Air New Zealand's $1.2 billion capital raise 'tracking to plan' says chair Dame Therese Walsh

Greg Foran, Air New Zealand chief executive and Dame Therese Walsh, Air NZ chairwoman. Photo / Supplied

Air New Zealand chairwoman Dame Therese Walsh says investor interest in the airline's $1.2 billion capital raise is "tracking as expected" as the shareholders' rights offer approaches the halfway mark.

The raise is part of a $2.2b capital and debt raising deal to pay back existing government loans and "refuel" the airline as border restrictions ease and it can now do more flying.

While unable to talk specifically about uptake of the offer, she said underwriters and brokers believed it was going according to plan.

"We're progressing as we would have expected so we e are comfortable with where we are, but we continue to want to raise awareness."

The airline, and institutions managing the offer, copped early flak for the offer being overly complicated and not well explained, especially to many among the 100,000 Sharesies investors.

The NZ Shareholders' Association said investors — many of them individual or "retail" shareholders — should have been given more time to digest details of the offer before trading started.

Prices for both ordinary and rights shares were volatile reflecting confusion and early on an NZX blunder.

"It is already a complex offer and we are concerned about the confusion that has surrounded it for professional organisations as well as retail investors," the association's chief executive Oliver Mander has said.

"The main thing that we are focused on now is really to implore investors to make sure that they understand the offer and its implications prior to trading in anything."

Walsh said the company had put in "a lot of effort" at the start of it in terms of awareness with media appearances and investor presentations about the offer that she said was inherently complex.

"What happened in those first few or maybe even in that first week was a lot of narrative about what does this deal look like? What does it mean?"

She said a mistake by the exchange operator, NZX, when it put up the wrong reference or theoretical starting prices for the ordinary Air NZ shares and for the tradeable rights to buy new shares, didn't help.

"I think that what happened at the NZX wasn't ideal," she said.

She said the discounted two rights for one share deal was aimed at being as fair as possible for all shareholders. The volume of information was "on the more comprehensive end of the spectrum" and it appeared to be understood more readily overseas as a capital raise of this scale and structure was not done frequently in New Zealand.

"There is inherent complexity in this, which is why we've given people lots of time, which is why we've made the materials as simple as possible. That period of a question mark on complexity has happened. It's passed quite quickly and was exacerbated by what happened with the NZX.''

Rights trading ends on April 26 and the offer closes on May 2 with a shortfall bookbuild for two days after that.

''There will always be areas for improvement, I'm sure. And you always get that with the benefit of hindsight. But we put a lot of effort into the comms and taking something that's inherently complex and making it as simple as possible.''

The time of the offer, announced on March 30, has coincided with a brighter operating environment for the airline.

With New Zealand in the orange traffic light setting, passengers will no longer be required to show proof of vaccination or negative test to fly around domestically and from May 1 the airline will remove its no jab, no fly vaccination policy for international customers.

It is also restoring many transtasman flights and has resumed its non-stop service to San Francisco, and detailed its resumption of services to Honolulu and to Houston in July. It will begin an Auckland-New York non-stop service in September.