KiwiSaver returns hit by Iran war shock as Morningstar counts $5b drop – Stock Takes

However, they averaged an 8.8% gain for one year, Morningstar said.

“For KiwiSaver investors, the more important story was how quickly the markets absorbed and stabilised the shock,” Morningstar director of data strategy Greg Bunkall said.

“By late March, equities had recovered much of their losses as investors judged the conflict to be unlikely to trigger a sustained global recession, and earnings expectations remained broadly intact,” he said.

He said many diversified portfolios were left closer to flat for the quarter than the early volatility suggested.

Commodities and real assets provided critical inflation hedging and US-dollar strength during “peak stress” cushioned New Zealand dollar-based investors before partially reversing.

ANZ led with a 16.6% market share at $22b in assets at the end of the quarter.

ASB was in second position, with a market share of 14.9%. Fisher, Milford, and Westpac rounded out the top five.

“We estimate that KiwiSaver providers will charge more than $1.1b from KiwiSaver members in the next 12 months to manage their KiwiSaver funds, at an average fee of around 0.81 of a cent per dollar invested,” Morningstar said.

Despite being one of the more expensive default funds, over three years, the Fisher Funds Default Fund stood out with a 10.2% annualised return.

In the non-default funds, a mix of active and passive funds performed strongly relative to their peers.

Kernel, Simplicity, QuayStreet, ANZ, AMP, Evidential, Aurora and Pie Funds all had some of their funds with high rankings in the quarter.

Over the last 10 years, the aggressive category average has given investors an annualised return of 8.9%, followed by growth (7.9%), balanced (6.4%), moderate (4.4%) and conservative (3.9%).

Shares in My Food Bag showed some signs of life after the company announced a strategic review, effectively putting a “for sale” sign out front.

The board said there was no certainty that any transaction involving My Food Bag would eventuate from the process.

“Rather, one option from the review is for My Food Bag to continue to grow in its current form as an NZX-listed company,” it said.

The stock has bumped up a few cents since the announcement to around 28c – but is a far cry from its March 2021 NZX debut price of $1.74.

Forsyth Barr is upbeat about utilities software provider Gentrack, despite its underperforming share price.

The broker said Kraken and Origin Energy’s 2026 joint investor briefing reinforced the scale of competition that Gentrack faces.

Kraken positioned itself as a central utilities operating platform, with capabilities that would typically require multiple legacy systems.

The presentation emphasised scale and platform breadth, a proven track record of migration execution and artificial intelligence (AI) integration as key differentiators.

“This matters for Gentrack because the medium-term thesis rests on converting a sizeable pipeline into signed contracts and repeatable deployments,” Forsyth Barr said.

“Despite this, we remain constructive on the opportunity ahead for Gentrack.

“Gentrack still has credible angles where independence, market complexity and regulatory nuance matter, particularly in water and harder-to-bill C&I [commercial and industrial] and customer segments.”

The broker has not changed its $8.70 estimated target price for Gentrack.

The stock trades at around $5.99, having fallen by 50% over the last 12 months.

Gentrack, a medium-sized company with a market cap of $668 million, is headed up by Gary Miles, who topped the latest Herald CEO Pay Survey with total earnings of $17.3m.

This week, the company said it had entered into a sale and purchase agreement to acquire Dubai Technology Partners (DTP), an airport technology and services provider based in Dubai, in the UAE, for US$10m ($17m).

“Depending on the final completion date, we expect the acquisition of DTP to add $3.5m of revenue to Gentrack’s Veovo business across the approximate four months remaining in 2026.”

NZX this week launched trading in S&P/NZX 20 Index Futures, bringing liquidity in equity derivatives back to New Zealand’s market for the first time since the early 1990s.

The launch makes portfolio building easier and more efficient for fund managers and KiwiSaver providers, and helps bring New Zealand into line with other developed markets, the exchange said.

Trades were executed from the opening bell, both on screen and via block trade. The first trade, in the first minute, was traded by the Accident Compensation Corporation and Jarden Securities.

“We are seeing live orders in the book each day providing a buy and sell price for investors,” Simon Beattie, NZX general manager corporate affairs & sustainability, said.

“It demonstrates clear demand for a low-cost hedging tool to manage risk or gain exposure to New Zealand’s equity markets.”

The NZ Super Fund says it is well positioned in the current volatile market conditions with investment strategies performing as expected.

As at March 31, the sovereign wealth fund’s value stood at $86.6b, having returned 11.9% over the previous 12 months, slightly ahead of the passive Reference Portfolio benchmark, which returned 11.01%.

Meanwhile, Genesis Energy is back in favour with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, which had previously excluded it because of its use of coal and gas.

“The Super Fund will no longer exclude companies with incidental or very low exposure to fossil fuel reserves from its listed equities portfolios, following a review of the methods it uses to meet its carbon targets,” NZ Super said.

“The change means the fund has now invested in NZX-listed Genesis Energy and can consider investing in climate change transition assets that may previously have been excluded,” the fund said.

Genesis shares are up 12% over the last year and were trading around $2.43 yesterday.

Jamie Gray is an Auckland-based journalist, covering the financial markets, the primary sector and energy. He joined the Herald in 2011.