Vector expects 'tough conditions'

Electricity and gas distributor Vector is not buying the green shoots recovery story, saying it expects operating conditions to be tough this financial year.

"Despite recent media coverage of improved sentiment and green shoots, we expect that conditions will be tough in this current financial year, and that growth in our core businesses of electricity and gas will remain subdued," chairman Michael Stiassny told shareholders at the annual meeting.

"We're not out of the woods yet," he said.

He said regulation would remain a key driver of the business.

"We don't expect to replicate the substantial cost savings we made from efficiencies in this current financial year," Mr Stiassny said.

The company did not provide a profit forecast at the meeting. It provided a full run down of proxy votes held by the chairman at the start of the meeting.

Ahead of the meeting Mr Stiassny was criticised by Milford Asset Management executive director Brian Gaynor for banning cameras and recording devices from the meeting, according to a report by Businessday.

Also ahead of the meeting, the company said warmer, wetter weather and subdued consumer and business activity affected its operations in the three months to the end of September.

Volumes on its Auckland and northern electricity networks were down 1.4 per cent, compared to a year earlier, to 2262.6 gigawatt hours.

The number of connections lifted by 1130, or just 0.2 per cent, in the quarter to 524,524.

Chief executive Simon Mackenzie told the meeting that the company was realistic about the issues facing it and that soft economic conditions would make the way forward challenging.

"Regulatory certainty remains a vital element in supporting investment and funding of critical infrastructure to enable productivity," Mr Mackenzie said.

He said Vector had made no secret of its ambitions in the deployment of a high-speed fibre network.

"New Zealand cannot find itself in seven years still relying on legacy networks when the rest of the world has moved on to fibre," he said.

However, in the prepared notes he did not get into any specifics on the company's broadband plans.

"Fibre for New Zealand is akin to what refrigeration did for the agriculture sector early last century," Mr Mackenzie said.

- NZPA