Chris Lee & Partners Ltd

Taking Stock 9 April 2026

James Lee writes:

“Most of life comes down to controlling what you can and putting guardrails around what you can’t.”

It sounds like a throwaway line but it wasn’t. It was a clear and coherent strategy.

I was sitting with the then CEO of Air New Zealand. We were talking about the realities of running an airline, arguably one of the most exposed business models in the world. Oil prices, FX, global demand, the economic cycle, even the weather are all out of your control.

So Air NZ hedged what it could - fuel, currency and capacity - then focussed relentlessly on the one thing it could control: brand and customer loyalty. The experience, the reason a customer comes back. (That was the edge, but perhaps Air New Zealand might revisit whether customer loyalty has been as much of a focus recently.)

But let’s be clear, the definition of “controllable” shifts when the world shifts. And it’s worth asking whether that playbook still holds in today’s environment, because the reality is that risks are now materially higher than where we started the year. This isn’t noise, it’s a repricing of geopolitical risk. And the duration of the Iranian conflict is, frankly, the single biggest variable hanging over markets.

Right now, the world finds itself in the middle of a potential ceasefire, that has seen the oil price fall sharply and equity markets rebound. Investors should expect volatility to remain heightened.

Not all conflicts matter to markets. This one does because it runs straight through energy.

Oil prices are probably the second most important variable to consider, behind interest rates, when thinking about input variables that impact the world. When you consider that the correlation between oil and inflation and then inflation into interest rates, you could probably argue it’s the most important input to monitor.

The price of oil has increased 50% since the Iran conflict began. The general thesis was that the war would be short lived, which perhaps ignored the history of what is one of the oldest civilisations on the planet. Now we are faced with a reality that this has the potential to materially impact portfolios.

The cost to human life is real and impossible to calculate. The cost of the war itself varies but currently I have read estimates of anywhere between $200B and $400B including weapons, damage, and cost to rebuild, but the economic impact of this disruption is estimated to be between 1% and 3% of global GDP (global GDP is about US$100 trillion) depending on what happens next.

The world is faced with three simple scenarios. Yesterday we saw the first step towards de-escalation, but there are still a few twists and turns to play out.

The first is de-escalation - a brokered ceasefire, which Trump often says is what he wants. Oil pulls back. LNG stabilises. Inflation expectations ease. Central banks regain optionality. Risk assets recover. Iran is asking for a full ceasefire, including sanctions being lifted. This is what the market generally believes is most likely. The consensus was that Trump would announce he has achieved what he wanted, declare victory, and step back. The US public was recently polled, with 90% wanting the conflict to end and 70% opposing ground troops. While the market may be pricing this outcome as likely, oil is not.

The second is escalation, specifically either significant bombing of key infrastructure, what Donald suggests is “bombing Iran into the stone age”, or ground troops. This would cause major disruption to infrastructure in Iran, which would likely retaliate across the UAE or Oman. Global security would change materially, as any response from Iran would be aimed at economic disruption. Iran does not have the capability to match physical damage, so it would target economic damage instead. This is not a headline risk. It would be a supply shock unlike most have seen. For now, that risk appears to be easing.

The third is the messy middle - oscillation. Tensions flare, then cool, week by week. Oil spikes, retracts, then spikes again. Markets churn and confidence erodes. This is effectively what we have seen over the past seven weeks.

Now here is what matters. This conflict has highlighted that the system has very little slack.

Global oil demand is just over 100 million barrels per day. The Middle East supplies roughly a third of that, and more importantly, most of the spare capacity. Remove even 3–5 million barrels per day and you are not rebalancing supply, you are exposing the absence of alternatives.

US shale can respond, but slowly. Call it 1 to 1.5 million barrels per day over 12 to 18 months if price incentives hold. Offshore projects take years. Global reserves are already being used, but if you assume a 10% reduction in supply, reserves would last broadly three months.

LNG is tighter again. Global trade sits around 400 million tonnes per annum. Qatar alone accounts for roughly 20%. If that flow is disrupted, there is no immediate replacement. The US is the swing supplier, but it is already running at capacity. New supply is coming, but on a multi-year timeline.

The reality is energy markets do not adjust smoothly. They gap. A small disruption in volume becomes a large move in price because there is no buffer, and no real short-term solution.

Oil feeds directly into inflation. Higher oil and LNG prices lift transport, electricity, and input costs. That flows into CPI. Central banks cannot ignore this as transitory. Rates stay higher for longer, and could move higher again. Consumers feel it immediately through fuel, food, and utilities. Discretionary spending tightens, employment slows, and business investment weakens. This time, it likely also feeds into housing, as people have held on, expecting a recovery that may not come as quickly as hoped.

