‘Global market noise’ the backdrop to still-impressive result for One NZ owner Infratil
Tuesday, 26 May 2026
Global investments in data centres and renewable investment are key growth planks for one of New Zealand’s largest listed companies, although they are also the two areas most suspect to “global market noise”.
Announcing its year-end results this morning, dual-listed Infratil, which has a market capitalisation of almost $16 billion, said it would tune out the noise and keep following its path, tod “continue to see the strongest opportunities in data centres and renewable energy”.
Infratil Limited (IFT) has assets across international digital infrastructure, renewable energy, healthcare, and transport, and its star performer is Australia’s CDC Data Centres, of which it holds an almost 50% stake. The business recently secured a massive 555MW contract with a US customer, the largest in Australian history.
It also owns One NZ, Wellington Airport, about a 9% stake of Contact Energy, stakes in various renewable energy firms across the US, Asia, Europe and Australia, and some healthcare concerns.
Read more:
Infratil’s data centre business wins record contract from US customer
Amazon re-announces $7.5 billion data centre investment in NZ
Certainly Infratil’s formula has paid dividends for its investors in the year to March 31, 2026 ‒ and that includes thousands of New Zealanders who either directly, or indirectly through KiwiSaver and other funds, own about a third of the company.
The strategy saw Infratil’s underlying profitability beat analyst expectations for the year, even if topline revenue of $294 million didn’t quite meet expectations of about $319m.
Proportionate operational pre-tax earnings ‒ a specific financial metric used by investment companies to show their true underlying earnings based on their actual ownership stake in each business ‒ of $989m, up 11% over the year prior, were driven heavily by data centre scaling and data demands. It posted a net surplus of $550m, after a $295m loss last year.
Infratil’s total asset value was up 13% to $20.6b, up from $18.3b last year.
A final dividend of 13.65cps brings the total year’s dividend to 20.9cps.
Chief executive Jason Boyes acknowledged the company’s share price had been impacted by negative AI sentiment over the year, including a “SaaS-pocalypse” in February as investors worried about AI’s effect on tech businesses.
There has also been widespread pushback against the growth of data centres in the US, while renewable energy projects have been jeopardised by the Trump administration’s various legal challenges and other obstacles as it attempts to bolster its fossil fuel industries.
But Boyes said sentiment shifted back in favour of AI as a result of the Middle East conflict, as investors sought “defensive” stocks ‒ stocks that provide stable earnings and consistent dividends regardless of the overall state of the stock market.
“Given this volatile market backdrop, we’re very pleased to have delivered a 13.9% total shareholder return for the year,” he said.
During the year, Australia’s CDC, the Infratil stakeholding which represents 40% of its portfolio, secured Australasia’s largest data centre contract, and investors were told of an impending tsunami of demand: “Massive, mega, super-sized, and monster, were some of the superlatives used by media and analysts to describe the 555MW deal,” he said.
“While there is a lot of AI hype that needs to be screened out, it is clear we are in the midst, arguably still near the beginning, of one of the largest technological developments and infrastructure build outs we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.
“We’re lucky enough to have a front row seat,” he said.
Breaking out its main New Zealand assets, One NZ reported revenues of almost $2b, a small uptick from last year, and earnings of $609m, another small increase from last year. During the year the company’s 2G and 3G networks shut down and its 5G network investment achieved 70% population coverage.
One NZ is worth $3.4b, according to Infratil.
Wellington Airport “continued to demonstrate its resilience in a challenging operating environment”, its parent company said. Strong performance across the international and commercial (non-aeronautical) businesses, together with a continued focus on efficiencies, delivered increased pre-tax earnings of the year of $133m, up 2%.
As far as an outlook went, Boyes said artificial intelligence was “clearly front of mind.
“Our focus is on sifting through the noise to understand what really matters for our existing investments. We’re in a good position to do that. We see demand and customer behaviour first-hand at CDC, we see the implications for energy demand through Longroad Energy, and we’re seeing practical applications of AI scale in One NZ and in teleradiology.”
Across the portfolio, “the near-term outlook is exciting”, he continued.
“CDC is on track to meet its target of doubling [financial year 2025] earnings by [financial year 2027]. Solar and battery storage remain the lowest-cost sources of new generation in many markets, and we’ve agreed to provide a further US$300 million of equity to Longroad to accelerate its growth.
“As always, there’s plenty to be done and we’ll continue to invest wisely to create further shareholder value.”