Ryman drags down NZ stock market

Aged-care provider and index heavyweight Ryman Healthcare dragged down New Zealand’s share market today as investors wait for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s cash rate hike tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 22nd 2022, 5:57PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index fell 0.17% to 11,294.52. Turnover across the main board was $146.3 million.

Greg Smith, head of retail at Devon Funds, told BusinessDesk there was a lot of anticipation about the RBNZ's decision tomorrow, which could be why market activity was subdued today.

Ryman Healthcare fell 7.1% to $6.91, significantly dragging down the index today, with Smith noting that the company's share price hadn’t been this low since September 2013.

Smith said the aged-care provider’s first-half results released last Friday were “broadly in line” with expectations, but the market was still disappointed with Ryman’s debt levels and property market weakness, which was why the stock had fallen by so much since then.

Real estate investment firm Argosy Property's half-year results for the six months ended Sept 30 showed a 92% drop in net profit to $10.7m.

Argosy’s chair Jeff Morrison said in the company’s announcement that the world was experiencing economic and geopolitical volatility that had continued to hurt global financial markets.

“Argosy is mindful of this and remains committed to delivering on its investment strategy,” he said.

The firm was up 3.7% to $1.225 today.

Sky Network Television was put in and then lifted out of a trading halt today after the pay TV company announced its capital return worth $70m had been implemented.

At the company’s annual meeting in early November, Sky’s chair Philip Bowman faced many questions from peeved shareholders over Sky’s share consolidation and told them more than once that they weren’t being “swindled”.

As part of the capital return, one ordinary share for every six ordinary shares held by shareholders as of Nov 21 was cancelled. The total number of shares on issue following the capital return was 145,573,191 shares.

By the end of the day, Sky TV rose 1.4% to $2.30.

In a report today, Forsyth Barr’s senior quantitative analyst Matthew Leach picked Vulcan Steel to be the automatic entry to the NZX50 upon fleet company Eroad’s automatic departure at the upcoming S&P/NZX December 2022 quarterly index review.

Vulcan Steel was up 2.7% to $8.64 and Eroad was flat at $1.28.

Eroad will reveal its half-year results this Friday. In November, it told the market that it had a five-year agreement with North American food service leader Sysco for an initial order to supply more than 9,000 trucks with SaaS subscriptions.

Leach said if Forsyth Barr’s calculations were incorrect, the investment firm estimated that liquid fuels company Channel Infrastructure (CHI) would – by default – gain entry.

Turners Automotive Group reported its half-year interest expenses in the six months ended Sept 30 more than doubled from the same period last year. The automotive company was up 1.1% to $3.58 by early evening.

Metro Performance Glass fell 10.2% to 18.4 cents in very light trading.

Honey products manufacturer Comvita edged up 0.3% to $3.24 after it announced this afternoon that non-executive director Sarah Kennedy will resign from the company’s board from March 1 next year. Kennedy has been a member of the Comvita board since 2015.

Independent director Julia Hoare has been appointed in Kennedy’s place from March 2023 after Kennedy leaves.

Comvita also reported positive sales data yesterday.

General insurer Tower releases its full-year results tomorrow and was up 2.2% to 69 cents today.

ASB’s Chris Tennent-Brown said the Reserve Bank's decision tomorrow was the “next major event” for the NZ dollar, which fell one cent overnight. The move was mainly due to the greenback jumping on concerns that China may keep tightening its covid-19 restrictions.

Today, the NZ dollar traded at 61.10 US cents at 3pm in Wellington, down from 61.45 cents yesterday.

Tags: Market Close