‘We’ve grabbed all the lollies’: CEO

Veteran competition lawyer Michael Wigley says he doubts there will be any clearance issues. The only possible fly in the ointment he sees is Infratil’s 51 per cent in Trustpower, which has grabbed around 5 per cent of the retail internet market in recent years by bundling broadband with power.

If this does become a problem, Infratil could solve through divestment, Wigley said.

But that could be a little tricky. The Commerce Commission would likely veto Spark, 2degrees and Vocus as buyers of Trustpower’s 100,000-strong base of broadband customers, Wigley said, and the power retailer might be reluctant to offload its telecommunications business.

Infratil offloading Trustpower altogether is not an attractive option, either. Forsyth Barr senior analyst Andrew Harvey-Green recently noted: “Trustpower is the only [Infratil] asset with strong, reliable free cash flow.

Although Infratil is perhaps best known as the owner of Wellington Airport and NZ Bus, Vodafone NZ won’t be its first foray into tech.

In 2016 it bought a half share in Canberra Data Centres (CDC) for A$392m and a year later invested a further A$50m to help fund its growth.

Asked by the Herald what has changed since his last tour-of-duty in telecommunications, Bogoievski quips: “Probably everything. I tell people not to rely too much on my view because it’s so hopelessly out of date.”

That notwithstanding, Infratil’s tech-sector performance has not been too shabby.

Last month, the company said the value of its 48 per cent stake in CDC had risen to between $841m and $942m.

Harvey-Green cited highlighted smart management of the CDC investment as he maintained his “outperform” rating on Infratil on April 11 and lifted his 12-month target price by 10 cents to $4.45.

Dekker rates it neutral with a $4.37 target.