NZ market turns over almost $400m as indices rebalance

New Zealand’s sharemarket turned over more than $300 million on Friday as the S&P/NZX indices rebalanced – as a result of its June quarterly review.

Friday, June 16th 2023, 7:05PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index rose 112.59 points, or 1%, to 11,800.04.

Turnover on the entire market was $380.8m with 85 stocks rising and 46 falling.

Hamilton Hindin Greene investment advisor Jeremy Sullivan said it had been another quiet news day on the market as investors digested this week’s economic data.

“Clearly the big data this week was the Fed's pause,” he said. “It's the first time in ten sessions that they’ve done so.”

Scott Technology, which was up 10% on Thursday, had another solid day and rose 10 cents or 3.3% to $3.10 by the close.

The automation and robotics company told the market on Thursday that it was “exploring options to maximise value for all shareholders”.

This followed discussions with majority shareholder JBS which owns 53% of the Dunedin-based company.

Sullivan said Scott Technology’s stock was up 16% in the past two trading days.

“They're probably one of the best performers this week,” he said.

Channel Infrastructure was up 2.1% to $1.44 after announcing it had entered into a long-term fixed price variable volume contract for the supply of renewable electricity.

Foley Wines chief executive Mark Turnbull told the market that the company had completed its harvest for the 2023 vintage, bringing in 8,137 tonnes across its Marlborough, Martinborough, and Mt Difficulty wineries. This was down 12% on the 2022 harvest of 9,203 tonnes but a 46% increase on the 2021 harvest of 5,582 tonnes. Its shares were unchanged at $1.18.

ASB senior economist Nat Keall said in a commodities weekly note that economic data out of Chinese had “continued to disappoint”.

Although China's retail sales rose 12.7% year-on-year, they were below expectations of a 13.6% lift and down from the 18.4% annual growth in March, he said.

“We retain our view that any growth in demand for key NZ primary exports from China won’t be sufficient to offset weaker demand from elsewhere.”

A2 Milk rose 8 cents, or 1.4%, to $5.63, and Synlait Milk was down 7 cents (4%) to $1.70.

Both companies have major interests in China.

Scales was down 9 cents, or 2.8%, to $3.18.

Smartpay Holdings said it was investigating a ransomware security incident that happened on June 10 affecting some of its systems.

The Eftpos equipment supplier told the market that its “ongoing” investigation had confirmed that “criminals have stolen information pertaining to a group of customers in Australia and NZ from our NZ systems”.

The stock was down 7 cents, or 3.9%, to $1.735 by early evening.

Sullivan said utilities had weighed down the index during the day although many managed to scrape into the positive territory by the close.

Meridian Energy was up 3 cents, or 0.7%, to $5.42, Vector edged up 2 cents, or 0.5%, to $4.01 and Mercury rose 3.5 cents, or 0.6%, to $6.365.

Contact Energy was flat at $7.83 per share. Genesis Energy fell 4 cents, or 1.5%, to $2.70 and Manawa Energy was down 2 cents, or 0.4%, to $4.73 and Infratil was down 24.5 cents, or 2.5%, to $9.625.

“Ryman, which has had a nice recovery over the past few trading sessions, has come off the boil a little bit as well,” Sullivan said.

Ryman Healthcare was down 14 cents, or 2.2%, to $6.29. Oceania Healthcare fell 2.6% to 76 cents.

Summerset Group edged down 1 cent to $9.15.

Offsetting today’s decliners and doing much of the index’s heavy lifting were big stocks like Ebos Group, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, and Mainfreight. Mainfreight was up 85 cents, or 1.2%, to $72.40, F&P Healthcare rose 71 cents, or 3%, to $24.58 and Ebos Group jumped 2.5% to $36.60.

NZ Automotive Investments announced the company’s name was changing to 2 Cheap Cars Group effective from June 26.

The stock was down 1.5 cents, or 5.2%, to 27.5 cents.

My Food Bag was up for the third day in a row, rising 1.1 cents, or 6.3%, to 18.6 cents.

Sullivan said the meal kit company was a “relatively liquid stock” that could be pushed around and was trading back to the levels it recorded after the release of its full-year results in May.

On the currency front, the NZ dollar was trading at 62.40 US cents at 3pm in Wellington, from 61.63 cents on Wednesday.

Tags: Market Close