My Food Bag buoyed by Aussie takeover

New Zealand shares rose on Tuesday with My Food Bag climbing out of the doldrums after rival Hello Fresh shelled out A$125 million to buy an Australian meal company.

Tuesday, July 13th 2021, 6:43PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index rose 21.54 points, or 0.2%, to 12,784.94. Turnover was $150m.

Meal-kit company My Food Bag – which sits outside the benchmark index – got a boost after multi-national rival HelloFresh offered to buy ASX-listed ready-made meal company Youfoodz at an 82% premium to its share price.

Youfoodz has followed a similar track to My Food Bag, falling steadily since going public last December.

The two companies are very different in many ways. My Food Bag is profitable, trades at a higher revenue multiple and only a fraction of its revenue comes from ready-made meals.

Still, investors were encouraged by Hello Fresh’s willingness to pay significantly above market price and My Food Bag shares rallied 3.8% to $1.38 – roughly 5% above its low.

Tourism Holdings had the day’s biggest gain, up 3.8% at $2.44, also bouncing back after its lowest closing price since March.

Shares of personal lender Harmoney jumped 10.1% to $2.18, bringing its gain over the past two weeks to almost 50%. Much of this gain seems to have been driven by cornerstone shareholder Heartland Group, which bought another 1.7m share for $2.7m at the start of July.

Another fin-tech firm, Pushpay Holdings also climbed 3% today to reach $1.75.

Internet infrastructure firm Chorus fell 1.6% to $6.25 after Jarden analysts valued the stock at $6.20 on uncertain dividend expectations due to regulation delays.

Jarden analysts also upgraded their valuation of Summerset Group, which gained 0.4% to $13.55 today.

The research analysts said Summerset was their preferred listed retirement operator due to its development pipeline, growth opportunity in Australia, and flexible balance sheet.

Travel booking software firm Serko had the day’s biggest drop, down 3% to $7.14, but is still up 25% year-to-date.

The kiwi dollar was trading at 70.03 US cents by 3pm in Wellington, up from 69.88 cents yesterday.

The trade-weighted index was at 74.01 at 3pm, from 73.90 yesterday. The kiwi traded at 93.47 Australian cents from 93.50 cents, 77.29 yen from 76.95 yen, 59.00 euro cents from 58.87 cents, 50.41 British pence from 50.27 pence, and 4.5285 Chinese yuan from 4.5259 yuan.

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