Category: Business

Source: Radio New Zealand

Icehouse Ventures says the response to its latest early-stage seed fund has been “phenomenal”, raising a record $70 million to help at least 30 ventures get started.

Chief executive Robbie Paul said the market was hot, with new investments continuing to flow from family offices and individuals.

“The venture capital and startup ecosystem is extremely vibrant and I think the reason is that most companies are operating on very long-term time horizons,” he said.

“They don’t start a company because the market’s bad and they don’t give up for the same reason.

“They have big missions that they’ve been thinking about and researching and working on for a very long time, and will continue to pursue those irrespective of who’s in power, who’s in the White House, what the weather is and anything else.”

The fund was capped at $75m, with an end-of-year deadline to raise the last $5m.

“It feels like we’ll hit that fairly shortly.”

A maturing ecosystem

Paul said Icehouse had been hoping to raise $30m for Seed Fund IV, but quickly attracted investment from 363 investors, with 80 percent based in New Zealand.

He said more than half of the investors were entirely new to Icehouse Ventures, while 147 had backed the firm’s prior seed funds, with a core group of 26 invested in all four, and 17 investors from the United States, China, Singapore, India and Germany contributing a combined $22m.

“The success of Seed Fund IV demonstrates a renewed belief in Kiwi entrepreneurs and signals that the startup economy is very much back in motion,” Paul said.

He said the investment represented a maturing of the venture capital ecosystem.

Past recipients pay it forward

“The rise of the ecosystem was inevitable because entrepreneurs build businesses over time horizons that far exceed presidential terms and macro-economic swings.”

Cheque sizes had grown significantly, with commitments ranging from $25,000 to $5m in Seed Fund IV.

Paul said the most encouraging trend was the rise of founder-investors who have scaled companies of their own and were reinvesting into the ecosystem that backed them.

Nearly a dozen had invested in the latest fund, including the co-founders of award-winning global educational software business, Kami.

“Founders know the difference that early capital and the right partner can make,” Paul said.

“Having a large cohort of entrepreneurs in our fund means we can tap into their expertise to help the next generation.”

Where the money goes

Seed Fund IV was the largest seed fund in the country’s history, with $6.3m already committed to eight NZ-founded startups over the next three years.

The early investments included AI presentation creator, Aether, design collaboration platform, Harth, and industrial engineering software, Spaceproof, and fraud-prevention technology startup, Static Technologies.

“Our goal with the seed fund is to invest as early as possible,” Paul said.

“Success for us is finding companies who’ve never raised money and sometimes are not even established, and to start investing with small amounts at that point, and then to invest further as they achieve technical and commercial milestones.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A crypto accountant is warning investors that the tax collector is coming for them, with seven out of ten people trading in crypto assets currently side stepping their tax obligations.

In July last year IRD signalled it was honing in on people dealing crypto who were not declaring their income.

The Department had identified had 227,000 unique crypto asset users in New Zealand undertaking around 7 million transactions with a value of $7.8 billion.

Accountant Tim Doyle specialises in cryptocurrency and said nearly a third of his clients have now received letters from IRD calling in tax they owe.

Doyle told Checkpoint while the law does outline that tax must be paid on crypto, the reality is a little more confusing.

“New Zealand doesn’t have a capital gains tax, so you can own property or own shares in companies and not have to pay taxes,”

“But with crypto because it’s digital because it’s intangible, ID have the default position that it’s a speculative investment and people have it likely acquired it for the purpose of disposal and that’s why they want to tax every single dollar of gains from it.”

Not everyone has to pay tax on crypto, it is only when the crypto is acquired with an intention to dispose that it must be paid.

“So that’s actually going to capture most investors or most crypto investors.”

An investor can have crypto sitting for as long as they like without having to pay tax on it, but as soon as they sell it, tax comes into play.

“As soon as they sell it to New Zealand dollars or they sell it from one token to another, that’s the time that any gains or losses are realised, and that’s the taxable point.”

Doyle said the amount of unpaid tax on crypto was “significant”, and over the past few years his business alone has been filing two to three voluntary disclosures a week.

The tax bills that have come through his office range from a few thousand dollars to a few million.

He said he has one client currently owing around $600,000, after his crypto took a huge dive.

“He put $100,000 New Zealand dollars into crypto, he was able to turn that into about $1.6 million over a couple of years… he took those tokens and he moved them into another token, which is a taxable event.”

