PAUL MCBETH: Remembering the little guys
For some, 2025 was very much about stepping out of the shadows.
Paul McBeth is the editor of The Bottom Line and Curious News, and previously worked at BusinessDesk for 15 years. He’s owned shares of Bremworth since January 2024.
Last year was a good reminder that the mantra of the old Mitre 10 Mega TV ads doesn’t always ring true because bigger isn’t necessarily better.
Scan the top 10 performing share prices on the NZX in 2025 and you’d be forgiven for having to do a quick Google search to work out who they are and what they do.
Topping the charts is Third Age Health Services, an aged care and general practice operator that’s quietly been rolling up new facilities in recent years and is serving more than 27,000 enrolled patients.
The share price surged 125% to $5.48 in the calendar year, topping the NZX’s main board and valuing the company at almost $55 million as it added to the 58% gain in 2024.
Where is the life that I recognise?
The last time Third Age Health garnered much media attention was a couple of years ago when former chief Michael Haskell had a go at chair John Fernandes over the share price slump at the time.
Since then, earnings and revenue have grown at a rapid clip and the rather thinly traded company more than doubled in value for its 220 odd owners through 2025.
And it wasn’t alone in the aged care sector, as Radius Residential Care jumped 86% to end the year valued at $110.6 million for its 1,500 shareholders, while Oceania Healthcare advanced 26% to close 2025 with a market capitalisation of $666.3 million after three subdued years.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the outlook for the aged care sector has perked up since the government decided the funding system was broken, although one does wonder whether appointing former Labour leader David Cunliffe to chair the ministerial advisory group will achieve the bipartisan agreement needed to survive successive administrations.
Meanwhile, takeover chatter helped give the next two winners of 2025 a boost as ikeGPS notched up its best year since its 2014 listing with a 95% gain after its owners spurned an approach by a private equity buyer at the start of the year.
I will learn to survive
Carpetmaker Bremworth – which some of us still think of as Cavalier – enjoyed its best year since 1991 as it climbed 94% after some shareholder agitation installed a new board that quickly got to work in finding a buyer who’d let them keep a large portion of the company’s insurance proceeds from the destruction wrought by Cyclone Gabrielle a few years ago.
Now all it needs is Commerce Commission approval, although that won’t be a cakewalk given the suitor is the parent of major rival Godfrey Hirst.
Would-be miner Santana Minerals chalked up a 94% gain in 2025 as the price of gold got seriously frothy and the mining operation edged closer to getting a green light under a regime more open to digging minerals out of the ground, while dual-listed Ventia Services Group jumped 76% on this side of the Tasman in a decidedly favourable environment for an infrastructure services firm.
Even among the top 50 companies, we didn’t get the usual line-up of leaders as David Mair worked his no-nonsense magic at Sanford with the 74% gain the fishing group’s biggest annual leap since 1992, while a2 Milk Co and the Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund posted respective increases of 71% and 59% in a reminder that the white stuff is still integral to New Zealand’s economic well-being.
Meanwhile, retailers were at the bottom of the league tables, with KMD Brands and Michael Hill International sinking 36% and 37% respectively as New Zealand’s tentative households held off from prising open their wallets for more discretionary spending, while the 35% drop for Comvita and 33% slide for Ryman Healthcare were more indicative of those companies’ strained balance sheets.
I don’t cry for yesterday
The 33% decline for Gentrack snapped four stellar years for the utilities software firm as it faces a more aggressive and cashed-up international competitor in the form of Kraken, which is set to be unleashed from the upstart UK power firm Octopus Energy, that seized the crown of bring Britain’s biggest household energy supplier at the start of 2025.
Among our biggest listed companies, Infratil posted its first annual decline since 2016 as it shed 12% as a word of caution started creeping into the world of AI and data centres, while Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Auckland International Airport and Meridian Energy posted single digit dips for the year.
That’s not to say it’s time to turn your back on the BIG big end of town in New Zealand. Those companies have built up their positions through hard graft over many years and as every commentator likes to point out, stock markets don’t go in a straight line.
But it is a timely reminder that there’s more vibrancy to New Zealand’s stock exchange than simply the 10 biggest companies that dominate trading volumes and news headlines.
