Mainfreight result lifts sharemarket as investors eye Infratil update
The New Zealand sharemarket closed up on Wednesday after a better-than-expected result from Mainfreight, as well as buoyed expectations ahead of Infratil’s result tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 12th 2025, 6:33PM
by BusinessDesk
The S&P/NZX 50 Index closed up 0.49% or 67.182 points to 13,671.73 after 30.5 million shares worth $131.2 million were traded.
The S&P/NZX 20 index was up 0.55%, closing at 7,830.15 points, while the S&P/NZX 10 index ended the day at 13,101.35 after rising 0.76%.
There were 66 gainers on the main board and 60 decliners.
Mainfreight share price rallies
Mainfreight released its half-year result for the six months to September.
Its share price rallied 6.80% or $4.01 to $63.00, despite reporting an 18.5% fall in its net profit to $93.4m.
Mainfreight said it was well positioned to take advantage of improving economic conditions across its international network, with the trading performance across the NZ divisions improving as the half year had progressed.
Salt Funds Management managing director Matt Goodson said the result had slightly missed consensus, but thought it perhaps could have been worse.
“The outlook comments, particularly on strength in New Zealand and Australia, seem to be what investors are latching on to and in fact have come back a long way,” Goodson said.
“The US in particular and Europe are still pretty weak for them. I think investors are looking at the continued strength in Australia and one of a number of companies now pointing to better days ahead in New Zealand.”
Kiwi Property Group drew attention from investors, lifting 0.47% to $1.07 on high volume of 2.4 million shares after announcing it had signed a conditional land deal for a second Costco Wholesale shop to be built at South Auckland’s Drury.
“It is a positive that it’s happened, something that was always likely to happen, I think, at some stage. They’ve [Kiwi Property] probably got a couple more commercial ones to go at Drury, but it’s good that they’ve been able to get it away.”
Infratil also rose ahead of its half-year result due out on Thursday, with its share price lifting 0.56% or 7c to $12.67 on turnover worth $14.59m.
Goodson said the lift was interesting ahead of the result, given data centre companies in the United States and Australia were down overnight.
Elsewhere, Freightways’ share price fell 2.73% or 39c to $13.91, while Goodman Property Trust fell 0.97% or 2c to $2.05.
Optimism over end to shutdown
Wall Street stocks mostly rose on Tuesday (US time) as optimism over a likely end to the US government shutdown offset weakness in some leading technology equities.
After Monday’s rally, US stocks opened mostly lower on lingering unease about the stratospheric valuation growth of major players in artificial intelligence.
Those worries ebbed a bit as the session progressed, with some large tech equities finishing in positive territory. But the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was down 0.3%, the only one of the three main US indices to retreat.
Shares in Nvidia, whose processors are prized by companies training and operating AI models, fell 3.0%.
– Additional reporting AFP
| « NZ sharemarket dips ahead of Mainfreight and Infratil results | NZX edges lower as Infratil, profit-taking weigh » |
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