Daily ShareChat: Infratil

Infratil's purchase of the Shell New Zealand assets including its petrol stations and stake in the Marsden Point refinery will mark a significant change in direction, says McDouall Stuart.

Since March last year, Infratil has sold almost $400 million in assets and raised close to $100 million of new capital, leaving it with "a significantly trimmed suite of core investments," the broker says.

"The question as to whether Infratil's divestment strategy has yet run its full course appears still to be an open one," it says, adding analysts have question its continued ownership of its Kent and Prestwick-Glasgow airports and NZ Bus.

"Infratil has suffered in the past from a lack of depth of understanding from the local investment community" and the asset sales should help lift investor understanding of the remaining assets.

But the Shell purchase, in conjunction with the NZ Superannuation Fund, will see the company entering a completely new business with little obvious overlap with its other assets and runs the risk of adding to the local market's shallow understanding of the stock, McDouall Stuart says.

"Infratil will need to work hard to instil investors with the understanding necessary to offset this."

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