New Zealand shares ended lower on Friday as most Asian markets fell, following a tech-related sell-off in Wall Street's Thursday trading session.

The S&P/NZX 50 index fell 2.5% or 333.3 points to close at 13,198.18.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell almost 2%, the Nasdaq Composite lost 2%, and the Dow Jones fell below 1%.

Wall Street was impacted by Cisco Systems' quarterly adjusted gross margin being below estimates as costs of memory chips surged.

"The prevailing tone in markets is a rotation toward more defensive areas of the equity market and companies with steady, less cyclical and more predictable earnings," said Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone, as quoted by Reuters.

In domestic news, expectations for New Zealand's one-year-ahead annual consumer price index increased by 20 basis points to 2.59% from 2.39% in February, according to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's survey.

Also, New Zealand's manufacturing sector continued to show a "healthy" level of expansion, with seasonally adjusted performance of manufacturing index (PMI) of 55.2 in January, slightly lower compared with 56.1 in December 2025, according to the Bank of New Zealand - BusinessNZ PMI.

In corporate news, Air New Zealand's (NZE:AIR, ASX:AIZ) group capacity fell 1% year on year in December 2025.

Meridian Energy's (NZE:MEL, ASX:MEZ) retail contracted sales volumes rose to 809 gigawatt hours (GWh) in January from 787 GWh a year earlier.