NZX on front foot to start May as Infratil rises 3.5% - Market close

Infratil shares rallied on the news that Microsoft and Meta suggested overnight they would ramp up investment in datacentres. CDC's Hobsonville data centre has been doubled in size since it first opened in late 2022. The half-Infratil owned firm offers some 90MW of capacity between the Hobsonville facility and its twin at Silverdale. Photo / NZME

The New Zealand benchmark has kicked off the month on the front foot but is still being outgunned by its counterpart on the other side of the Tasman.

A late rally of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, rising 2.44% to $34.83, helped push the S&P/NZX 50 up 2.06% to 12.148.600 points – over 44 million shares trading hands, amounting to $153.9m in value traded.

The equivalent index in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200, was down more than 10% for the year on April 7 but has more or less recovered since. Up another 0.2% by 5pm on Thursday, it is almost flat for the year.

Despite never being down 10% at any stage this year, the NZX 50 has not made the same recovery. It remained 7% down for the year at the end of the day’s trading.

Head of retail investing at Devon Funds Greg Smith said part of the explanation is due to the NZX being more defensive and less directly exposed to China than the ASX.

Australian stocks fell further but recovered faster, and the Australian economy was stronger, he said, adding NZ investors were holding their breath for a rate cut.“Our economy is still crawling out of a recession. To really get our stock market going, we need some more rate cuts.”

Datacentres

Across the main board, there were 93 gainers and 41 decliners.

Smith noted a quiet day with regard to company announcements, though drew attention to Spark acknowledging media reports stating the firm was auctioning half of its datacentre.

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported the telco had “launched an auction to find a co-investor for its datacentre portfolio, which could be worth as much as $1.2b”.

Smith said Spark shares, which rose 1.2% to $2.105, were unlikely to move dramatically on the announcement because investors ”were taking the news with a pinch of salt” due to the deal remaining indefinite.

Sticking with datacentres, after a topsy-turvy year, Infratil rallied 3.51% to $10.92 after Microsoft and Meta suggested overnight they would ramp up investment in datacentres.

Due to its holding in Canberra Data Centres, the infrastructure investor is exposed to changes in perceptions about how much large US technology firms are willing to invest in expanding their artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.“

There’s been a bit of a suggestion that some of these hyperscalers were pulling back on their datacentre investment, which in theory put a bit of a dent in that narrative,” Smith said. ”But that was put to rest.”

The rest

Buried in his speech at the NZX annual general meeting, company chairman John McMahon provided a trading update and held guidance.

McMahon said revenues for the first quarter were $30.8m, up 8.8% compared with the same period last year.

“Despite present market volatility, we remain cautiously optimistic for 2025 and we are maintaining our operating earnings guidance range of $49m to $54m,” he said.

The market operator’s shares jumped 1.95% to $1.57.

Retirement village and aged care facility company Ryman Healthcare rose 2.71% to $2.27, while its principal competitor, Summerset Group, dropped 0.74% to $10.70.

For the past five years, Summerset shares have fared better than Ryman’s, which have fallen precipitously from over $17 in January 2020.

Fletcher Building quietly locked in more gains, rising 3.26% to $3.17. The stock ended the day up nearly 10% for the year.

Overlooking some of the “specific problems” the company is working through, Smith said it was benefiting from the economy appearing to have reached the bottom of the cycle.