Mercury Energy impresses as NZX 50 dips 0.3% - Market close

Mercury Energy's result beat market consensus expectations. Photo / NZME

Sharp gains in dairy stocks were not enough to keep the benchmark index above the ledger on Tuesday.

The S&P/NZX 50 declined 0.32% to 12,928.68 points, with 55.9 million shares worth $154.4m changing hands.

Harbour Asset Management portfolio manager Shane Solly said it had been an “action-packed day” on the local bourse, starting with a “solid result” from Mercury Energy.

Mercury shares rose 1.64% to $6.495 despite the company reporting a net profit after tax (npat) of $1m, compared with $290 million the previous year.

Solly said the market was focused on operating earnings (ebitdaf) and that the figure came out at $786m when the consensus estimate was $773m.

“Now the previous year was $877m, so it is down on the previous year, but it’s ahead of expectations, and sharemarkets work on expectations.”

Milky gains

The a2 Milk Company had another good day, lifting 4.13% to $9.32 on volumes exceeding $24.5m in value traded.

On Monday, alongside its annual result, a2 Milk told investors it had inked a long-awaited deal to purchase Yashili’s NZ plant for $282m. It also sold its stake in Mataura Valley Milk to Open Country Dairy.

Synlait Milk jumped 7.02% to 61 cents after it confirmed media reports that it was in discussions with “a party” over its North Island assets.

A report in The Australian overnight said Abbott Laboratories was believed to be in talks with the dual-listed milk producer to buy its Pōkeno factory south of Auckland. United States-based Abbott is a customer of Synlait’s at the site.

Solly said the stock had likely moved because the announcement shows a “very credible operator” is interested in the business. “That’s confirmation that there is value in those assets,” he said.

Although Synlait has dipped since trading above $1 in April, both it and a2 Milk are up over 40% in the year to date, while the NZX 50 has traded flat over the same period.

The other main openly traded dairy security on the NZX, Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund, lost 0.43% to $6.95.

SkyCity halt and OCR

Elsewhere on the exchange, SkyCity Entertainment Group went into a trading halt.

The casino operator said it expected to make a “material announcement” regarding a capital raise. It said “no final decision” had been made around the raise, but a trading halt was needed to “maintain an orderly market while SkyCity works to finalise the capital raise”.

Infratil, which held its annual meeting in Auckland on Tuesday, slipped a modest 0.12% to $12.19.

The market will be looking ahead towards the Reserve Bank of NZ’s (RBNZ) monetary policy statement (MPS) announcement on Wednesday, Solly said.

He said investors had more or less baked in another 25-point basis cut to forecasts, but they will be looking for tone and whether or not the RBNZ revised its terminal rate, which is currently set at 2.85%.

Both Fletcher Building and Spark NZ will report on Wednesday.

“Both have the potential to be quite complicated results with lots of accounting changes,” Solly said. “There’s a little bit of focus on resetting dividends for Spark. That is going to be the big one.”

Fletcher fell 3.07% to $2.23, while Spark lost 1.98% to end the day at $2.48.