So the outcome of any peace agreement will not be theoretical, it will be mechanical.

Over the past week, Trump has said the war will end quickly, then signalled escalation, then called for a ceasefire. Today we have talk of peace. With Trump, there are still likely a few acts to play out.

Any good Trump analyst will tell me that Trump always does both. It’s negotiation 101 - threaten aggressively but don’t pull the trigger - Greenland, Chinese tariffs, North Korea, so on and so forth.  So rather than be fearful that lunacy takes hold, we just need to recognise that we have probably all been guilty of being too casual about the strategic importance of the supply chain of oil.

Now bring that back to New Zealand, where we sit at the end of the supply chain, not the centre of it.

We import essentially all of our refined fuels. Marsden Point was our only refinery and shut in 2022. Since then, we’ve relied on imported petrol, diesel, and jet fuel, largely from Asia and the Middle East. That means we’re exposed not just to crude prices, but to refining margins, shipping capacity, and global competition for finished product.

The obvious question - why not lean on Australia?

Australia cannot bail us out as its refining capacity has shrunk materially. It imports a large share of its own fuel and relies on the same Asian supply chains we do. Even if it had surplus, logistics and contracts don’t flex overnight.

In short, there is no regional safety net; the fact is we’ve traded resilience for efficiency. It worked in a stable world. It looks different in a volatile one.

What do you do?

At a national level, the levers are clear - more storage, more diversified supply, and a serious conversation about strategic capability. That is not necessarily rebuilding a full refinery but acknowledging that pure just-in-time supply carries risk. We can expect sensible government-supported investment into our supply chain across most things, which, to be frank is the government’s job, not to tweet and comment on every single micro thing. Being grumpy right now, I do not care about a politician’s view on the rugby, their plans for Easter, or whether we should subsidise some pet project.  Their job is to focus on the macro investments that keep its citizens employed, healthy and safe.

For an investor it’s more nuanced, while the question is simpler: where does capital go when energy becomes unstable? You have to also balance that with how long will it remain unstable.

I start with the macro by looking at what the market thinks is the base case, which currently is de-escalation, then compare that with what has already moved or what hasn’t.  Then overlay that with the following logic.

What struggles?

Anything energy-intensive with no pricing power is going to struggle - transport, logistics, low-margin manufacturing, discretionary retail. These businesses wear higher input costs and can’t fully pass them on. Margins compress and demand softens at the same time.  They will have a hard time.

What holds up?

Defence is the obvious one. Spending is already committed and rising, driven by policy, not the cycle. That said, defence stocks were already elevated and while many stocks rallied in the first few days, most have fallen with markets.  To me though, standing back, the big four defence stocks trade at 15-20x EV/EBITDA, have 5-10% EBITDA growth and have margins on average at 15%.  This puts them into the category of very stable investments in this environment that are also low-growth, low-margin investments.  Personally, though, I would rather own something more positive than betting the world is going to arm up because it has been wartime for a while now under Trump and Putin.

Balancing the fact the market is down a bit (4%), consensus is currently for de-escalation. I would say the market is under-pricing the risk of a long drawn-out process, or escalation.  It is doing so in the belief that the economic cost is too high.  The question I would put to an investor is, Do you really feel confident enough that you can call it, and even if you get it right and the market bounces 5%, will oil really go back to the old levels or will it stay above US$80 a barrel for some time to come?

This leads me to what I think is the interesting outcome of all this, which is electrification - and this is where nuance matters.

At first glance, higher energy prices sound negative for everything. But for electrification, it’s the opposite, and could be where New Zealand decides to pivot into building resilience into its systems.

The more volatile and expensive fossil fuels become, the stronger the case for alternatives, across the board.  Renewable electricity - wind, solar, hydro - has high upfront costs but low and predictable marginal costs, plus no fuel input and the benefit that we control the supply chain.

What matters is that renewables shift energy from a traded commodity to a domestic asset, and for New Zealand, that’s particularly relevant. We already generate a large share of electricity from renewables, but it doesn’t make us immune and will never be the full solution, but lowering our reliance and increasing our resilience is important and is likely to get more attention.

Electricity demand rises as transport and industry electrify. They will electrify as government-supported investment solves infrastructure constraints, such as generation, storage, and grid capacity. In the short term, gas still plays a balancing role, which means LNG prices still matter, so we should actively be encouraging gas exploration.

