Time to sell Kordia

Chris Keall writes:

Kordia is selling its money-losing Australian arm in a deal that will see the state-owned enterprise halve in size. …

In commercial terms, it’s relatively easy to make a case for Kordia to focus on the fast-growing cloud and cyber-security markets over the workaday business of helping to build mobile networks.

But it’s harder to see why the Government should own a company that focuses on the cloud and cyber-security – areas catered to be a plethora of local companies, including Datacom and Spark, and countless multinationals with an NZ presence.

Kordia began life as Broadcast Communications Ltd, a division of TVNZ that handled broadcast TV infrastructure. It was carved out as a standalone entity in 2003. It was doing a job that on-one in the private sector was putting their hand up for.

But today, broadcasting infrastructure fees are a relatively small part of Kordia’s business.

There was an arguable case for state ownership of Kordia when it was BCL. But there is no strategic reason for the state to still own Kordia, and a sensible Government would sell it.