Syria tension saps appetite
Pushpay Holdings hits five-week low after its weak sales report
NEW Zealand shares fell, pushing the benchmark index to a week-low, as geopolitical tensions weighed on equities. Pushpay Holdings extended its slide to a five-week low after its weak sales report. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and Sky Network Television declined. Synlait Milk broke with its frequent running mate A2 Milk, chalking up the day’s biggest gain while A2 fell.
The S&P/NZX 50 index fell 49.50 points, or 0.6 per cent, to 8404.22. Within the index, 28 stocks fell, 16 gained, and six were unchanged. Turnover was $125 million.
Escalating tensions in the Middle East, where US President Donald Trump has threatened a missile strike on the Syrian regime and a missile was reportedly shot down across Saudi Arabia, have driven up the price of crude oil and sapped risk appetite.
However, Hamilton Hindin Greene adviser James Smalley says the strength of the kiwi dollar is a better signal of whether investors fear the New Zealand economy is at threat from global forces, including a trade dispute between the US and China. “New Zealand is a bit of a bellwether, being an open trading economy,” he said. “You would have thought there would be an impact on the currency.” F&P Healthcare, which gets the biggest portion of its revenue in US dollars, fell 2.7 per cent to $12.75.
“Some of these growth-related stocks have done pretty well,” Smalley said. F&P Healthcare is one of the companies that will be posting March 31 results in the next month or so and there may be an element of “sell the fact ahead of the results”.
Pushpay fell 4.8 per cent to $3.94. The mobile app payments developer posted its first dip in quarterly revenue, with annualised committed monthly revenue down 19 per cent in the March quarter.
Sky TV fell 1.7 per cent to $2.33 and is down 16 per cent this year. Smalley said the stock has had a precipitous fall on bad news including not being the preferred bidder for the Rugby World Cup but that the Cup was only a six-week show. Consensus was the shares were about fair value around current levels and had found a base.
Spark New Zealand rose 0.4 per cent to $3.40. It is reportedly in the running for the World Cup rights in partnership with state-owned Television New Zealand.
Synlait gained 3.5 per cent to $9.26. The stock has often traded in sympathy to A2, its infant formula partner, but after falling this week, some investors “have decided to use it as a buying opportunity”.
New Zealand Oil & Gas dropped 3.2 per cent after the Government announced plans to end new offshore oil and gas exploration permits to pursue its zero-carbon by 2050 goal.
New Zealand Refining, the country’s only refinery operator, rose 1.3 per cent to $2.43, while transport fuels firm Z Energy declined 0.1 per cent to $7.12. Genesis Energy, which owns 46 per cent of the Kupe gas and oil field, was unchanged at $2.30.
Contact Energy fell 0.8 per cent to $5.28 after director Sue Sheldon said she will retire from the board at the end of August. —