“Rather than cashing it out and paying his taxes because he didn’t know about crypto tax, he left his crypto investment in the market.”

Doyle said the investments declined in value, back down to $100,000, leaving the client with a debt he doesn’t have the wealth to now pay.

He said it is clear there has been a stronger crackdown from IRD recently.

“I think there’s a strong mandate from this government to not only crack down on crypto tax, but just wider taxes as a whole.”

“Certainly IRD are sending out letters and requesting information on crypto from investors.”

Every single dollar of crypto is taxable at a taxpayers marginal tax rate, which could be as high as 39%.

“It’s treated the same as normal income, which is quite unfavourable and perhaps inconsistent from other asset classes.”

Doyle said cryptocurrency asset holders who are owing tax will first receive a warning letter from IRD, and may face an audit.

If the asset holder then doesn’t become compliant, further steps will be taken.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand King Salmon has fallen to a loss in the eight months to September thanks to an abbreviated reporting period after changing its financial year, and lower salmon weights reducing harvest volumes.

Key numbers for the 8 months ended September compared with 12 months to January 2025:

• Net loss $6.3m vs net profit $13.4m
• Revenue $117.7m vs $210.9m
• Operating profit $7.1m vs $29.7m
• Sales volumes 3,260 MT vs 6,582 MT
• No dividend
• NB: King Salmon has changed its reporting year from January to September

The company reported a net loss of $6.3 million for the 8 months ended 30th September 2025 compared to a net profit of $13.4 million for the 12 months ended 31st January 2025.

New Zealand King Salmon chairperson Mark Dewdney said the results were the first under its revised balance date, reflecting the shortened reporting period.

The company has been grappling with low fish weights in recent years, which reduced available harvest volumes.

“Despite facing some challenges with fish performance over the 24/25 summer, we have made significant strides by strategically investing in our future growth,” Dewdney said.

Chief executive Carl Carrington said the company had “several initiatives underway to strengthen our core business and improve fish health and performance, some of which are already yielding meaningful results”.

Among the initiatives was a deliberate decision to reduce harvest volumes to rebuild stocks, and trialling new diets to increase salmon weights.

The company projected 2026 operating profit to be between $9m and $15m, with a harvest volume between 5500 and 5900 metric tonnes.

Capital expenditure was forecast between $28m and $36m.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Major retirement village operator Ryman Healthcare has reported a first-half loss, but is in a cashflow-positive position for the first time in a decade.

“We’ve turned an important corner in our transformation, with the balance sheet reset providing a robust foundation for sustainable performance,” chief executive Naomi James said.

The reset followed a $1 billion equity raise in February 2025, which saw its debt-financing costs drop 27 percent or $14.2m.

“The business has stabilised, momentum is returning and we are delivering results with meaningful progress achieved against FY26 priorities,” she said.

“Our focus is now moving to accelerating performance across our portfolio of high quality retirement villages.”

Key numbers for the six months ended September compared with restated year-earlier results:

• Net loss $45.2m* v $82.0m net profit
• Underlying loss $43.4m v $101.0m net loss
• Fair value movement of investment properties $3.2m* v $270.1m
• Revenue $413.8m v $366.3m
• Interim dividend nil
• *Net loss includes drop in fair value of assets, as well as a $2.4m impairment, resulting from cost overruns in Woodcote and Kevin Hickman villages

James said the second half of FY26 was expected to remain broadly in line with the first half.

“We remain focused on selling down stock as a significant opportunity to drive cash flow. We are confident our sales effectiveness will support continued progress over FY26.

“We anticipate ongoing variability as the property markets recover at differing speeds – Victoria is showing positive momentum, while Auckland is yet to show meaningful improvement.”

She said cost savings were tracking ahead of expectations, with annualised savings of $40m, expected to rise to between $50-60m by the end of the year ending in March.

“At our investor day in February, we’ll share more on the land bank review, including sites which have been earmarked for future development and additional sites selected for divestment.”

The company would also provide an update on its overall growth strategy and dividend policy.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

Insurance company Tower has reported record profits, as increased numbers of customers drove premium income, while it had a low level of big-claim events.

Key numbers for the year ended September compared with a year ago:

• Net profit $83.7m v $74.3m
• Underlying profit $107.2m v $83.5m
• Gross written premium $600m v $595m
• Large event costs $7.2m v claim back $2.3m
• Full year dividend 24.5 cents per share v 9.5 cps

The New Zealand-owned company extended its recovery and return to profit, as it sold more policies, boosting its premium income, and benefited from below-average large claims.

