Nice post Jayriggs and nice to see someone take the bit between their teeth and try and understand TRA's woeful underperformance.
Add into the mix long term autonomous self driving cars and overseas survey's are showing many young people would rather own a smartphone than own a car. Good public transport in some overseas cities, uber, self driving cars and now people getting around en masse in cities on electric scooters. The world is slowly changing.
I keep an eye on AHG the largest vehicle retailer in Australasia. Its interesting to compare the two graph's and it would appear these long term developing trends are having a meaningful effect on both companies, with AHG in yellow getting based even harder with the ugly stick over the last two years, see attached comparison graph
Attachment 10171
I think there's more too it with TRA. As Winner has correctly pointed out their ROIC is not great and eps growth this year will be minimal, if any. Then there's the fear of a recession in FY19 or FY20 and car companies have traditionally faired very poorly in a deep recession. The lack of liquidity is also off-putting for many and the chairman did himself and the company a tremendous disservice by not attending the annual meeting.