Low yields.

[Snoopy]

I'm picking that there is some buying and selling to cover new money in and withdrawals, which will affect the NAV and thus unit price and thus yield.

You might be on to something there GTM. For a start, there is definitely a DRP operating as evidenced by the following NZX news releases:

14/06/2023: "NZ Bond ETF advises that the strike price for units, issued in lieu of dividend in respect of the distribution to be paid on 20th June 2023, is $2.866 per unit."

The number of units on the books on 20th June 2023 was 144,167,077
But the next entry where the number of units on issue changes is on 3rd July 2023, where the number of shares on issue drops by 50,000 to 144,117,077.

Since there was no increase prior to this and the 14th June announcement, I guess we can conclude that there were no new units issued as a result of the DRP?

It would seem the fund is open ended and the number of units change as people get in and out of the fund.

On my first live trading reference date of Monday 8th August 2022, after the reference date of Sunday 7th August 2022, the number of units on issue reduced from 103,151,618 to 103,111,618 - a drop of 140,000.
Compare this to my second reference date of 7th August 2023 with 145,717,077 units on issue

That means over my reference year: 145,717,077-103,151,618= 42,565,459 new fund units were created.

In terms of number of units, the fund has increased in size by 42,565,459/103,151,618 = 41.3% (!) This also means that all of those additional units were purchased in the 07/08/2022 to 07/08/2023 calendar year. Given the number of units on issue at the date 08-02-2023 (the half year points) was a mere 116,977,077 (which means an increment of 116,977,077-103,151,618= 13,825,459 in the first six months of my reference year), this indicates nearly 3/4 of those incremental purchases were made in the second six month period of my reference year.

SNOOPY