip £50m of annual running costs from the UK business.
In Spain, National Express said the rate of underlying revenue decline has improved to 5%, “although economic conditions remain challenging”.
But in North America it is continuing to suffer from the loss of school bus contracts and it has not stripped as much from costs as it hoped.
“This will benefit from a stronger management action plan to be rolled out in 2010, supported by tailoring of the business transformation programme to optimise cost and benefit,” National Express said.
National Express’s shares closed up 0.8p or 0.4% at 187.1p.
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