Auckland Airport shares drop on runway delays as NZX dips 0.61%

A runway delay at Auckland Airport has kept the NZX in the red as markets across the ditch continued their rebound.

Tuesday, April 29th 2025, 7:30PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 ended the day 0.61% down on 12,025.450 points, adding to Monday's losses and remaining about 2% down for the month.

The Australian benchmark, the S&P/ASX 200, was up 0.86% by 5pm after topping its highest level in eight weeks and locking in a full recovery from the fallout sparked by so-called “Liberation Day” on April 2.

News continued to rush in from the United States overnight, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling journalists the administration was prioritising tariff discussions with countries other than China.

US equities initially sold off, but the S&P 500 finished trading up a marginal 0.06% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.1%.

Following market close in the United States, the White House said it was mitigating the impact of automotive tariffs by easing some duties on foreign parts.

Concentrated Volumes

Of the $154.5 million in value traded across the NZX main board, over $37m was tied to Auckland International Airport, which told investors it was pushing out the timeframe for a second runway to at least 2038.

Auckland International Airport shares fell 2.87% to $7.78 after a rollercoaster year-to-date.

The second runway is still expected to be needed, as the airport anticipates a doubling of passengers to 38 million flowing through its terminals. By 2047, air cargo is expected to have grown by more than 40% to 223,000 tonnes.

Craigs Investment Partners senior research analyst Mohandeep Singh said the announcement was low in detail and that he doesn’t think it affects the airport's long-term earnings prospects.

“I don't think it’ll sway the market too much given how far out it is into the future,” he said.

"We’d like to see [it] be closer because it means demand or volumes is coming through, but the reality is they’ve got plenty of capital expenditure going on at the moment with the domestic terminal and so forth.”

Large volumes were also traded in NZ’s listed property companies. Between them, shares of Goodman Property Trust, Precinct Properties and Kiwi Property Group accounted for nearly $26m in value traded.

Shares at Precinct were up 1.9% to $1.075 while Goodman Property rose 1.08% to $1.87.

Singh said the property sector is feeling "some love" due to its domestic focus and being insulated from overseas news flows, as well as the expectation that rates will come down.

“We’ve got another three cuts to come, that’s what the market is saying,” he said. “The property sector is most acutely impacted by changes in interest rates.”

The rest

Across the main board, there were 89 gainers and 48 stocks that declined.

Rakon was up 16.33% to 57 cents on light volumes. The high-tech manufacturer declared improved earnings guidance and revealed it had more than one interested buyer for its business on Monday.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare continued its tough year, dropping off 0.92% to $34.30 on volumes exceeding $10m.

Pacific Edge halted trading for a couple of hours earlier in the day to come to terms with an overnight announcement from a US federal agency.

Once the trading halt was lifted, Pacific Edge's shares rose rapidly, finishing the day up 10.34% to 9.6 cents, recovering some of the losses from Monday.

The biotechnology said it was upbeat about the draft "gapfill rates" for its new Cxbladder Triage Plus test from the US Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Gapfill prices are proposed reimbursement rates for new or unpriced clinical diagnostic laboratory tests.

Just before the market closing, Fonterra Co-operative Group said it would shut down its Hamilton canning and packaging facility at the end of July.

The Canpac site, which blends and packages powder, packs up to 4,000 metric tonnes of powder per year, less than 1% of the co-op’s total product volume. Fonterra shares remained relatively flat, up 0.22% to $4.55. These are shares that farmer members of the co-op are required to buy. Fonterra shareholder fund units that are openly traded were up slightly to $5.25.

Tags: Market Close