Category: Business

Source: Radio New Zealand

Chip maker Rakon slashed its half-year loss on the back of increased revenue.

Key numbers for half year ended in September compared with a year ago:

• Net loss $2.95m vs $10.4m loss
• Revenue $54.2m vs $41.7m
• Operating loss $4.1m vs $15.8m loss
• No dividend.

Rakon said the first half year marked a clear return to growth for Rakon as it posted growth in sales of its specialist systems for satellites, telecommunications, and computers.

It said it increased market share in core segments, increased capacity globally, and benefited from cost cutting at its New Zealand, India and France operations.

Chief Executive Sinan Altug said the company was recovering with a 30 percent rise in revenue, and increase in its margins and underlying operating earnings, which more than doubled.

He said the restructuring of the past two years were delivering tangible results, with its India operation focusing on volume production and its France facility focusing on aerospace and defence.

“This shift continues to free New Zealand to focus on innovation and new product introductions while India scales to meet global demand.”

It expects margins to improve in the second half year as production scales up.

Rakon maintained its 2026 full year underlying profit guidance at between $15 to $25 million, saying earnings were typically skewed towards the second half of its financial year.

The company is targeting revenue of $250 million and an underlying profit of $75 million by 2030.

The company went through a boardroom tussle in August as a dominant shareholder moved to replace most directors, causing the Stock Exchange to suspend the stock until it complied with rules about the number of independent directors.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Consumer confidence lifts, although pessimists slightly outweigh the optimists
• It follows the strong business sentiment on Thursday
• Households remain cautious on spending on big ticket items

Consumer confidence has lifted to its highest level since June, with more households expecting to be better off in a year’s time.

The ANZ Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence Index lifted 6 points in November to just over 98.

However, a score below 100 indicates more pessimists than optimists.

“It’s good to see a decent lift in consumer confidence this month, though it is yet to break out of recent ranges,” ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said.

“Although it’s early days in terms of the economic recovery, this is not the only indicator suggesting that things are looking up for consumers,” she said.

A net 21 percent of respondents expected to be better off this time next year, the highest level since April.

“Consumer arrears have been declining, employment has returned to modest growth and retailers are reporting improved activity,” Zollner said.

ANZ said a net 9 percent thought it was a bad time to buy a major household item, suggesting ongoing caution.

Zollner said the ‘good time to buy’ indicator has not been positive in more than four years.

“Consumers’ reluctance to spend in recent years has certainly been felt by the retail sector.”

Zollner noted falling consumer arrears, employment returning to modest growth and retailers reporting improved activity.

“Our card spending data shows a return to growth across a broad range of discretionary categories, though overall spending levels are still very subdued compared to the Covid-era boom.”

Zollner said aside from lower inflation, the slowdown also led to household debt relative to incomes back to where it was before the housing bubble.

“Now we’ve taken our medicine, the stars are aligning for better times ahead.”

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

• Business confidence jumps as firms report better past activity
• The closely followed measure of expected own activity also rose to its highest in more than a decade
• One-year ahead inflation expectations steady

Business confidence has jumped to its highest level in 11 years.

The ANZ Business Outlook survey showed headline confidence rising nine points to net 67 percent confidence in November.

The more closely followed measure of businesses’ expected own activity also rose to the highest level in more than a decade – increasing eight points to net 53 percent.

ANZ said reported past activity, the best indicator of economic growth in the survey, also looked brighter for every sector except construction, although it too was off its lows.

“Green shoots are looking well established, if this month’s survey is anything to go by,” ANZ chief economist Sharon Zollner said.

“It is particularly encouraging that the improvement in sentiment is rooted in an improvement in experienced activity, not just hope.”

Zollner said “things are looking up”.

Inflation expectations were steady, with one-year ahead inflation expectations at 2.69 percent.

“With the recovery underway and CPI inflation at the top of the target band, we don’t expect the RBNZ [Reserve Bank of New Zealand] to cut the OCR again this cycle barring unexpected developments,” Zollner said.

Other inflation indicators in the survey showed the net percentage of firms expecting to raise prices in the next three months rising to its highest level since March.

But those expecting cost increases eased marginally.

Regionally, ANZ said Wellington remained the weakest for both experienced and expected activity, although it also improved.

It said the lift in past activity was broad-based across the regions, but was strong in Auckland and the South Island outside of Canterbury.

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

Source: Radio New Zealand

New Zealand women start working for nothing from this week.

Although the country’s gender pay gap improved this year, campaigners say there is much work to be done to bring pay equality for New Zealand women.

Still Minding the Gap spokesperson Jo Cribb said for every $1 earned by a Pākehā man, a Pacific woman would earn 79c, a Maori woman 82c, an Asian woman 84c and a Pākehā woman 93c.

Cribb said this would be the week that all women started working for nothing. “It’s going to be four weeks of nothing.

“Research shows women’s education levels, occupation or experience account for less than 20 percent of why there is a pay gap.

“What is driving around 80 percent of gender and ethnic pay gaps is decisions made within organisations about pay and promotions – that is, unconscious or conscious bias. Pay differences based on performance are justified. Pay differences based on gender or ethnicity aren’t justified, and that’s what we are focusing on.”

She said the government should introduce mandatory pay gap reporting. Labour’s spokesperson for women Carmel Sepuloni has introduced a member’s bill that would require large employers to report pay differences and include pay in job ads.

“Should 61 MPs support it, we could have it very soon,” Cribb said.

“There is clear overseas evidence that when businesses are required to report their pay gaps publicly it drives meaningful action and has seen national gender pay gaps drop by 20 percent to 40 percent.”

Stats NZ said in August the pay gap this year was 5.2 percent, down from 8.2 percent a year earlier.

‘We also need a fair and consistent pay equity process’

But Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner Gail Pacheco said the reduction could be because fewer lower-paid women were in work.

“The gender pay gap is obviously only for those that are employed… which means that if more low wage women have become unemployed in recent times because of our economic downturn, that artificially brings the pay gap down.”

Pacheco said requiring companies to report on pay gaps helped to close them over time. “We also need a fair and consistent pay equity process. The recent amendments of the Equal Pay Act made it much harder to ensure we get those fair outcomes for pay.”

She said structural drivers of the gap also needed to be addressed. “Things like making flexible working normalised and available at all job levels, strengthen parental leave for fathers and partners to share the care load – and reduce any bias or discrimination that could be occurring in the workplace.”

Pacheco said some organisations did not think they had a pay gap until they looked closely at the data.

“It could be that maybe there’s no gaps in like-for-like role. But there’s an organisational wide gap because not enough women are making it through the hierarchy within the organisation.”

Council of Trade Unions national secretary Melissa Ansell-Bridges said the gap had only dropped this year if it was calculated on median pay, not mean.

“They’re both useful to look at in conjunction, but if you’re going to pick one, we generally look at the mean and that pay gap is still 8.7 percent.

“It’s hard to know all the factors but it’s most likely that the reason that the median pay gap had decreased by a couple of percentage points was that you were seeing a lot of movement in the middle … you’re seeing the impact of the tail end of previous public sector pay increases under the last Labour government that were a bit higher than what you’re seeing now.

“It also means it’s probably a high water mark because those drivers are no longer happening.”

Cribb said all European Union nations and more than 50 percent of OECD members, including Australia and the UK, were introducing measures aimed at reducing gender pay gaps.

“We know times are tough for a lot of New Zealand businesses, so the government could choose to only mandate public pay gap reporting for businesses over a certain size and provide for a long implementation time to acknowledge the challenging trading environment. A tool already exists on the Ministry for Women website to help businesses work out their gender pay gaps and what action to take to close them.”

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

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