Market closes up over 1 per cent

The New Zealand sharemarket turned its back on three consecutive days of decline, building momentum after an early small gain to close up more than 1 per cent.

The benchmark NZX-50 index ended the session up 30.77 points, or 1.04 per cent, at 2995.37. It clawed back around half of the nearly 63-point decline in the past three trading days, including 21 points yesterday.

Telecom notched up a more than 2-per cent gain to close up 5c at 193, leading a largely positive charge from the top stocks.

Contact Energy rose 8c to 576, Fletcher Building jumped 16c to 769, Auckland Airport was up 2c at 193, Sky City rose 4c to 297 and Sky TV gained 2c to 476.

Among other stocks to gain, Air New Zealand was up 2c at 104, NZ Oil and Gas rose 4c to 125, The Warehouse lifted 6c to 356, and Restaurant Brands was up 3c at 230.

Abano Healthcare surged 12c, or 2.4 per cent, to close at 510.

On the down side, Guinness Peat Group lost a cent to 65, Property For Industry was down a cent at 112, network company Vector shed 3c to 211, NZX fell 4c to 146, and Ebos was down 5c at 625.

Allied Farmers rose 9 per cent, or 0.4c, to 4.8 after it managed to negotiate another extension to its banking arrangement with Westpac.

Meat processor Affco was untraded, but closed yesterday at 37, after majority shareholder Talley's Group announced a full takeover offer for the company at 37c after the market closed.

Fellow takeover target NZ Farming Systems Uruguay rose a cent to 54, a cent below the bid by Olam International.

Dual-listed stocks were generally firmer, with Westpac up 36c at 2755, ANZ up 30c at 2740 and AMP up 10c at 655, but Telstra down 2c at 398.

Australia's S&P/ASX-200 Index was up 0.8 per cent at 4392, on the back of gains across Asian markets and higher metal prices.

Earlier, United States stocks rose, spurred by optimism ahead of earnings from key technology companies and after Boeing announced strong orders.

Investors bet there would be solid reports from International Business Machines, the world's largest technology services provider, and chip maker Texas Instruments, hoping they would echo Intel's positive results last week.

But shares of IBM fell nearly 4 per cent after the closing bell after its revenues missed expectations, and Texas Instruments slumped 6 per cent as its revenue failed to impress.

- NZPA