Excluding significant items, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation increased 12 per cent to $2 billion. Loading The company - which put its shares in a trading halt until Thursday - declared a full-year dividend of 59¢ per share, up from 56¢ last year, and gave guidance for a 62¢ dividend in 2020. Chief executive Scott Charlton gave investors hope their payouts would continue to rise, saying the company believed it could continue to grow dividends by mid-single digit every year. UBS analyst Simon Mitchell said the result was "broadly in line with expectations", while noting weakening traffic trends in the fourth quarter.

Traffic grew by 2 on average across Transurban's roads in Australia and North America, notwithstanding disruptions caused by construction works in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. However traffic dipped sharply in the fourth quarter, slowing to 0.3 per cent in Sydney and Melbourne and went backwards slightly (0.1 per cent) in Brisbane. Mr Charlton said that was due to softer economic conditions, the timing of Easter, and the progression of major tram works in Sydney that saw a large number of trucks moving in and out of the city. “So maybe a little bit weaker but nothing at this point that we’d be tremendously concerned about," he said. "We’re conscious of the current [economic] conditions but hopefully things will pick up from here.”

Chris Hillsdon, an analyst at Legg Mason's investment group RARE Infrastructure, said the softer traffic "was expected, given we’ve got interest rates coming down to where they are and obviously the economy’s not quite as strong as it has been in the past". “The flip side and the benefit to that is that their interest costs continue to come down… which means you can maintain that cashflow through to equity," he said. Loading Mr Charlton said that while low interest rates delivered short-term benefits on new aquisitions, it did not change its overall investment outlook given the long life of the roads it operated. "Clearly there’s a benefit in the shorter term where you know where interest rates are, you can lock in interest rates," he said.

"[But] we’re looking at long-term risk profiles, long term equity returns and we’re looking at the long term averages." Mr Hillsdon said the M5 buyout made "perfect sense", with Transurban able to reap benefits such as refinancing that were not possible under the group ownership. One analyst, who declined to be named, said the traffic slowdown appear to be a function of "how many tradies are driving up and down... doing buildings and reno work". "With the way the domestic economy is going, there is a lot less of that happening," he said. Mr Charlton said the number of motorists using the new M4 tunnels in Sydney were higher than expected since they opened last month, and that the company was interested in being part of the NSW government's western Sydney Harbour tunnel project.