It’s not all doom and gloom from the 2011-13 reporting season.
There are some small glimmers of hope and associated good news.
Take Transurban (TCL), the country’s leading toll road operator. It reported a very sharp rise in net earnings for the year to June 30 yesterday and forecast a rise in distributions to security holders for the new financial year.
The news helped push the units to a new post GFC high of $6.96 yesterday, up 2.6% or 18c on the day and the latest in a series of new highs the stock has passed through in the past couple of years.
TCL 1Y – Busier roads boost Transurban
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And, while the forecast higher payout will keep shareholders happy, so will the news that newish CEO Scott Charlton received the still rich $4.1 million in his first year running the company. But that was sharply lower than the $6.8 million his predecessor Chris Lynch received in his final year.
The company reported a net profit of $175 million for the year to June, up from $58 million in 2011-12. Toll revenue rose 5% to $991 million. That’s a net profit margin of more than 18%, which is very handsome indeed.
But the size of the increase in the 2012-13 result was a bit of an illusion as the previous year’s result was cut by an accounting charge of $138 million, which related to the Pocahontas Parkway 895 roadway in the US state of Virginia.
That left the a 2011-12 net profit of $58.558 million.
A more accurate comparison of profit performance is to look at earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. On that basis they rose 6.2% to just over $676 million, compared with nearly $637 million in 2011-12 and $604 million the year before.
Transurban, which owns nine toll roads in Sydney, Melbourne and the US, will pay a final dividend of 15.5c a share on August 14.
That will take its total payout for the year to 31c.
The new forecast distribution for the current year will be 34c which will be fully paid out of cash received from its toll-road assets.
Mr Charlton said the company’s confidence in the outlook for this financial year was based on increased traffic and toll revenue from roadways in Sydney’s north-west.
‘‘The completion of the M2 upgrade will bring significant benefits to Sydney’s north-west corridor – including our connecting roads the Lane Cove Tunnel and WestLink M7,’’ he said.
