The rules tighten the criteria from the 2025 Broker Picks, which allowed brokers to choose more international stocks.
Retirement villages and transport
This time around, New Zealand retirement villages were a theme, although respondents differed as to which ones would perform the best.
Transport and logistics was another area of interest, as the sector has close exposure to what many expect to be an economic recovery in 2026.
Medical supplies and pet care firm Ebos, whose share price fell sharply over 2025, was a popular pick.
“Ebos is out of favour with investors but, unlike other NZX businesses over recent years that have been under pressure, we don’t view Ebos’ recent issues as structural,” Forsyth Barr senior analyst Matt Montgomerie said.
Retirement village company Summerset was another popular pick.
“It’s been a strong end to the year for the retirement sector in general, up 24% through the last quarter, with Summerset front and centre of this renaissance,” Amova Asset Management’s head of equities Michael Sherrock said.
“A recovering housing market (in turnover, if not necessarily in price) and long-term demographics support this momentum continuing into next year and beyond, and Summerset has a solid pipeline of developments to meet this future need.”
Heartland Bank was also singled out.
“Heartland provides exposure to niche lending segments, including reverse mortgages and vehicle finance, where it has built specialist capability,” Hamilton Hindin Greene investment adviser Jeremy Sullivan said.
“Easing credit conditions and improved funding costs should support margins and volume growth, provided credit standards remain disciplined.
“The digital strategy gives Heartland a cost advantage in targeted markets.
“Key risks are credit quality in a weak economy, wholesale funding conditions and regulatory settings across its different jurisdictions.”
A mixed bag
But for the most part, broker selections were a mixed bag.
Salt Funds singled out NZME, publisher of the New Zealand Herald, as one of its picks for 2026.
“NZME’s cost-cutting will be eclipsed by revenue growth as the economy recovers,” Salt Funds managing director Matt Goodson said.
“Declining legacy businesses generate strong cashflow and have an opportunity to be the surviving news source ‘of record’.
“One Roof is benefiting as Trade Me optimises pricing before a potential relisting and property advertising recovers.”
In transport and logistics, Craigs Investment Partners said Freightways offers high-quality exposure to a cyclical recovery in the New Zealand economy.
“The company has strong momentum with its most recent trading update ahead of market expectations, and we expect volume growth to pick up as consumer spending recovers,” Craigs head of investment solutions Rousseau Lotter said.
“Despite Freightways shares being re-rated this year, this has largely been underpinned by earnings growth, and valuation remains attractive in our view.”
In offshore picks, Hamilton Hindin Greene favours Alphabet – the company behind global search engine Google.
“The company is positioned to benefit from continued AI adoption, cloud migration and digital advertising resilience,” the broker said.
Forsyth Barr is backing America’s Mastercard for 2026.
“We see Mastercard as a high-quality businesses that can grow irrespective of AI headlines or the economy,” Forsyth Barr’s Montgomerie said.
Amova’s international pick is Bio-Techne, an American life sciences firm.
Ian Fulton, part of Amova’s Edinburgh-based global equities team, said after three years of unprecedented challenges, the headwinds were clearing for Bio-Techne.
“Underpinned by megatrends like personalised medicine, cell and gene therapies and research process automation, we expect them to deliver exceptional compound sales and profit growth in the coming years,” Fulton said.
Salt Funds likes the look of ASX-listed CSL – a blue-chip that has fallen from grace because of an overpriced acquisition, disappointing research and development outcomes and US challenges to its flu vaccine business.
Results for 2025
The best performing stock-picking firm was Salt Funds with a 21.5% return, building on its 2024 performance when its selected stocks returned 36%.
Salt’s best-performing local pick for 2025 was Freightways with a 34.4% return.
Internationally, Salt picked Australia’s Challenger, an investment management firm that returned 56.7%.
Salt Funds’ Goodson said there were a couple of things in the New Zealand economy that pointed the fund manager towards Freightways.
“First of all, there were the domestic drivers in 2025, which have seen significant rate cuts to the Official Cash Rate [OCR] over the course of a year,” he said.
“We’ve seen the OCR fall from 4.25% to 2.25%, so that has gradually started to feed through to the economy and has fed through a little bit more quickly to financial markets, which are forward-looking by their nature.
“We formed a view relatively early in the year that the economy was slowing, inflationary pressures were peaking, the Reserve Bank had grossly over-tightened earlier, and there was room for significant easing and that cyclical stocks would benefit from that.
“Hence the Freightways pick, which is probably the best of the blue chip cyclicals, if you will.”
On top of rate cuts, there had been a terms of trade boom thanks to strong export prices for dairy, meat and horticulture.
“Plus there was some hope of a little bit of a slightly looser fiscal policy going into an election year.
“If you wait for the rebound evidence, you’re going to be too late – that was really the crux of our positioning across the funds.”
For Australia’s Challenger, which sells annuity products in the Australian retirement market, it was a much simpler call.
“They had been massively oversold,” Goodson said.
“They had significant upside and what we liked was their structural growth for what is by far and away Australia’s leading provider of annuities.”
Disclaimer – It’s a game
Readers should recognise the results of the Brokers’ Picks are skewed by some features of the game. The figures exclude brokers’ fees. Percentage changes are total shareholder return (share price performance and dividends).
Brokers are asked to choose the securities that will give the best short-term performance.
If they had been asked to choose, for example, a five-year term, the results might be different.
The survey does not allow brokers to review choices during the year.
The survey implies a one-size-fits-all approach.
It takes no account of individual circumstances such as an investor’s appetite for risk, needs for income or tax circumstances.
The views expressed do not constitute personalised financial advice and are not directed at any person.
Some shares picked may include shares held by the company’s directors and staff. Finally, past performance is no guarantee of future performance.
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