Paul Robertshawe, chief investment officer for Octagon Asset Management, said Fisher & Paykel holds its annual meeting (on August 25) during the reporting season, and in recent history it has provided an earnings upgrade.
“Perhaps investors are anticipating that this will happen again – Fisher & Paykel has been growing at low double-digit percentage increases.”
Robertshawe said quarterly updates from companies such as Michael Hill and Briscoe have been okay. “Anything in line with expectation is good enough in this environment – it shows companies have managed well in a tough period.”
In the US, the technology stocks were back in favour on stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings. One commentator said, “The cloud computing giants are very well positioned, and semiconductors remain in rapid growth mode.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average struck a record close after gaining 693 points or 1.32% to 53,178.41. S&P 500 neared its all-time high after increasing 1.48% to 7600.5 points (record 7609.78), and the Nasdaq Composite rose 2.13% to 25,913.9.
Nearly all the Magnificent Seven tech stocks had a strong day. Meta Platforms rose 6.02% to US$590.24 (NZ$1006.37); Microsoft was up 4.93% to US$487.65; Amazon gained 4.58% to US$284.02; Alphabet added 4.44% to US$372.47; and Tesla rose 3.49% to US$322.08.
Apple was the only one to go the other way, decreasing 1.78% to US$303.42.
Across the Tasman, the S&P/ASX 200 Index had risen 1.3% to 9136.4 points at 6pm NZ time – the index’s highest close was 9202.9 on February 26.
Local stocks
At home, card spending was up 0.5% in July, with annual growth increasing from 5.8% to 6.1%, according to the latest ANZ data.
Durables and hospitality had the largest monthly increases, up 2.3% and 2% respectively, while spending on motor vehicles and fuel was down 0.8%.
Meridian Energy was up 13c, or 2.3%, to $5.77; Infratil added 29c, or 1.96%, to $15.09; Fletcher Building gained 7c, or 1.93%, to $3.69; Freightways collected 15c to $14.15; and Vista Group climbed 7c, or 2.79%, to $2.58 after upgrading its full-year earnings.
Scales Corp increased 25c, or 3.82%, to $6.80; Seeka was up 10c, or 2.06%, to $4.95; Delegat Group gained 8c, or 1.93%, to $4.23; and Gentrack rose 17c, or 4.62%, to $3.85.
Vulcan Steel was up 20c, or 3.1%, to $6.65; NZ Rural Land gained 4.5c, or 4.86%, to 97c; and Locate Technologies rose 0.006c, or 13.64%, to 5c.
Summerset was down 29c, or 3.52%, to $7.94; Vector shed 11c, or 2.21%, to $4.86; Millennium & Copthorne Hotels NZ declined 10c, or 3.15%, to $3.07; and Kiwi Property decreased 2c, or 2.11%, to 93c.
Third Age Health, providing services to 124 aged residential care facilities, increased 20c or 4.42% to $4.73 after earlier reporting a 20.9% increase in revenue to $6.08m and a 36.3% rise in net profit to $1.025m for the first quarter of the 2027 financial year – compared with the same period last year.
Eroad, up 2c or 1.96% to $1.04, has appointed David Leach as the new chief executive, with a yearly wage of $595,000 and short- and long-term performance incentives ranging from 33% to 100% of the base salary.
Leach, currently chief executive of Auckland-based cloud insurance software firm JAVLN, starts on October 12. Until then John Scott will continue as executive chairman.
Air NZ, unchanged at 43c, reported a slight drop in passengers in June, with domestic down 3.1% to 888,000, Tasman-Pacific 0.3% to 361,000 and long-haul down 0.2% to 187,000. Total passengers carried were 1.436 million, a 2% decrease.
Revenue per available seat kilometre for domestic, Tasman and Pacific Islands was down 1.7%, and long-haul increased 5.7%, primarily reflecting reduced capacity while demand remained resilient.
Santana Minerals was up 2c or 4.27% to 61c after making a Diggers and Dealers Investor presentation. Santana said four deposits in the Central Otago Bendigo Ophir Gold project contained 2.34m ounces at 2.1 grams of gold per metric tonne of rock ore.
Santana is waiting for a Fast-track decision to mine on December 16 and plans to extract the first gold in 2028.