South Port New Zealand Limited Analysis

Overview

South Port is the southernmost commercial port in New Zealand, located at Bluff and operating on a year-round, 24 hour basis. It is situated in the highly productive province of Southland which is responsible for producing a sizeable proportion of New Zealand's total exports by value.

The company was established in October 1988 when it acquired $23m of assets from the Southland Harbour Board. Stock exchange listing was achieved in July 1994 after 6.48m shares owned by the Southland Regional Council were offered to the public at $1.10 each. A share buy-back was undertaken in 2000 and the Southland Regional Council now owns 66.48% of the shares in the company.

South Port is governed by a board of six independent directors. It is the only Southland-based company listed on NZX. It is also one of the major employers in the region, employing over 80 full time equivalent staff.

From its base on the 40 hectare (100 acre) man-made Island Harbour, South Port is proud to provide a full range of marine services, cargo and container shipping, and on-site warehousing for domestic and international customers. The port is ideally situated to service Southland's significant export and import industries including aluminium, timber, fisheries, dairy, meat, wood chips, stock food, cement, alumina, fertiliser and petroleum products. The port handles over 2.5 million tonnes of import and export cargo in a normal trading year.

SPN has been granted Listing with a 'Non-Standard' ("NS") designation. This designation was granted because under the Port Companies Act 1988, changes to SPN's Constitution must be approved by the Minister of Transport. For further information, please see the Port Companies Act 1988 which is publicly available at www.legislation.govt.nz.

Performance

The following information was extracted from South Port New Zealand Limited's Full Year results, released on 23 August 2024:

In the year to 30 June 2024 South Port recorded revenue of $56.13M (2023 - $53.59M) and recorded an after-tax profit of $7.38M (2023 - $11.71M). Earnings per share were 28.1 cents, against 44.6 cents last year.

Consistent with other infrastructure companies, South Port’s result was also negatively impacted by the Government’s recent decision to remove tax deductibility for depreciation on commercial buildings.

This tax change resulted in a one-off deferred tax expense of $2.27M for the 2024 financial year.

Normalised net profit after tax (NPAT), excluding one-offs, was $9.96M (2023 - $11.50M).

Net asset backing was $2.30 per share, up from $2.28 per share last year.