ANZ Business Confidence

ANZ Business Confidence is the headline of the ANZ New Zealand Business Outlook survey of NZ firms. It is published by ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited through its ANZ Research unit. It covers agriculture, construction, retail, manufacturing and services and asks about general conditions in the next 12 months.

It measures forward looking sentiment, meaning future expectations, not actual output, sales or GDP (national output value). It is a private ANZ panel, meaning an ANZ run group, not an official statistic. Its sample is non random, as firms join on request and may opt out. Each month ANZ sends about 2000 invitations and averaged 380 replies in 2019.

The concept dates to 1983 and chief economist Don Abel of the National Bank. First results appeared in December 1983 and the survey rebranded to ANZ in October 2012.

Responses are collected during the survey month and results appear in the last 2 business days at 1pm NZ time. Each release prints charts for all parts plus a table against the previous month with sector notes and ANZ written views. There is no fixed revision rule, meaning no set update plan, so changes appear only when ANZ notes them in the release. Readers treat higher net balance, meaning more optimists than pessimists, as stronger sentiment and track direction over single prints.

Moves come from firms' own trading outlooks, hiring and spending plans, and price and pay pressures.

• Expected own activity: each firm's outlook for its own trade over the next 12 months.
• Past own activity: realised trade versus 12 months ago, ANZ's best GDP guide.
• Expected profits: profit outlook for the next 12 months.
• Employment: hiring plans for the next 12 months and realised hiring versus a year ago.
• Investment: plans for buildings, plant, equipment and IT (computers and software) over the next 12 months.
• Exports and construction: export plans plus home building and other building work over the next 12 months.
• Pricing intentions and costs: expected selling prices over 3 months and incoming cost pressure.
• Inflation expectations: expected annual price growth over the next 12 months, asked since February 1983.
• Wages: expected and realised pay growth for regular staff.
• Capacity, credit and supply: use of resources, ease of funds access and current supply chain health.

The 30 April 2025 release shows how one month can split in two. Global tariff news split the survey into early responses from 1 to 4 April and late responses from 22 to 24 April. Headline confidence fell 9 points to 49 while expected own activity eased 1 point to 48.

Past own activity rose 10 points from 1 to 11. Past hiring rose 8 points from minus 6 to 2 while inflation expectations held at 2.65%. ANZ warned the late slice was small and noisy, so readers treat it as direction only while own trade held up.

1. Positive and negative shares: For each question count the share answering improve or better and the share answering worse. Ignore same or no change answers in the formula.
2. Net balance: Subtract the negative share from the positive share to get net balance in points.
3. No weights or seasonal adjustment: The publisher applies no size, sector or area weights and no seasonal adjustment, meaning no smoothing for calendar seasons. Some price, cost, wage and inflation questions also average the stated % figures instead of using net balance.
4. Illustrative example: For example 380 firms answer with 210 improve, 60 worse and 110 same. Positives are 55.3% and negatives are 15.8%, so net is 39.5, shown as about 40.