TCL share price in focus
Transurban, founded in 1999, manages and develops urban toll road networks in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Transurban has an interest in 22 urban motorways across its portfolio. Some of its notable motorways include the CityLink in Melbourne, Hills M2 in Sydney and the Logan Motorway in Brisbane.
Transurban invests heavily in the development of new projects which are paid back through collecting toll revenue from motor vehicles.
The key metrics
If you’ve ever tried to read a company’s income statement on the annual report, you’ll know it can get pretty complex. While there are any number of figures you could pull from this statement, three key ones are revenue, gross margin, and profit.
Revenue is important for obvious reasons – everything starts here. If you can’t generate revenue, you can’t generate profit. What we’re concerned about is not so much the absolute number, but the trend. TCL last reported an annual revenue of $4,119m with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the last 3 years of 12.6% per year.
Moving down the income statement, we then get to gross margin. The gross margin tells us how profitable the core products/services are – before you take into account all the overhead costs, how much money does the company make from selling $100 worth of goods or services? TCL’s latest reported gross margin was 57.0%.
Finally, we get to profit, arguably the most important figure. Last financial year Transurban Group reported a profit of $326m. That compares to 3 years ago when they made a profit of $3,303m, representing a CAGR of -53.8%.
Financial health of TCL shares
The next thing we need to consider is the capital ‘health’ of the company. What we’re trying to assess here is whether they’re generating a reasonable return on their equity (the total shareholder value) and have a decent safety buffer. One measure we can look at is net debt. This is simply the total debt minus the company’s cash holdings. In the case of TCL, the current net debt sits at $18,018m.
A high number here means that a company has a lot of debt which potentially means higher interest payments, greater instability, and higher sensitivity to interest rates. A negative value on the other hand indicates the company has more cash than debt (a useful safety buffer).
However, arguably more important is the debt/equity percentage. This tells us how much debt the company has relative to shareholder ownership. In other words, how leveraged is the company? TCL has a debt/equity ratio of 175.1%, which means they have more debt than equity. This isn’t always a bad thing if the company has stable revenue and good cash flow, but it certainly creates more risk.
Finally, we can look at the return on equity (ROE). The ROE tells us how much profit a company is generating as a percentage of its total equity – high numbers indicate the company is allocating capital well and generating value, while a low number suggests the profits might offer more value if they were paid to shareholders as a dividend. TCL generated an ROE of 3.0% in FY24.
What to make of TCL shares?
With strong revenue growth over the last 3 years, TCL could be a company to add to your ASX share price watchlist. However, the negative trend in profit suggests you might want to have a deeper look into TCL’s financial health and growth potential.
Please keep in mind that these figures are important but should only be the beginning of your research. It’s important to get a good grasp of the company’s financials and compare it to its peers. It’s also very important to make sure the company is priced fairly. To learn more about share price valuation, you can sign up for one of our many free online investing courses.
