Sanford leads NZ shares lowers

Fishery company Sanford led New Zealand’s benchmark equity index lower as the local share market continued to roll downhill into earnings season.

Wednesday, February 10th 2021, 7:31PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index fell 97.66 points, or 0.8 percent, to 12,830.03. Within the index, 28 stocks declined, 14 rose and eight were unchanged. Turnover was $138.4 million.

One-hundred-year-old fishing firm Sanford had the day’s biggest fall, after running into trouble with China's customs authority.

The customs authority suspended imports from a Sanford site after it raised “a number of queries” following a video audit of Sanford's Havelock mussel processing facility.

Sanford said it does not expect this to have a material impact on sales, but the firm’s share price dropped 5.1 percent to $4.65.

Renewable energy firms continued to fall as buying demand from offshore index funds slowed. Meridian Energy fell 4.5 percent to $6.53 and Contact Energy declined 3.8 percent to $7.70.

Shane Solly, a portfolio manager at Harbour Asset Management, said investors are concerned that a possible reweighting of the clean energy indices that drove these stocks higher may see the price fall even further.

Infratil shares dipped 0.3 percent to $7.465 after the investment firm announced its long-serving chief executive Marko Bogoievski will step aside, allowing Jason Boyes to assume the role.

Bogoievski will continue in his role as chief executive of Infratil’s manager Morrison & Co.

Shares in Property for Industry climbed 0.7 percent to $2.925 after announcing the sale of its Carlaw Park property in Parnell, Auckland, to a private investor for $110 million.

The property investment vehicle is in the process of divesting non-industry properties.

Retirement village operator Summerset Group posted the day’s biggest gain, climbing 3.3 percent to $12.89.

Milford Asset Management portfolio manager Sam Trethewey told BusinessDesk investors were taking a “wait and see” approach ahead of what he expects to be an interesting earnings season.

“We should be in for one of the more interesting earnings seasons in some time, given the backdrop of pretty strong markets in the back end of last year, and rebounding economies globally have set the scene for some pretty strong numbers to be reported from those companies that are exposed to cyclical economies,” he said.

Next week eight companies in the NZX 50 will report earnings, with most other reporting in the following two weeks.

The kiwi dollar was trading at 72.35 US cents at 5pm in Wellington, down from 72.48 cents yesterday.

The trade-weighted index was at 74.80 at 5pm, from 75.10 yesterday. The kiwi traded at 93.45 Australian cents from 93.80 cents, 75.63 yen from 76.02 yen, 59.66 euro cents from 60.01 cents, 52.33 British pence from 52.60 pence, and 4.6576 Chinese yuan from 4.6739 yuan.

Tags: Market Close