News Round Up

Financial Forecasts, NPT changes direction, Reduced dividend for St Lukes, ANZ Float delayed, Thematic fund coming, AMP's second downgrade.

Sunday, January 30th 2000, 12:00AM

Financial Forecasts, your blueprint for the year ahead will be published later this week.

Financial Forecasts is our annual special feature that maps out what lies ahead for advisers and investors in the next 12 months. Topics covered include New Zealand and international equities, property, bonds, tax and superannuation.

This, the third annual Financial Forecasts, is brought to you by Good Returns in association with Bank of New Zealand.

NPT changes direction
The National Property Trust has reviewed its strategic direction and decided to invest up to 10 per cent of its total assets in development funding.

"The objective of this facility is to fund development projects which have known financial outcomes and provide satisfactory security," the company says.

NPT, like most listed property companies, are market laggards at the moment. NPT's units are trading at a 16 per cent discount, and its rights issue in October was only one-third filled.

Also unitholders last year scuttled NPT's plans to merge with Auckland-based Newmarket Property Trust.

NPT reported a $1.47 million after tax profit half-year profit. Unitholders will get a 4.79 cpu dividend on February 25.

Reduced dividend for St Lukes
High demand for retail space helped St Lukes Group report a 30 per cent increase in pre-tax earnings for the six months to December 31.

The company says its earnings of $32.9 million were achieved on total revenue of $58.1 million.

While St Lukes had a good six months ordinary shareholders will get a reduced dividend of 4.676 cps because the interest rate on its convertible notes has been increased from 8.7c to 13.9c.

Since the convertible note rate is fixed for four years, ordinary shareholders have to rely on a growth in company earnings for any future increase in dividend.

Special offer from Equitable
Equitable is offering investors an additional 0.5 per cent on top of the carded rate for any new ore reinvested money which is put into its Mortgage Income Trust during February.

Thematic fund
Australian-based funds manager Invesco is planning to launch its Global Themes Fund in the New Zealand market later this year.

The idea of the fund is that instead of investing internationally by geographic regions, it's better to select industries (such as telecommunications, financial services and healthcare) to invest in.

Thematic investing, (or sector funds as they are sometimes known), are one of the current trends being picked up by managers around the world. Another example of this approach is the new Calan Healthcare fund that was launched (quietly) last year.

The Invesco Global Themes Fund was launched in Australia in September last year and currently has A$2 million retail and A$4.7 million in wholesale money.

ANZ float delayed
ANZ Bank has confirmed it has put its New Zealand share float back to May because of regulatory delays.

The bank is planning to issue NZ dollar shares that are designed to track the head share's price.

"It is critical that we can give investors assurance that the income distributions can validly carry NZ imputation credits," managing director Murray Horn says. "We are not yet in that position."

AMP's second downgrade
AMP has suffered its second credit rating downgrade in as many months. Standards and Poors last week revised AMP's rating down from AA+ to AA, and it has replaced the credit watch negative status with a stable outlook.

AMP says that Moodys is currently reviewing AMP's rating status.

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