Infratil said it had sold its 20% stake in celltower operator Fortysouth for “more than $200m” and an Auckland property for $55m – which Infratil said was a legacy of its former ownership of NZ Bus (sold in 2018).
Fortysouth was formed in 2022 when Vodafone New Zealand (then 50% owned by Infratil and now 99.8% Infratil-owned and rechristened One NZ) sold the passive assets of its celltower network.
Infratil took a one-fifth stake in the spun-off company, with funds controlled by Canada’s Northleaf Capital Partners and the UK’s InfraRed Capital Partners taking the remaining 80%, in what was framed in an Overseas Investment Office application as a $1.7b deal.
Infratil listed the fair value of its Fortysouth holding at $186.3m in its 2025 annual report, down from $195.2m in 2024 and $207.7m in 2023.
InfraRed and Pantheon bought Infratil’s 20% stake.
The company said it was now 58% of the way to its target of $1b in asset sales with the (previously announced) agreement to sell its stake in RetireAustralia plus the Fortysouth and Auckland property deals.
Bull and bear takes on CDC
Infratil also said it would chip in $250m toward the expansion of CDC’s data centres in the second half.
It narrowed its CDC proportionate ebitdaf (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation and fair value adjustments) guidance to A$390m-A$400m, a band toward the bottom of its previous range.
“This might disappoint people who had been looking for an upgrade,” Solly said. The same went for the increased capex, which would reduce return-on-income from CDC.
“But the bulls could point to demand driving faster rollout.”
“Recent CDC contract announcements mean the business will achieve its target of doubling its FY25 earnings in FY27. This is good confirmation, given investors are wary about the timing on data centre contracting and deployment.”
CDC has 453 megawatts of new or expanded data centres under construction, Infratil said, “with multiple opportunities with existing and new customers for significant additional capacity”.
Longroad: Positive surprise
Solly said the CDC dip was offset by the “positive surprise” of Longroad Energy’s full-year ebitdaf guidance being bumped from US$110m-$120m to US$120m-$130m.
Solly also latched on to comments about the convergence of Infratil’s renewable energy and data centre businesses.
He noted Infratil said it was “exploring opportunities for our electricity businesses to help data centres solve electricity supply constraints”.
Infratil holds a 37.3% stake in Longroad.
Infratil’s investor presentation said, “Longroad earnings grew strongly with 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in HY26. It now has 3.5GW of operating capacity and is constructing more to meet the soaring demand for electricity being driven by new data centres, industrial growth and electrification. In September, the financial close of the 1000 Mile Solar project was announced. It will provide 400MW to advance Meta’s target to support its data centre operations with 100% clean energy.”
On the home front, Infratil lifted its stake in Contact Energy by 4.92% to 14.3% as it bought the Tauranga Energy Trust’s stake in the gentailer in a deal announced on October 20.
One NZ: Analysts focus on mobile
In a November 10 preview, which predicted One NZ and CDC would be “standouts”, Forsyth Barr analysts Ben Crozier and Aaron Ibbotson upgraded Infratil from neutral to outperform and bumped their 12-month target from $13.25 to $14.60.
One NZ’s first-half contribution to Infratil operating earnings was $296m versus the year-ago $304m with the dip attributed to the “timing of strategic spend” on artificial intelligence (AI) and SpaceX.
Full-year ebitdaf guidance ($595m to $625m) was unchanged.
Crozier and Ibbotson, who had tipped $300m ebitdaf from the telco, had a focus on mobile performance in an Infratil preview – in the context of One NZ being Infratil’s second largest asset and its single largest ebitdaf contributor, and mobile being the most buoyant sector of the telecommunications market.
One NZ’s first-half revenue grew to $954m – 1.4% ahead of the first half of FY25 ($941m) but behind the first half of FY24 ($963m).
The second-half expectation “reflects a lift in trading momentum leading into the peak summer trading period and the benefit of HY26 price increases”.
Crozier and Ibbotson had expected total mobile post-paid (or “contract”) customers to be flat at 1.36 million. In the event, they were down slightly to 1.35 million as total mobile connections edged down from 2.30 million to 2.23 million.
But although there were slightly fewer mobile customers, they were spending more money.
The pair had been looking for mobile arpu (average revenue per user per month) to increase by $1.50. In the event, it increased by $1.60 to $36.90.
The higher-margin post-pay segment was the best performer, with arpu increasing from $40.60 to $43.30.
Infratil said One NZ was “delivering revenue growth in a slow market”.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
