Transurban Group (ASX: TCL) shareholders haven't had much to cheer about this year. Transurban's share price is still down 18% since February 19.
Transurban's share price took a big hit from the COVID-19 market selloff, falling 39% from February 19 through to March 19.
Since the low, the company's shares have regained 34%, but that wasn't enough to recover February's highwater mark.
There's good reason for that, of course. When a pandemic sees you ordered to stay inside, or at least not travel more than a few kilometres from your home, you're pretty unlikely to get onto one of Transurban tollways in New South Wales, Victoria or Queensland.
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What does Transurban do?
Transurban is one of the world's largest toll road operators. As well as collecting toll payments from road users the company also designs and builds new road projects. Transurban is Australian owned and active in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. It also operates toll roads in Montreal, Canada and the wider Washington DC area in the United States.
Transurban first listed on the ASX in 1996, and today is part of the S&P/ASX 200 (INDEXASX: XJO).
Why this data points to a bounce in Transurban's share price
As the company revealed in its full year financial results on August 12, the coronavirus took a big bite out of its FY20 revenues.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) declined 6.4%. The company reported a fall in daily traffic across all its operations of 8.6%. Now that's for the entire 12 months, mind you. While virus lockdowns have only been in place since March.
For Transurban's share price to rebound it needs to see more vehicles back on its toll roads. It's not rocket science.
And the latest mobility data from Apple shows the company can not only expect a return to pre-COVID levels of traffic, but potentially a big increase.
Apple's Mobility Trends map the change in routing requests since January 13, 2020. And the data shows a 14% increase for drivers requesting directions in Perth. Meanwhile, public transit searches in the city are 29% down.
Now Transurban doesn't operate in Western Australia. But it does operate in Melbourne, where driving searches are down 54% since January 13 and transit searches are down a whopping 87%.
Victoria remains largely shuttered as it fights to control the second wave of infections. But if Perth is any example, once those restrictions lift, drivers will return to the roads in hoards. While public transport will likely stumble as people continue to maintain social distancing.
This outlook hasn't filtered into Transurban's share price today (it's down 1.3%). But at the current price of $13.30 per share, Transurban's shares could look like a huge bargain as we head into next year.
