Infrastructure investor Infratil, which has exposure to data centre firm CDC, ended up 30c (2.9%) at $10.70.
Salt Funds managing director Matt Goodson said Infratil’s gain ran counter to US data centre giant, Equinix’s (market cap US$73.9 billion), share price in recent days.
“These days, Infratil’s valuation is dominated by the data centre business,” Goodson said.
“There are differing views about how sustainable this whole data centre thing is,” he said.
“It’s tended to wax and wane, but in the US, one of the major players, Equinix, has been down 9% in each of the last two days.
“In the past, a speed wobble in one of the major global players would feed into prices down here, but this time around it’s ignored the Equinix factor,” he said.
Property for Industry (PFI) finished 3.5c higher at $2.23 after issuing a positive update.
PFI said its portfolio continued to demonstrate solid fundamentals, with 99.9% occupancy, a steady weighted average lease term, and a healthy tenant base, “leading to continued high levels of cash collection”.
Goodson said PFI’s update showed the commercial property sector had “pretty much bottomed out”.
“We’ve seen the property index, after quite an extended period of weakness, behaving a lot more strongly,” he said.
Out-of-favour telco Spark gained 6c or 2.5% to $2.42 on the back of a couple of broker upgrades.
Across the Tasman, ASX-listed accounting software platform Xero traded at A$182.54c ($197), down A$1.46, after successfully completing a A$1.85 billion institutional placement for the acquisition of US-Israeli payments fintech Melio earlier in the week.
The shares were issued at A$176 a share in the placement.
“I guess Xero faced the question as to whether they could have either built that capability in the US themselves or bought Melio, so in the end they chose to use their extended share price to do a large equity raise.
“It’s been a mixed reaction from Xero, but the share price is certainly down from where it was trading, but it’s a little bit above the issue price.”
Among the smaller issues, Rakon was the market’s top performer, gaining 4c or 7.1% on light volume.
Looking ahead, Monday could see some end-of-quarter trading activity in the market, Goodson said.
Beyond that, there is the Reserve Bank’s July 9 review of its Official Cash Rate (OCR), which currently sits at 3.25%.
ASB this week revised its OCR forecast to just one more 25 basis point cut, most likely in August.
The bank had previously expected the OCR to reach a low of 2.75% later this year.
Jamie Gray is an Auckland-based journalist, covering the financial markets and the primary sector. He joined the Herald in 2011.