Consumer behaviours will change. Anecdotally I hear that BYD and Tesla sales staff have been run off their feet as car sales companies prey on the fear of fuelling up. My bet is the CFO at bus operator Ritchies Transport, owned by private equity company KKR, is feeling pretty happy about life, and probably a few investment bankers might be pushing it to an IPO.  Even second-hand Audi E-Trons probably look like good value now.

To me, the takeaway is straightforward - electrification wins. It is not instant, and it’s not frictionless, but my guess is that long-term investors should be open to looking at something like Contact Energy. Contact trades on 12x EBITDA, will grow EBITDA gradually depending on the weather, and produces circa 30% EBITDA margins. This allows it to pay a healthy dividend, so in an environment that feels pretty tough, where our return expectations should be tempered and income should be prized, we have a few good sensible options.

We’re moving from a world where energy was abundant and predictable to one where it’s strategic and volatile. In this environment markets will swing between overreacting and underestimating - because that’s what markets do.

Our investment strategies need to embrace that concept at the moment because whether the Iran war escalates or de-escalates is actually out of the average investor’s control, and escalation is ugly.  Regardless of what happens, I don’t see a world where oil prices aren’t more connected to that strategic risk for a while, especially as people build strategic reserves again.

For an investor, control what you can. Do you need to be fully invested? Hedge what you can’t, reduce your risks.  And be very clear about which parts of your portfolio - and your economy - are exposed to forces you no longer control.

The reality for many investors is simple, and goes back to one my golden rules: If you’re not sure, don’t place a bet.  The easiest way to grow your wealth is actually not to lose it on bad bets. 

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Travel

13 April – Taupo – Johnny Lee

14 April – Hamilton – Johnny Lee

15 April – Tauranga – Johnny Lee

16 April – Lower Hutt – David Colman

17 April – Napier – Johnny Lee

22 April – Auckland (Ellerslie) – Edward Lee

23 April – Auckland (Albany) – Edward Lee

Chris Lee & Partners Limited

Bottom of Form

Taking Stock, 2 April 2026

Fraser Hunter writes:

ENTERING 2026, there were genuine reasons to feel better about New Zealand. Interest rates had fallen materially from their highs. GDP had grown in both the September and December 2025 quarters – modestly, but in the right direction. The Reserve Bank held the OCR at 2.25% in February and acknowledged that earlier easing was starting to support activity.

In February, locally listed companies delivered their strongest reporting season in three years, with earnings successes outweighing misses for the first time since 2023. Consumer confidence in January hit its highest reading since August 2021, at 107.2.

The recovery was uneven and not yet self-sustaining, but for the first time in a while the evidence was pointing in the right direction.

Then conflict in the Middle East widened, oil surged, trade tensions returned, and global markets repriced sharply. None of that was in anybody’s forecast for the quarter.

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THE quarter’s disruption came from several directions at once, which is part of what made it difficult to navigate.

The most significant was energy. The temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz drove Brent crude to around US$120 a barrel at its peak, its steepest monthly surge since the Gulf crisis.

While NZ’s distance from conflict provides some comfort, it’s the type of shock that matters. A growth scare and an inflationary supply shock are different animals. Markets have been more willing to look through growth scares, with falling demand eventually bringing inflation down and clearing the way for rate cuts. An oil-driven shock does the opposite, raising prices at the same time as it weakens confidence and spending power. It is much harder for central banks to cut their way through that.

Trade provided a further layer of uncertainty. Following the US Supreme Court’s February ruling against the initial tariffs, the US launched fresh trade probes in March targeting major partners. China is reciprocating in kind, though neither side moved to full escalation by the end of quarter. The trajectory however signals slower global trade and higher costs, and that kind of uncertainty is particularly challenging for smaller, trade-dependent economies like New Zealand.

Bonds offered no shelter either. New Zealand swap rates rose 40 to 55 basis points in March alone, sending the corporate bond index down -1.4% for the month and the government bond index down nearly -2%.

Gold, which continued its stellar run into late January, pulled back sharply in March as the inflationary nature of the shock reminded markets that gold pays no income and tends to struggle when real yields are rising.

The assumption that lower interest rates would paper over a lot of problems has already come under real pressure.

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THE domestic economy told a reasonable story through most of the quarter. Export commodity prices held up, with the ANZ commodity price index rising more than 4% month-on-month in February and meat prices near record highs. The reporting season was genuinely good. The domestic story was delivering. It was simply overtaken by a global one that few had written into their base case.

