Index reshuffle lifts Briscoe Group as Australian holiday subdues NZX trading

The S&P/NZX 50 fell 0.19% to 12,539.26 points after a slow day on the share market, in which $65.4 million of equities changed hands.

Peter Sigley, director of institutional sales at Forsyth Barr, said Australian markets pausing to observe King’s Birthday had further subdued trading on what is typically the slowest day of the week.

Go, Briscoe

Two big moves on the exchange were triggered by some index rebalancing signalled after the market closed on Friday.

S&P Dow Jones said it would remove The Warehouse Group from the NZX 50, the NZX MidCap and the NZX SmallCap indices. 

Fellow retailer Briscoe Group will take its place on all three from June 23 onwards, joining other listed retailers Hallenstein Glasson and KMD Brands.

Briscoe Group shares were up 9.76% to $5.40 while The Warehouse Group shares dropped 3.19% to 91 cents.

Sigley said the Warehouse’s capitalisation has been racing downwards for quite some time after trading at above $4 at the beginning of 2022.

“The stock has just fallen to the point that it comes back out [of the index]. On the flip side, Briscoe has been the best retailer in New Zealand for an extended period of time,”  he said, adding that had it not been for liquidity requirements, Briscoe Group would have been in the index earlier.
“It's a much bigger stock that would have been in years ago, except it’s tightly owned by the proprietor, Rod Duke.”

With Contact Energy receiving the green light to acquire Manawa in May, Sigley highlighted that another spot on the index will become available soon.

“We're pretty sure that Napier Port will come in,” he said.

Napier Port Holdings shares were marginally up on Monday to $3.16, but have risen by almost 23% year to date.

Newsflow

Elsewhere in the markets, SkyCity Entertainment Group shares jumped early and stayed up to close 5.32% higher at $0.99.

The gain came after the casino operator announced on Friday that it was suing Fletcher Building for losses related to the delayed construction of the NZ International Convention Centre (NZICC) in Auckland.

“It'll be a bit of a long, drawn-out process that one, we imagine,” Sigley said.

Fletcher Building dipped 1.63% to $3.02.

Comvita shares rose 3.45% to 60 cents after the company named Karl Gradon, the former chief executive of Taupō-based dairy processor Miraka, as its next CEO.

The Manuka honey company had been without a permanent CEO since David Banfield left in August last year.

The golden country

At 5pm, futures pointed to a slight uptick for the ASX 200, which ended last week at 8,515.7 points.

That put it just below its all-time high in February and within reach of a technical bull market, defined as a 20% rise from a recent low.

In contrast, though recovering from the sharp April downturn sparked by United States President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, NZ equities continue to lag.

Nearly halfway through the year, the NZX 50 remained down about 4% so far in 2025.
“Our economy has been in a far more difficult state than theirs has with the overhang of covid-19,” Sigley said. “Consumer confidence remains fairly fragile, and if you look at retail spending, all those sorts of things, the barometers are pretty mediocre.”