Matt Goodson, managing director at Salt Funds, said the market was weaker but was faring better than many others.
Late in the New Zealand day, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index was down 1.4%.
“There was a big intraday turn-down in the US, which was initially up quite strongly and then turned to finish down relatively hard,” Goodson said.
There was euphoria in markets yesterday following the “headline” Nvidia result, Goodson said.
“The quality of the Nvidia result is coming into increasing question now, and the quality of their numbers is the big issue there,” he said.
A return to reality meant data centre stocks came under pressure – one of them being Infratil, which dropped 40c to $11.55.
Beyond the AI world, retirement village company Oceania dropped half a cent to 82c after reporting a $4.9m six-month profit against a loss of $17.1m a year earlier.
“[Oceania] are slowly getting there, but their new sales were just a little bit behind the hopes of some of the bulls,” Goodson said.
“I think it’s probably going to be into next year, and hopefully a stronger housing market, before Oceania really starts to get stuck into its surplus stock.”
Turners Automotive gained 25c to $8.02 after yesterday reporting a 13% increase in net profit for the first half, saying it was on track to report a record full-year, pre-tax profit of around $60m.
“The surprise was not so much in the result, but in the outlook comments where the potential for growth in their finance book was significantly above what market forecasts currently are, and at a capital impost that was below what people would have expected,” Goodson said.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, the market’s biggest stock, fell 26c to $36.88 ahead of its first-half result, due out on Wednesday.
The company’s guidance for the half is for revenue of $1.075 billion and net profit of $200m – implying growth of 3% and 31%, respectively.
Software firm Gentrack gained 35c to $7.85 after announcing that its “g2″ platform had been selected to enhance operations and customer experience at Pennon Water Services, one of the UK’s leading business water and wastewater retailers.
This marks the first customer to adopt g2 in the UK and the first g2 water implementation, Gentrack said. It is due to report results on Monday.
Eroad fell 5.5c to $1.485 after reporting a $146m first-half net loss (as against its year-ago $11m loss), driven by a $135m goodwill impairment.
Drugs company AFT Pharmaceuticals was the best performer on the day, rising 35c or 10% to $3.75 after reporting a strong result this week.
Looking ahead, the market also has the Official Cash Rate review from the Reserve Bank on Wednesday to focus on.
A quarter-point cut to 2.25% is widely expected.
Jamie Gray is an Auckland-based journalist, covering the financial markets, the primary sector and energy. He joined the Herald in 2011.
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