NZ market still in dour state post SVB fail

The shockwaves from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse are still being felt across markets, with New Zealand’s benchmark index being dragged lower on dour investor sentiment.

Tuesday, March 14th 2023, 6:12PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index was down by 77 points today, or 0.66%, to 11,595.47. Turnover was $134.7 million.

Craigs Investment Partners investment advisor Peter McIntyre told BusinessDesk that Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse was still being felt across markets and there were some concerns about whether there was going to be a “contagion effect” on some other smaller regional banks.

“If anything falls from the trees over the next day or so, that’s going to roll the market,” he said.

There were 35 gainers and 95 decliners across NZ’s local index today, with technology firm Serko having one of the bigger jumps up the board, rising 4.7% to $2.43.

Healthcare manufacturer Ebos Group turned over the most in value – almost $21m – and edged down 0.5% to $45.16.

TruScreen Group had one of the biggest declines today – on light trading – and fell 11.8% to 3 cents. A share rights offer priced at 3 cents is due to close shortly.

The cervical screening tech company told the market that private medical services provider Dr Sulaiman Al-Habib Medical Group had recently completed the analysis of results from its cervical screening clinical evaluation of TruScreen’s Cytology product.

It had confirmed TruScreen’s sensitivity screening was 83.3% while its specificity was 95%.

Other stocks that were pinched today were tech companies like ikeGPS Group which fell 4.4% to 88 cents and Rakon which was down 4.5% to 85 cents.

General insurer Tower fell 4% to 59.5 cents while church management software firm Pushpay was up 1.6% to $1.26 on the news that its scheme implementation agreement had been given an extension.

The new date and time have been set for 7pm tomorrow.

Westpac NZ was down 1.5% to $22.80. The bank announced it had increased its financial support for Community Law Centres o Aotearoa (CLCA) to provide more assistance to vulnerable clients.

ANZ Bank also fell 2.8% to $24.65.

Synlait Milk reduced its forecast base milk price for the 2022-23 season to $8.50 per kilogram of milk solids (kgMS) from $9.00/kgMS.

Synlait told the NZX this morning that the key drivers of the revised forecast were subdued global economic activity as well as a slower-than-expected recovery of Chinese demand following the pandemic.

Synlait was down 3.1% to $3.13 by the end of the day and A2 Milk fell 1.8% to $6.95. Fonterra Shareholders' Fund Units edged up 0.7% to $3.02.

Today, the NZ dollar was trading at 62.15 US cents at 3pm in Wellington, jumping up from 61.50 cents at the same time yesterday.

Tags: Market Close