NZ sharemarket up but Pacific Edge waits for coverage confirmation
The New Zealand sharemarket rose in line with US markets, with very little domestic news ahead of the long weekend.
The S&P/NZX 50 Index closed up 0.51% or 61.37 points, rising to 12,017.84, with 29,855,807 shares changing hands to the value of $174.1 million.
The S&P/NZX20 index closed at 7,131.57,
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Techday NZ
4 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Exclusive: CIOs push back on SAP upgrade deadline amid cost fears
Leaders in IT are under growing pressure to upgrade their core enterprise systems, but many are digging in their heels. With less than two years until SAP ends mainstream support for its traditional ERP platform, many businesses are still resisting the move to S/4HANA, citing cost, risk, and lack of a compelling business case. "Two-thirds of SAP customers are still running ECC," explained Luiz Mariotto, who leads the global solution engineering team at Rimini Street. "That's according to Gartner. After ten years, SAP still hasn't convinced the majority of its customer base to move," he said during a recent interview. Mariotto, based in Miami and a 25-year veteran of the SAP ecosystem, recently completed a whirlwind tour of Australia and New Zealand, meeting customers and prospects across Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland. He said while the region shares global concerns, some industries are "more aggressively focused on cost-cutting." "IT leaders are under pressure to reduce cost, optimise their operations, and at the same time, find ways to innovate," he said. "But how do you fund innovation if you've got to reduce both capex and opex, and still run your mission-critical ERP?" SAP announced in 2020 that it would end mainstream support for ECC by 2027. For many enterprises, the vendor's push to move customers to S/4HANA in the cloud feels less like a choice and more like a mandate. But Mariotto says the business case just isn't there for many. "Some CIOs go to the board and say, 'There is a risk if we don't get SAP's support,' but the board is pushing back. They're asking: 'Do we really need to spend hundreds of millions and three years of effort just to change software that already works?'" he said. Mariotto cited examples of global clients who have spent years and millions tailoring their ECC systems to complex processes like finance, logistics, or manufacturing. "Now SAP is saying, 'Sorry, you have to upgrade,'" he said. "But IT leaders are asking themselves: should my roadmap be driven by a vendor's timeline, or by business priorities?" Some clients who have started their S/4HANA projects are already pausing due to economic or geopolitical changes, such as trade wars or shifts in global supply chains. "The world is changing. The risks are shifting. And in that scenario, software upgrades drop in priority," he said. According to Mariotto, customers are increasingly exploring third-party support options as a way to defer expensive upgrades. Rimini Street, which provides independent support for enterprise software, has built what it calls the "Rimini Smart Path" — a three-stage approach: support, optimise and innovate. "First, we take over support of the ERP and deliver savings of 50 to 90 percent," he said. "Then we help clients optimise their landscape - no more forced upgrades. Finally, they can reinvest those savings into innovation." That innovation doesn't need to come from SAP either. Mariotto said many customers are turning to vendors like ServiceNow, Microsoft or AWS for AI, automation, and analytics. "Who said your AI must come from SAP?" he asked. "Clients can innovate now, without waiting years for a complex ERP migration." In a timely development, Rimini Street has also announced it will now offer full support for all SAP ECC 6.0 and S/4HANA releases through 2040 - without requiring customers to migrate to S/4HANA on RISE. This move is significant for businesses weighing whether to accept SAP's cloud roadmap or chart their own course. The extension means organisations can maintain their current SAP systems, stay in full tax and legal compliance, and avoid the significant costs of vendor-mandated upgrades. "This gives customers a real choice," Mariotto said. "They can buy time, stay supported, and focus their budget on strategic innovation rather than software replatforming." SAP has tried to soften its stance, announcing earlier this year a programme allowing customers to delay their migration if they commit to moving to S/4HANA Cloud by 2030 or 2033. But Mariotto called it "a ticket with strings attached" and said many customers remain unconvinced. "The vendor says you can delay, but only if you commit to a cloud subscription now. Clients say, 'Wait a minute - I don't even know what I'll be doing in two years.'" The complexity of moving to S/4HANA is also a deterrent. For large organisations, the change is not simply an upgrade - it involves changing data models, processes, licences, and infrastructure. "Even for a simple ECC to S/4HANA migration, you have to convert your general ledger, adapt your customisations, and migrate data into HANA's new structure," he said. "That's not a patch. That's a transformation." Mariotto added that some clients mistakenly believe third-party support limits future flexibility. "One of the biggest misconceptions is that you can't move forward without SAP support. But we can handle security, custom code, integrations - everything. And if clients eventually decide to go to S/4HANA, we can help prepare them." In fact, he said, some customers who delayed upgrading with Rimini Street's support have later chosen to migrate on their own terms. "We have clients who stayed with us five or six years, and then said, 'Now I have a business case.' In some cases, we even supported their legacy ERP during the transition," he said. In the era of hybrid IT, many enterprises are already managing a mix of legacy and cloud applications. Mariotto said this "composable ERP" approach - mixing a stable core with best-of-breed cloud tools - is now the norm, not a Frankenstein monster. "The future of ERP won't be a big box. It'll be intelligent agents, automation layers, and flexible platforms," he said. "Vendors like ServiceNow and Microsoft see that. They're building tools that integrate everything - not just one vendor's stack." With CIOs expected to do more with less, Mariotto said the days of vendor-driven roadmaps are numbered. "Clients are telling SAP: If you're not flexible, I'll find someone else to support me - and someone else to help me innovate," he said.
