Infratil chief executive Jason Boyes.
The New Zealand sharemarket slipped modestly during a day of reshuffles at the top of several listed companies.
The benchmark S&P/NZX 50 fell quickly after the market opened on Monday but pared back most of its losses throughout the day, ending 0.01% down on 12,764.95 points.
Over 32.6 million shares changed hands, amounting to $135.5m in value traded.
Infratil equities rose 2.88% to $11.08 after an ongoing disclosure notice showed the infrastructure investor’s chief executive, Jason Boyes, has increased his stake in the company.
Boyes purchased about 118,000 shares between June 30 and July 4 in five transactions worth about $1.25m.
Paul Robertshawe, Octagon’s chief investment officer, said Boyes’ buying was a positive sign.
“You’ve got insiders buying. Generally speaking, you only buy something if you think you are going to get a good return from it.“
Robertshawe also highlighted a substantial product holder (SPH) published by Tourism Holdings, which showed the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) had increased its holding.
A consortium comprising Australian private equity firm BGH Capital and the family interests of executive director Luke Trouchet offered $2.30 per share for the company in mid-June.
Robertshawe said he thought the fact that ACC was buying back shares it sold earlier in the year indicated that the Crown entity thought the final sale price would rise above $2.30.
Reshuffles
Across the main board, the number of companies that declined outnumbered gainers 46 to 40.
NZME shares were flat after the media company announced its chief financial officer, David Mackrell, had resigned and will leave his role at the end of the year.
Mackrell has been with NZME since March 2019 and will take up a job at Sky Network Television, which was down 1.65% to $2.98.
Elsewhere in the market, George Adams and John Rae both resigned from carpet maker Bremworth with “immediate effect”.
The pair were the only two directors to stay on the board after a shake-up that replaced Adams with Rob Hewett and brought on new directors, Trevor Burt, Julie Bohnenn and Murray Dyer. Shares gained 3.33% to 62 cents.
Synlait Milk dipped 1.64% to 60 cents after chief operating officer Paul Mallard also resigned.
Mallard has been with Synlait since 2018 and has held various leadership roles. His resignation is the first from the newly appointed CEO’s Richard Wyeth’s executive team.
US
Skellerup Holdings was up 0.63% to $4.83 after the company gave more details about how it had been affected by the United States’ imposing tariffs on many of the countries from which it sources its products.
In an investor note released on Monday by Forsyth Barr analysts Rohan Koreman-Smit and Paul Koraua, the analysts raised their one-year target price 5% to $5.80.
“Both the Vietnamese tariff rate and Skellerup’s confidence in full mitigation are better than we had modelled, and we lift our forecasts accordingly,” the analysts said.
At 5pm, S&P 500 futures were down 0.43% before trading opened on Wall Street, signalling a cautious start to the trading week for the world’s largest economy.
The tariffs announced by President Donald Trump are scheduled to be reimposed on July 9, although Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated certain countries missing the deadline could be granted a three-week extension to continue negotiations.
“All statements are true until they’re not,” said Robertshawe. “The problem with this is they stop being true quite quickly, and one after another.”