In case you missed it: News bites for the week.
Liam Mason.
Entities affected by recently announced climate reporting threshold changes will no longer be expected to lodge climate statements ahead of legislation changes, the FMA said on Tuesday. General counsel Liam Mason said the FMA recognised many entities preparing for upcoming climate reporting periods will be affected by the uncertain timeframe in which the amending legislation might be passed, meaning they don't know whether they'll be required to lodge climate statements or not. For affected Climate Reporting Entities (CREs) with upcoming lodgement dates for the 2025/26 reporting period, the ‘no action’ approach means that the FMA will not take any action in respect of a failure. This approach will begin on November 1. However, CREs with June 30, 2025, balance dates are still required to lodge their climate statements by the end of October.
Media company NZME has upgraded its guidance for annual operating earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) to between $59 million and $62m. The company had previously expected to bring in between $57m and $59m. The midpoint of the new range would represent a 12% increase on FY24, when an operating ebitda of $54.2m was reported NZME CEO Michael Boggs said: “We're pleased to upgrade guidance as our business shows signs of recovery, despite the continuing economic challenges across the country. The company has had better-than-expected revenue performance, coupled with continued cost control. This momentum positions us well as we enter FY26.” The company will report its results for the 2025 calendar year at the end of February.
NZX-listed Sky Network Television has secured the exclusive NZ broadcast rights to the Olympic Games, starting with the upcoming Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, including the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, and extending through to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games. The long-term renewal of a partnership with the International Olympic Committee will see Sky deliver Olympics coverage across its platforms, including Sky Sport, streaming app Sky Sport Now, Sky Open, and newly acquired free-to-air platforms Three and ThreeNow. Further details on Sky’s Olympic coverage plans will be announced closer to each Games. Sky CEO Sophie Moloney said the recent acquisition of Three and ThreeNow was a game-changer in securing the rights. “We’re absolutely thrilled to continue our long-term partnership with the International Olympic Committee and to be the home of the Olympic Games in New Zealand through to Brisbane 2032."
Carnival Cruise Line, one of the world's largest cruise operators with 29 ships, says it will homeport its Carnival Adventure vessel at Auckland for its May to July 2027 programme, marking the line's first homeport season in New Zealand. Carnival country manager Peter Little said the vessel, which has a capacity for 2636 guests and 1100 crew, would offer nine cruises for the season, including a new four-night itinerary to Norfolk Island and a four-night one-way voyage from Auckland to Sydney departing in July 2027. The region is serviced by four vessels, including Sydney-based Carnival Splendor and Brisbane-based Carnival Encounter and Carnival Luminosa.
Genesis Energy has announced the conditional acquisition of rights to develop a solar farm near Rangiriri in the Waikato. The 271MWp (megawatt peak) project would cost about $487 million to develop, with a final investment decision due in the 2027 financial year, with generation to begin two years later. The seller is Pioneer Green Power, a Spanish solar developer with projects in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Genesis said the acquisition would give it a pipeline of 700MWp advanced-stage solar options. "Rangiriri represents an exciting milestone in delivering our Gen35 solar objectives (up to 500MWp) and leverages the flexibility offered by our assets at Huntly Power Station, specifically our new BESS [battery energy storage system], in addition to making our hydro schemes more valuable as flexible, long-duration storage that balances intermittent solar generation and battery discharge,” said chief operating officer Tracey Hickman.
Global cloud computing provider Microsoft has experienced an outage this morning, with a wide range of websites and companies affected, such as Air New Zealand. In a statement posted at just before 9am New Zealand time, Microsoft noted that "customers and Microsoft services leveraging Azure Front Door (AFD) may have experienced latencies, timeouts, and errors". The company confirmed that an "inadvertent configuration change" was the trigger event for the issue, and it was reverting to its 'last known good' configuration. "Customers may have begun to see initial signs of recovery. We are currently recovering nodes and routing traffic through healthy nodes, and as we make progress in this workstream, customers will continue to see improvement ... At this stage, we anticipate full mitigation within the next four hours as we continue to recover nodes." Outages have also been reported on AWS services, but the company's "service health" website claims all services are operating normally.
Mark Troughear.
Listed transport company Freightways says the New Zealand economy is no longer a massive headwind, and it is seeing positive momentum in the new financial year. At the company’s annual meeting today, it said first-quarter trading in FY26 had achieved both revenue and profit growth. Operating revenue was up 8.6% to $347.1 million, while net profit was up 22.5% to $23.4m, compared with the same three months last year. Chief executive Mark Troughear said the economy was slowly shifting. “It does feel like we've ridden into that wind for around two-and-a-half years. I wouldn't say we have the wind at our back yet, but we're sitting in that nice neutral territory where it's no longer hard to make progress. In Australia, the economy has slowed slightly, but the nature of our businesses means we are much less tied to economic performance in Australia.” He said express package and business mail helped drive revenue growth over the three months to September 30, with market share gains.
AskNicely founder Aaron Ward has raised $2.1 million for his new company, Huckleberry, which is developing the world’s first voice-based 360-degree feedback platform. The round was led by Oregon Venture Fund with support from Archangel Ventures and US and NZ tech founders, including Nathan Christensen, Rowan Simpson and Serge van Dam. Founded by Oregon-based Ward and Auckland-based Diogo Böhm, Huckleberry allows people to talk, rather than type, feedback on teammates on its AI platform, replacing more traditional feedback. Its latest feature helps people act on the feedback by automatically creating a personalised 90-day plan. The funding will be used to accelerate product development, advance its AI models, hire more staff, and support growth in its key markets of the US, Australia and NZ.
Mt Cook Alpine Salmon has reported revenue up 36% to $55m. The result was said to be the strongest financial result to date for the South Island salmon farmer. Mt Cook Alpine Salmon chief executive David Cole said the result reflected the success of its long-term growth strategy. "It has seen Mt Cook Alpine Salmon expand tenfold over the past decade, from an annual turnover of less than $5m." Sales for its Aoraki brand were seven times higher than when it was acquired in 2016, but no corresponding figures were given. Chair Bill English credited the company’s results to its long-term commitment to quality, innovation and sustainability. Mt Cook Alpine Salmon operates five salmon farms and has staff spread across Twizel, Timaru, Christchurch and Queenstown. Shares in the company trade on Catalist.
Listed transport firm Move Logistics says the difficult economy has continued to weigh on the business for longer than expected. In a trading update today, it said it was on track to return to positive normalised earnings before tax in FY26. Move’s business units, excluding warehousing, had improved as planned in Q1 as it focused on building value in its largest unit – freight. It said warehousing continued to face challenges, but some new business, productivity gains, and the planned exit of two property leases would provide some benefit in this financial year. Chief executive Paul Millward said soft consumer and business spending had dented the freight and logistics sector. “Manufacturing has not yet returned to expansion mode, unemployment and inflation are still creating headwinds, net immigration remains near its lows, and OCR cuts will take some time to feed through into reduced mortgage payments and increased business investment.”
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