Woolworths, Australia’s biggest supermarket operator, said third quarter sales barely budged at its Countdown chain in New Zealand, in the face of a subdued, highly competitive market. New Zealand supermarket sales edged up 0.1 percent to $1.4 billion in the 13 weeks ended April 6, the Sydney-based retailer said in a statement. The strength of the kiwi dollar meant sales …

New Zealand building consents for residential housing, excluding apartments, rose to a six-and-a-half year high in March, snapping two months of decline. Excluding apartments and units, which are typically volatile from month to month, seasonally adjusted consents rose 1.3 percent to 1,813 units in March, the most since November 2007, according to Statistics New Zealand. Including apartments, seasonally adjusted new …

Shares in Xero climbed 11 percent after the accounting software developer said it slowed the pace of cash outflow in the first three months of the year. The stock jumped $3.31 to $33.30 after the Wellington-based company said net operating cash outflow was $5.6 million in the three months ended March 31, slowing from an outflow of $6.5 million in …

Diligent Board Member Services filed its 2013 annual report after restating accounts for the prior three years and said chief financial officer Carl Blandino will step down once the company’s reporting obligations are up to date. The New York-based, New Zealand-listed company, whose strong operating performance was undermined by a slew of administrative errors last year, today filed its annual …

Dorchester Pacific, the finance company that avoided failure in 2010 by convincing investors to accept a debt-for-equity swap, said full-year profit rose more than five-fold, beating guidance. Profit in the year ended March 31 was about $8 million, up from $1.7 million a year earlier, the Auckland-based company said in a statement. Profit from its three trading operations would be …

New Zealand Post plans to roll out YouShop in China after attracting 82,000 kiwis to the parcel forwarding service from the UK and US that was set up to cash in on the surge in online shopping. The state-owned postal service, which is grappling with a slump in traditional mail volumes, says 4,000 users a month are signing up to …

OceanaGold, which operates the Macraes goldfield in Otago, boosted first-quarter profit by 730 percent as its Didipio operation in the Philippines came on steam with new gold and copper production. Net profit jumped to US$58.9 million in the three months ended March 31 from US$7.1 million a year earlier, the Melbourne-based company said in a statement. Revenue surged 78 percent …

A Labour Party-led government will require the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to use changes to the rate of people’s compulsory KiwiSaver contributions rather than interest rates to control inflation while taking pressure off the over-valued kiwi dollar. “Instead of paying more interest on your mortgage, a similar amount of extra savings would go into your KiwiSaver,” Parker told an …

New Zealand’s listed dairy companies, Synlait Milk, a2 Milk Co and Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund, probably won’t face much disruption from tighter rules on infant formula in China, the nation’s biggest market for milk products, investors say. A2, whose Platinum infant formula is manufactured at Synlait’s Canterbury plant, led the three dairy companies lower on the NZX today, after saying it …

An in-depth survey of senior leaders in the Christchurch rebuild indicates growing impatience and serious weaknesses in the way major projects are being procured and managed. The minister in charge of the post-earthquakes rebuild, Gerry Brownlee, released the hard-hitting survey of the city’s progress undertaken by the Council for Infrastructure Development, an industry lobby group. “There will always be a …