But by March the mood had turned. The NZX50 fell -6.7% in March and finished the quarter down -6.1%. Those with fuel exposure were hit the hardest. Auckland Airport dropped -13%. Mainfreight fell -10% and Freightways dropped -14.5%.

Air New Zealand was the worst performer, off more than -22% after suspending guidance and cutting flights as jet fuel costs surged. Only nine stocks on the NZX50 posted a positive return for the month.

Consumer confidence fell, unwinding the last six months’ recovery in sentiment. Business confidence more so. Households were squeezed at the fuel pump and inflation expectations returned. The major banks are now projecting inflation to return to above 4%, which will make the Reserve Bank’s job considerably harder. The RBNZ has acknowledged that the conflict could both stoke inflation and weaken growth momentum, a combination that leaves very little room to move.

Offshore was not much better, though New Zealand underperformed most peers. The S&P 500 fell -5.0% in March and -4.3% for the quarter. The ASX dropped -7.1% in March but held up better over the full three months, down just -1.6%. The MSCI World index lost -3.6% over the quarter.

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EARLIER in my career I was part of an annual client strategy piece that leaned heavily into the “green shoots” metaphor, complete with the plant growing through cracked earth stock photo. The economy was showing signs of life coming out of the GFC, the Rugby World Cup was just around the corner and the listed market outlook was improving. 2010 proved to be a false dawn, largely because of the Christchurch earthquake, again a scenario nobody had planned.

The decade that followed told a different story. The insurance rebuild mattered. Sentiment recovered. The NZ market went on to become one of the stronger performers in the developed world. The clichéd green shoots were real. They just took longer to establish than expected, and the early stage of the recovery was the least comfortable part of it.

The same metaphor popped up again entering 2026, and the first quarter has looked like another head fake, again largely due to factors outside our control. The world is more fractured now than it was post-GFC, and the bear case grows the longer the conflict in the Middle East drags on.

But the pattern is still worth noting. The early stage of a real recovery and the early stage of a false one can look almost identical from the inside, particularly when they are interrupted by shocks that have nothing to do with the underlying domestic picture. The discomfort of this quarter is not, by itself, evidence that the thesis was wrong.

In my own case, I’ve been thinking about a range of outcomes from here in three buckets: an ideal scenario, where the conflict is contained and the domestic recovery continues broadly on track; a compromised one, where some combination of higher energy costs, sticky inflation and delayed rate relief persists for longer than markets hope; and a very much not ideal scenario, where things deteriorate to the point that a much higher allocation to cash and fixed income becomes necessary.

A meaningful cash reserve is important, not because I think the worst case is certain, but to prevent being forced to sell good securities at bad prices. Forced selling is the most reliable way to destroy long-term returns. Holding cash that earns a modest return while you wait for clarity isn’t glamorous. But it’s disciplined, and it keeps your options open when others are running out of them.

The optimal scenario doesn’t require dramatic action; it requires a careful review of what you hold and whether it still makes sense at current prices. The compromised scenario, which I suspect is where we’re most likely to spend the next few months, calls for a portfolio that reflects your stage of life, your tolerance for volatility, and your willingness to accept that market returns won’t be a straight line.

The adverse scenario is worth planning for, not because it’s probable, but because the cost of being unprepared is high.

At the very least, these are conversations you should have with yourself, if not with your adviser.

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THE domestic fundamentals have not yet changed. Companies are delivering. Commodity prices are holding. Lower rates are still working through the system. The risk worth watching is a prolonged conflict that keeps energy prices elevated, delays rate relief further and tests business and consumer confidence beyond what the recovery can absorb. That is a genuine risk, not a remote one. But it is the bear case, not the base case, and positioning as though it is certain comes with its own costs.

Recoveries are rarely comfortable in their early stages. The evidence comes before the confidence does, and the confidence comes before it feels obvious. This quarter tested that assumption harder than most. It has not changed it.

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Property For Industry

Property For Industry has set its interest rate for its 6.5- year Senior bond at 5.35% and is fully allocated. Thank you to those who participated in this issue.

Local Government Funding Agency

LGFA has set its interest for its 8-year bond at 4.75%. These bonds are AAA rated by S&P and mature on the 15th of May 2034. Clients interested in this bond are welcome to contact us, as we have a small supply remaining.

Travel

13 April – Taupo – Johnny Lee

14 April – Hamilton – Johnny Lee

15 April – Tauranga – Johnny Lee

16 April – Lower Hutt – David Colman

17 April – Napier – Johnny Lee

Chris Lee & Partners Ltd