Government businesses with assets worth $45 billion made a total net profit of just $20 million in the year to 30 June, according to the Treasury's annual portfolio report.
AAP reports these assets don't include Meridian Energy, Air New Zealand and MightyRiverPower, which were partially privatised, but cover troubled entities like KiwiRail, Solid Energy and New Zealand Post, which are all struggling to make their business models work.
The annual review covers Crown-owned assets valued at $125 billion.
"For the residual commercial priority portfolio, overall performance (with some notable exceptions) was mediocre," the Treasury's Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit says in the report.
"Portfolio net profit after tax was just $20 million, with the poor performances by Solid Energy ($335.4 million loss), KiwiRail ($174.6 million loss) and Learning Media ($9 million loss) being partially offset by strong returns from Transpower ($264 million), Airways Corp ($22 million) and AsureQuality ($10 million)."
AAP reports total shareholder return excluding KiwiRail was 3.0%, although that represents an improvement on the negative 8.2% return achieved in the year to June 30, 2012, which was hit hard by the first round of losses from Solid Energy, which is now being managed in rescue mode.
"This overall result does not represent a satisfactory return in an environment where stock market indices have performed strongly," COMU says. It comprised "a 6.% dividend yield combined with a 3.5 per cent decrease in the value of the commercial priority portfolio".
"While there are some positive indicators in terms of total shareholder return and dividend yield, the overall financial performance for the commercial priority portfolio was poor in 2012/13," the report says.
"The bottom line result was only marginally better than breakeven for the portfolio" and represented a return on equity of 0.2%.
