Christchurch City Holdings Ltd controls a portfolio worth $6.3 billion across six companies, including Lyttelton Port, Orion, Christchurch Airport, and Enable, the fibre broadband provider covering Canterbury. The council is reportedly weighing a sale of Enable at around $1 billion to help fund capital priorities, chief among them the port that serves as Canterbury’s primary export gateway.
Meanwhile, the council’s 2025/26 capital programme sits at $736.1 million, up $30.2 million from the long-term plan forecast. Operating expenditure and interest costs have climbed to $861.3 million. The fiscal pressure is structural, not cyclical. Something has to give.
The only asset the mayor can actually sell
The politics narrow the options dramatically. Mayor Phil Mauger committed during the election campaign to not selling the port, airport, or Orion. That leaves Enable and two smaller entities, CityCare and EcoCentral, as the only assets theoretically on the table.
Even then, the numbers don’t work. The left-leaning bloc holds eight votes and opposes all strategic asset sales. The right-leaning bloc, including Mauger, holds seven. Two swing councillors hold the balance of power, and neither is buying what the right is selling.
Councillor Tim Scandrett is blunt: “I rule partial sales out. I think it’s a waste of time.” Councillor Andrei Moore is marginally softer, saying he “struggles to see a compelling case” for selling any shares but would consider a proposal. Neither expects a sale to succeed this term.
So the Enable sale is politically dead for now. But the conversation it has started matters far more than the vote count suggests.
Wellington is running the same playbook
Christchurch is not the only public owner rethinking its fibre position. The government holds $1.165 billion in face value of debt securities in Chorus, the national fibre company, from interest-free loans issued between 2012 and 2023 to fund the Ultra-Fast Broadband rollout. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed the government will sell that debt to free up capital for Budget 2026, with the monetisation process beginning in early 2026.
Willis’s logic is straightforward: “The loan to Chorus is not due to be fully repaid until 2036 but it has served its purpose so, after testing the market, the Government has decided to get the present value of its money back sooner so it can be invested elsewhere.”
The book value is just $643 million, well below face value, and the market price could differ again. But the principle is the same one Christchurch is grappling with: capital locked in fibre infrastructure that has served its original purpose could be redeployed into assets with higher returns.
Why fibre assets fetch a premium right now
The timing is not accidental. Fibre infrastructure is exactly what global infrastructure funds want to buy. Chorus’s half-year results show why: 1,098,000 fibre connections, uptake at 71.7% of addresses passed, fibre broadband revenues of $361 million representing 72% of total revenue, and EBITDA of $346 million. Monthly average data use hit 644GB per connection in December 2024, a record.
Stable, growing, inflation-linked cash flows with minimal technology obsolescence risk. That is the profile that commands premium multiples from pension funds and infrastructure investors globally. If Christchurch were ever going to sell Enable, this is the market to do it in.
The question nobody will answer
The opposition to selling Enable, both locally and nationally with the Chorus debt, defaults to the same rhetoric. Labour leader Chris Hipkins called the Chorus sale “hocking off the family silverware.” NZ First’s Winston Peters labelled it a “tawdry repetition of history.” ACT’s Todd Stephenson took the opposite view, calling it a “long-overdue step toward smarter management of Crown assets.”
But the Christchurch debate exposes what the sloganeering misses. The council’s annual plan shows $8 million in additional staff costs from pay equity adjustments, $6.5 million in extra inflation costs, and a capital programme that keeps growing. Lyttelton Port handles the exports that underpin Canterbury’s economy. If port investment is constrained because a billion dollars of ratepayer capital is tied up earning a modest yield in a fibre company, the cost to the region’s exporters is real.
What does Enable actually contribute to the CCHL dividend stream? How does that compare to the economic return on accelerated port investment? Until someone puts those numbers side by side in public, the debate remains about ideology, not economics. And that is exactly how the opponents of the sale want to keep it.
Sources
- ODT: Will Chch’s $6b ratepayer treasure chest stay in public ownership? (2025-01-17)
- Christchurch City Council Draft Annual Plan 2025/26 – Financial Overview (2025)
- RNZ: Government pushes ahead with sale of Chorus debt (2025-03-20)
- NZ Herald: Government confirms plan to sell Chorus debt, will invest in infrastructure (2025-03-20)
- RNZ: ‘Hock off the family silverware’ – Labour criticises government plan to sell Chorus UFB securities (2024-12-17)
- Chorus Half Year Results HY25 – February 2025 (2025-02-24)