“This is an exceptional result, underpinned by Tower’s transformation, driven by investment in our digital platform and continued focus on underwriting discipline, technology, data and efficiency,” chief executive Paul Johnston said.

The company added 5000 new customers to 318,000, as it concentrated on lower-risk policies and competitive pricing, which boosted its housing-insurance revenue.

The bottom-line result was affected by increased Canterbury earthquake claims cost estimates, the ongoing cost of customer remediations and a provision for software impairment.

The company said the Dunedin floods of October 2024 and Cyclone Tam in April were treated as big events, costing $7m.

Storms that hit the country in late October were expected to cost about $4.5m and would be accounted in the coming year’s accounts.

Johnston said the past couple of years had been out of the ordinary and were not likely to continue.

“We expect conditions that influenced the FY24 and FY25 results, such as relatively benign weather and prior-year rating flowing through the portfolio, to normalise in the coming year.”

The company forecasted an underlying profit for the coming year between $55m-65m and has set aside $45m to cover big-disaster claims.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A new wind farm makes it possible for the diesel-reliant Chatham Islands to go green and run entirely on renewable energy.

Locals hope it will slash astronomically high power prices with some saying the costs are deterring others from moving there.

The three new wind turbines at the Point Durham wind farm can generate more energy than the current peak demand.

The power price is expected to drop by more than 20 percent to about 89 cents per kiloWatt hour.

Currently, diesel fuels the power supply on the Chatham Islands, but it is costly and vulnerable to supply chain issues with an ageing ship and price fluctuations.

Hotel Chatham owner operator Toni Croon said the current exorbitant power prices limited growth.

Her monthly power bill for the hotel was roughly $13,000, she said.

“It’s just horrendous. Horrendous as a business owner, horrendous for anyone on this island. It’s survival of the fittest and we basically just live in debt because of our power prices,” Croon said.

She could not wait to be less reliant on diesel, saying the wind farm would be good for the environment and their wallets.

“It’s going to be everything. Even your family steals fuel off you because when times get tough, when there’s no fuel, you’ve got every bottle, everything filled up that you possibly can,” she said.

“This is going to be a game changer to every business and not have to rely on the ship.”

A previous wind turbine project fell over more than a decade ago after hitting financial difficulties.

She hoped this one would not be a lot of hot air and would make a sizeable difference to their bills.

If it did, she expected the Chathams would grow.

“I can think of five businesses that I’d like to start with the power prices being a lot more reasonable,” she said.

“People will move here for a start. No one will move here [currently]. Most households are $1000 to $1200 [a month]. That’s no hot water, just absolutely ridiculous, so we’ll get growth in the population.”

The mayor of the Chatham Islands, Greg Horler, said the cost of living – including power bills – hit hard on the Chathams.

“People are struggling on the mainland. People here [have] to do the same thing, they’ve got to slap another 30 percent on so if you’re struggling on the mainland, smack another 30 percent on and that’s how they struggle over here. It’s actually quite tough,” he said.

Locals were looking forward to a greener, cheaper and more stable energy source and opportunities for growth, he said.

In 2023, a $10 million government grant was earmarked to develop a renewable energy system.

Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust led the charge for the wind farm, and added a further million dollars to the pot.

Trust chair Hamish Chisholm said they were looking forward to a more reliable, sustainable power supply that would reduce the cost of living and doing business.

“We’ve only got limited capacity for storage on the island and we’ve had a couple of shipping outages in recent years so that’s brought us pretty close to the lights going off,” he said.

He hoped that cutting the tariff price would help to encourage businesses to invest more.

There was a lot of fishing done around the Chathams but he said the current cost of electricity meant it was mostly too expensive to process them there.

“With lower electricity prices, we’d hope that that would open up the range of fish species that could be processed here on the island viably and then that sort of just helps grow our economy from there,” Chisholm said.

The 225 kilowatt turbines generate power when wind speeds hit between 12 and 90 kilometres an hour.

A new grid balancing plant means the diesel generators can shut down when the turbines are covering the island’s demand and a battery can provide an hour of peak power load if wind speeds fluctuate.

Diesel burn would be reduced by the equivalent of 500,000 litres per year with carbon emissions dropping by around 1300 tonnes a year, he said.

