NZ sharemarket rises in late trading as Infratil rallies on datacentre deal
The New Zealand sharemarket rose late on Thursday, with Infratil rallying after securing a new contract, while the market’s newest entrant, mining company Uvre, had a strong first day.
Thursday, October 16th 2025, 7:33PM
by BusinessDesk
The S&P/NZX 50 Index closed up 0.61% or 81.70 points to 13,389.10 after 37.8 million shares worth $149.8m were traded.
The S&P/NZX 20 index was up 0.58%, closing at 7,659.43 points, while the S&P/NZX 10 index ended the day at 12,776.36 after rising 0.87%.
There were 87 gainers and 54 decliners on the main board.
'Headwind'
Salt Funds Management managing director Matt Goodson said the market was up, although it initially trailed behind Australia.
“Currently it’s +0.9%, which was strong due to a weak employment release reviving hopes of an RBA [Reserve Bank of Australia] rate cut pre-Xmas,” Goodson said.
“This saw the NZD/AUD rise sharply from 0.879 to 0.885, creating a headwind for a number of larger names which tend to be priced out of Australia.”
The market’s newest entrant, Australian gold miner Uvre, ended its first day up 16.07% rising 4c to 32c.
Infratil was the highlight after its CDC business signed a new partnership with Firmus Technologies and Nvidia.
“Little information was provided other than the first stage being a 40MW datacentre. Firmus is an unlisted public company that appears to be a neo-cloud provider, presumably funded by Nvidia.
“Their founders have some interesting backgrounds, and it’s unclear if they have any end-customers. This is something of a change in strategy for CDC, which up to now has done deals directly with major providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, etc.”
Infratil’s share price rallied 4.95% or 59c to $12.50 after 1.5 million shares changed hands on turnover worth $19.2m.
Fisher and Paykel Healthcare also lifted strongly, up 2.01% or 72c to $36.47 on turnover worth $19.6m.
Meridian Energy, Mercury NZ, and Contact Energy were down for the day, with Goodson attributing this to incoming weighting changes in the US$1.8 billion (NZ$3.1b) iShares Global Clean Energy ETF at the close on Friday.
Meridian’s share price fell 1.53% or 9c to $5.80, Mercury fell 0.78% or 5c to $6.39, while Contact was flat on $9.01 after 920,513 shares changed hands on turnover worth $8.2m.
Meanwhile, Precinct Properties benefited from a positive reweighting in the closing match, lifting 1.63% or 2c to $1.25 after 3.9m shares changed hands worth $4.9m.
International markets
Stocks mostly rose and the dollar retreated on Wednesday (US time) on hopes for further US interest rate cuts and a solid set of company earnings.
Gold surged to a new high above US$4,200 an ounce, boosted also by a fresh flare-up in China-US tensions.
The US dollar was weighed down by warnings on Tuesday from Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell on risks to the US labour market, reinforcing expectations that the central bank will cut rates at its October meeting.
Wall Street stocks spent most of the day in positive territory, with both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ending up. The Dow retreated modestly.
Both Bank of America and Morgan Stanley rose decisively after good earnings reports.
– Additional reporting AFP
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