National Business Review
7 hours ago
- National Business Review
US-China trade deal ‘done'; Musk says Trump comments went too far
Happy Thursday and welcome to your early morning wrap of the key business and political headlines from around the world. First up, a trade deal between the United States and China is 'done', according to US President Donald Trump. Reuters reports that negotiators from both sides have agreed on a framework to get a fragile trade truce back on track and remove Chinese export restrictions on rare earth minerals and other critical industry components. Trump took to social media to confirm the deal, which is subject to final approval from him and President Xi Jinping. "Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China,' he said on his social media platform Truth Social. 'Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%." A White House official said the 55% represents the sum of the 10% baseline 'reciprocal' tariff Trump has imposed on most of its trading partners; 20% on all Chinese imports that followed Trump's accusation the country, along with Mexico and Canada, facilitates the flow of fentanyl to the US; and the pre-existing 25% levies on Chinese imports Trump imposed during his first time in the White House. Meanwhile, Wall Street's main indices were down overnight despite the preliminary trade truce and softer-than-expected inflation data. The main indices were between 0.15% and 0.6% lower. The decline comes after a week of consistent gains, with the S&P 500 rising in six of the last seven days. 'Inflation in May was lower than anticipated, suggesting the tariffs aren't having a large immediate impact because companies have been using existing inventories or slowly adjusting prices due to uncertain demand,' Goldman Sachs Asset Management global co-chief investment officer of multi-asset solutions Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo told CNBC. Donald Trump. In other global news, signs are emerging that the worst of the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump is over. According to the BBC, Musk posted on his social media platform X overnight that he regretted some of the posts he made about the president. 'They went too far.' The two were caught in a war of words last week after the Tesla owner stepped back from his White House role and called Trump's tax bill a 'disgusting abomination'. He also made comments claiming that Trump appears in unreleased government files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In response, Trump said Musk had 'lost his mind' and threatened to cancel his government contracts, which are worth billions. But overnight Trump told the New York Post he was open to reconciliation and there were no 'hard feelings'. Elon Musk. To Gaza, where Al Jazeera reports that the Palestinian death toll has eclipsed 55,000 since the Hamas-led attack in late 2023 killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals. At least 120 Palestinians have been killed and 474 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave's health ministry. Closer to home, The Australian is reporting that the Pentagon has launched a review into the Aukus partnership to ensure the agreement is aligned with Donald Trump's 'America First' agenda. In a statement to the newspaper, the Pentagon confirmed the review, noting that it was an initiative launched by the previous administration. Under the Aukus arrangement, the US has agreed to provide Australia with between three and five nuclear-powered submarines. But concerns have emerged over whether the US industrial base can meet the target of producing the required 2.33 Virginia-class submarines per year – the rate needed to replace the boats sold to Australia. Australia made the first $500m down payment to the US under the deal in February. The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota arrives at HMAS Stirling, Western Australia in early 2025. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.) Finally, Brian Wilson, the frontman and co-founder of The Beach Boys, has died at the age of 82, according to the BBC. "We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away," his family said in a statement shared online. "We are at a loss for words right now.' Born in 1942 and raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson formed a group along with his younger brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. They went on to become one of the country's biggest rock bands, The Beach Boys. Music magazine Rolling Stone ranked them at 12 on the list of the '100 Greatest Artists of All Time'.
NZ Herald
a day ago
- NZ Herald
NZ sharemarket lifts as Fletcher Building shares rally on buyer interest
The NZ sharemarket lifted today as Fletcher Building announced it had received inquiries from parties interested in buying its businesses. The S&P/NZX 50 Index closed up 0.33% or 41.51 points, rising to 12,605.93, with 39,702,689 shares changing hands to the value of $139.77 million. The S&P/NZX 20 index closed at