The system also allowed for new renewable energy supplies to be added to the grid in the future, which would bring the costs down further, he said.

He expected the prices would start to drop soon.

“It had been feeding into the grid. There’s been days when the power station has been completely silent which isn’t something that’s been heard down here probably for 20 or 30 years,” he said.

The Point Durham wind farm will be officially opened on Thursday.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A property manager says he was shocked to be handed a $2000 fine for including a QR code rather than a stated rent amount on the sign outside a property available for rent.

David Faulkner is general manger for property management at Property Brokers.

He said the company had been fined after being investigated by the Tenancy Compliance Investigation Team (TCIT) for not advertising a rent price on the signs.

The Residential Tenancies Act requires that landlords must not advertise or offer a tenancy without stating the rent in the advertisement.

Faulkner said this had been driven by concerns about rent bidding, where landlords drive up rent by asking tenants whether they are willing to pay more to secure a property.

“I think that’s fine, it’s transparent. It does stop that from happening.”

But he said problems arose when it was argued the rent sign itself needed to display the rental amount, rather than simply a way for tenants to find the information.

He said his solution had been to put a QR code on the rental sign which directed people to more details about the property, including the price.

Tenants would be required to apply to rent the property via the website, anyway, he said. “Where the price is clearly displayed.”

Complaints were often driven by other property management companies rather than tenants, he said.

“There’s been a lot of debate in the industry thinking that’s ridiculous and most companies have just turned a blind eye to it… but others haven’t and they’ve complained to tenancy compliance.”

He said some properties were located a long way from the property management offices, and when the asking rent needed to change, it would mean someone had to drive out and change the sign.

“There’s a cost, there’s a carbon footprint. A QR code is common sense as the price adjusts on the advert, which is happening quite a lot at the moment with rents going down.”

He said some tenants did not want to have the rent displayed on an ad in front of their neighbours, either.

The company had been fined $2000 although that had since been revised down to $1000.

“You need regulation and you need government but you don’t need overreach which prohibits how you run your business.”

In a letter to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development he said it was an overreach by a government department and provided no tangible benefit.

“I do not believe TCIT was established to police such minor and unworkable issues. Their role is to hold landlords accountable for failing to provide warm, dry, and compliant homes. To my knowledge, New Zealand is the only country that enforces such a strict stance on rental pricing signage.”

Sarina Gibbon, director of Tenancy Advisory, said the market was very different from when there were concerns about rent bidding.

“Rent is trending down, sometimes weekly in certain areas, where it’s being repriced and repriced every week in order to get a tenant, you then have to ask yourself, in this environment, why aren’t we just operating with a QR code or a website address that’s printed on the physical sign, which would be a more fit for purpose solution to the intent behind the rule, which is to not gouge tenants.”

She said it could put a lot of stress and demand on property managers who were already handling a lot of compliance.

“I’m still hopeful that we can explore some pathways directly with the Housing and Urban Development Ministry to just get some guidance out there and just clarify the government’s position that when they interpret the word state, they mean they’re looking at the totality of that piece of advertisement, that they’re not treating a sign as a standalone piece of advertisement.

“If they treat the sign as merely an extension of a Trade Me advertisement, for example, which seems to be an appropriate, reasonable approach, because you don’t see any single for rent sign out there listing absolutely all the details of their rental property to the extent Trade Me would… this is all very, very silly.”

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development said in a statement it was aware of cases where QR codes or links were used in advertising, and the discussion around the issue.

“While there are no plans to amend the legislation at this time it is something that could be considered in a future review.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The official cash rate might have been cut – but how much further can we expect home loan rates to fall?

The Reserve Bank cut the OCR on Wednesday by 25 basis points (bps), taking it to 2.25 percent.

That was widely expected, but what was a little more surprising was how little room the bank left itself for further cuts to come. It said it would cut again if it needed to, but only if the economy was likely to really underperform its latest forecasts.

It forecast a bottom for the OCR of 2.2 percent, indicating little room for downward movement, and for increases to 3 percent around the end of 2028.

While banks responded with cuts to floating rates, commentators said the indication that the Reserve Bank probably thought it had done enough in terms of interest rate cuts meant fixed rates might not have much further to fall.

Markets had already priced in the 25bps reduction, and a trough in the forecast of 2.15 percent. One-year swap rates have fallen from more than 3 percent in August to less than 2.5 percent.

Kiwibank chief economist Jarrod Kerr noted that swap rates rose by a little more than 5bps after the announcement.

Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said there could be pressure in the near term for the bigger banks to match the one-year rates being offered by banks such as SBS and the Bank of China.

SBS has been offering 3.99 percent for one year and the Bank of China 4.28 percent. The big banks are all advertising 4.49 percent.

“However, today’s statement means there’s little likelihood of wholesale rates heading much lower unless we get a bad run of economic data or the market’s AI bull run suddenly ends,” Kiernan said.

“Having said that, with the OCR expected to hold around current levels for about a year, I don’t think there’s a massive hurry to rush out and lock in a fixed rate – it’s probably not until mid-2026 that any upward trend might start to emerge in most of the retail rates.”

BNZ chief economist Mike Jones agreed that if the OCR had fallen as far as it would go then there was limited scope for mortgage rates to keep falling. He said Wednesday’s move had been more than 100 percent priced in by markets.

“We probably thought it was on its last, or that downtrend was on its last legs anyway, and the statement today was probably more of a shift towards a neutral bias.

“They are not quite there, but more of a shift than people might have expected. So I think the scope that perhaps was there to keep cutting mortgage rates has been reduced a little bit because we’ve seen wholesale interest rates jump up a bit. That may not stick around because, of course, the bank has given itself that optionality to respond if some of the signs of life in the economy don’t get established over the summer.”

He said what happened internationally would also play a part.

It could mean it was time to lock in a longer rate, he said. “People sort of dipped their toes into long-term fixes if you look at bank data a few months back but then kind of backpedalled into the shorter fixed terms… I think we are going to see more of a debate from here about fixing terms and whether it’s time to push out the average term of borrowing a bit further into the future.”

ANZ economist David Croy said the bank had for some time been of the view that the low point in the mortgage rate cycle was approaching and borrowers could benefit from locking in a longer term.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

The retail sector is still hopeful it can convince the government to ease its hardline stance on banning card surcharges.

The government plans to ban surcharges on in-store card payments like Paywave by May next year, a move that has alarmed industry groups like Retail NZ, the Auckland Business Chamber, and several other chambers of commerce.

“Our members have been really unhappy about it. We’ve surveyed all our members and we’ve been talking about it for a while and they’re really clear that it’s not something that they support,” Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young said.

Young hoped to convince the government to compromise by capping surcharges instead of banning them entirely.

“What we’re trying to do is provide a solution that’s a middle ground that should appease everyone,” she said.

Her proposal was for surcharges on debit card transactions to be capped at 0.5 percent, and for credit cards to be capped at 1 percent.

“You could review it in a year or two years’ time. You could do a full consultation with the whole sector, but at least in the interim, we’d have a solution that the minister would be able to have the certainty of what consumers would be [paying] and merchants would understand fully what they could charge,” she said.

Young said the consensus among retailers was that they would raise the price of their products to offset the loss of revenue from surcharges.

“If [customers] weren’t getting surcharged, they’d get a price increase. So, regardless of how they pay, our members have told us that they would increase prices.”

The government has stood firm on its decision to ban surcharges outright, but Carolyn Young hoped that position could thaw.

“We’re really hopeful that we can get a little bit more airtime with the minister to go through and discuss this more fully,” she said.

“I know from Select Committee that a significant portion of submissions did not support the surcharge ban. So, we want to be part of the solution and we want to find a way in which we can say to the minister, ‘how about we look at this as a solution?’, and it’s a road that could keep everybody happy from consumers to business to government.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

Source: Radio New Zealand

A Hamilton company has done a deal to supply its virtual reality (VR) training systems to a multi-billion-dollar defence contractor.

The deal between Company-X and UK-based Babcock follows on from the New Zealand Navy using the systems.

Company-X’s head of training and simulation, Lance Bauerfeind, would not put dollars or jobs figures on the deal as it had just been done, but said it was the biggest they had done in the VR training space.

“That’s going to enable us to take our VR simulation training to the world.”

It was in line with the government’s push to develop a local defence export industry.

“They are supporting and encouraging you know these large multinational contractors to work with us local businesses here in New Zealand, and that’s great for the economy and it’s great for us … and also it’s great for the defence and tech sector.”

Without the Defence Capability Plan that bankrolls tech developments, the deal would probably have taken “a lot longer” to secure, Bauerfeind said.

The 13-year-old company’s VR headgear and software is used to train for chopper landings on ships and rescuing divers from the seafloor.

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand