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Retirement village operator and aged care provider Metlifecare says it’s on track to meet its primary guidance of $60 million full-year operating cashflow after reporting cashflow of $29.2 million excluding interest and acquisition costs in the six months to Dec. 31. The results are heavily influenced by five months’ revenue from the merger last July of Vision Senior Living and …

Telecom Corp, the country’s biggest phone company, eked out a 3.7 percent lift in first-half underlying earnings as revenue from its mobile business propped up otherwise disappointing sales. Stripping out one-off items from the Chorus demerger a year earlier, adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose to $506 million in in the six months ended Dec. 31 from …

Diligent Board Member Services, whose shares have more than doubled in the past 12 months, says it sees no need to restate earnings after reviewing a report into executive options that may not have complied with its incentive schemes. The shares, halted pending the report, will resume trading today. “At this time, the Diligent Board, based on advice received from …

The New Zealand dollar declined against the greenback and the yen as equities markets and commodities fell and figures showed the US economy is still growing only weakly. The kiwi dollar fell to 83.17 US cents from 83.42 cents at 5pm in Wellington yesterday. The local currency sank to 77.36 yen from 77.97 yen. The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Commodity Index …

Wall Street extended losses for a second day amid concern the Federal Reserve’s stimulus for the US economy might end sooner than expected, while the latest data on euro zone services and manufacturing output showed a larger-than-expected contraction. Minutes from the latest Fed meeting called into question the size and duration of the central bank’s bond-buying program at a time …

Solid Energy will remain trading during a “difficult two or three months” while the company, its bankers and the government find a way to keep a smaller, coal-only business alive. At a press conference in the Beehive, Finance Minister Bill English said the government was not injecting any funds into Solid Energy at present and had offered no formal government …

The Commerce Commission has cleared rental equipment operator Hirepool to buy Hirequip out of receivership, saying the two operate in different sectors and are hindered by their rivals. The regulator didn’t find any significant overlap between Hirepool and Hirequip in the hire of heavy construction and earthworks equipment, and that a merged entity would be constrained by competition at a …

New Zealand shares fell, pushing the NZX 50 Index to a month-low as Skellerup Holdings and Nuplex Industries missed profit expectations and cut guidance, and Fletcher Building continued its correction following its results yesterday. The NZX 50 fell 43.81 points, or 1 percent, to 4170.4, the lowest close since Jan. 18. Within the index, 26 stocks fell, 12 rose and …

Solid Energy, the state-owned coal miner whose chief executive quit this month, is in talks with its banks because of its deteriorating financial position. The coal miner, which is carrying some $389 million of debt, is heading for a “significant” first half loss, chairman Mark Ford said in a statement. “We are in discussions with our banks and Treasury on …

Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson is to open a new manufacturing facility in Wellington, helping to offset a wave of job losses announced for the capital in recent weeks. The firm, which is a supplier to the government-backed ultra-fast broadband roll-out, will create 30 jobs at a new factory in the Wellington satellite city of Porirua to produce fibre-optic cable ducts, …