NZME shares at 14-month high after Osmium raises stake

Shares in NZME, publisher of the NZ Herald, are at a 14-month high. Photo / NZ Herald

Shares in NZME, publisher the New Zealand Herald, rallied by 7.4 per cent after San Francisco-based Osmium Partners said it had lifted its stake in the company to 13.2 per cent from 11.6 per cent.

By late afternoon, the stock was up 4c at 58c, its highest point since August last year.

Osmium first revealed its presence on the NZME share register in early September, when it announced to the NZX that it had taken an 8.7 per cent stake.

Later that month, Osmium's holding rose to 11.6 per cent.

Matt Goodson, managing director of Salt Funds Management, said NZME has had years of pressure from structural change in the sector and maybe it is now coming out the other end.

The NZ Herald numbers picked up over the Covid crisis - the housing and automobile advertising will be helping - and papers like the New York Times have also done well, Goodson said.

Osmium's website says it focuses on investing in high-quality, small capitalisation public equities "via an exhaustive, bottom-up research process".

On September 3, Renaissance Smaller Companies said it had lowered its holding in NZME to 5.75 per cent from 10.5 per cent.

Osmium has been watching NZME for three years before it decided to invest, founder and
managing partner John Lewis told the Herald last month.

"Coming into the fourth quarter, I thought this would be a very rough time, but NZME pivoted rapidly and pulled out a win," Lewis said then.

On August 25, NZME reported a 5 per cent increase in operating earnings to $28.9m as rapid restructuring efforts and new online initiatives including premium subscriptions and OneRoof, helped to offset Covid-19's impact on advertising.

The board said dividend payments could resume after June 30 next year.