A2 Milk led the index, up 7 per cent to $2.28. The share price has been pushed around by news about its Australian competitor Bellamy's, which was placed in a trading halt in December. Yesterday, Bellamy's ASX-shares took a nose dive closing down 19.9 per cent at A$5.35 after cutting its profit forecast for the second time, announced chief executive Laura McBain is to leave and tweaked the terms of its supply contract with Fonterra Co-operative Group.
Spark New Zealand rose 1.8 per cent to $3.695, Genesis Energy gained 1.7 per cent to $2.12 and Meridian Energy advanced 1.5 per cent to $2.72.
ANZ Bank New Zealand was up 0.9 per cent to $33. It has sold UDC Finance to HNA Group for $660m, marking the Chinese company's first foray into New Zealand. The deal is subject to various approvals and is expected to be completed late in the second half of the year, and will deliver a net gain to ANZ of A$100m, the lender said.
The sale price is $235m above UDC's net assets, or a price-to-book ratio of 1.6 times.
Tourism Holdings was the worst performer, down 1.8 per cent to $3.81, while Summerset Group Holdings fell 1.7 per cent to $4.60 and Arvida Group dropped 1.5 per cent to $1.30.
Kiwi Property Group fell 0.7 per cent to $1.43. Augusta Capital has dropped its High Court proceedings seeking orders requiring listed property investor NPT to call a meeting of shareholders to discuss its hostile bid, with a notice of meeting to be issued in February.
Augusta's proposal, along with an alternative deal from Kiwi Property which has won the backing of the target's board, will be put to shareholders at the meeting. NPT gained 1.5 per cent to 67c and Augusta rose 1 per cent to 98c.
Outside the benchmark index, Pushpay Holdings dropped 3.7 per cent to $1.81. The mobile payments app developer says its annualised committed monthly revenue (ACMR) grew US$8.4m in the December quarter, including US$1.1m it made from acquiring US church app business Bluebridge in November. Pushpay is on track to reach its ACMR target of US$72m ($103m) and breakeven on a monthly cashflow basis by the end of calendar 2017, said chief executive and co-founder Chris Heaslip.
Hellaby Holdings rose 0.6 per cent to $3.54. Directors of Bapcor and Hellaby are to meet today and on Friday, with Hellaby's board planning to issue an updated recommendation to shareholders "as soon as is practicable".
ASX-listed Bapcor has been pursuing NZX-listed Hellaby since September and secured control of 50 per cent of Hellaby shares on Tuesday.
