FCL Energy, Warehouse the big movers

The sharemarket continued to respond to good equity news from the corporates yesterday, ABN Amro Equities institutional sales head Nigel Scott said.

The Warehouse, which on Tuesday bought Australian discount chains Clint's Crazy Bargains and Silly Solly's, rallied 28c to 473.

"There was a solid response from the marketplace to The Warehouse," Mr Scott said. "I think the analysts are generally in favour of what they purchased, with a conservative approach to the financing and movement going forward.

"I think people have added a little more to the value - there are obviously higher expectations of continued growth for The Warehouse slowly putting their stamp on Australia, as they've done in New Zealand.

"Clearly there are a lot more competitors but these businesses have been going for a while in Australia and I think people are fairly confident to see another leg to The Warehouse."

Fletcher Energy - which has had a significant amount of good news recently, including positive reports on its Pohokura well off Taranaki - gained 17c to 609.

Lion Nathan was up 7c to 475 ahead of moving into Australia's top 100 stock index, Mr Scott said.

"There has been continued buying [in Lion Nathan] for that index from Australia and selling from New Zealand so it's moving up to more than recent highs."

The NZSE-40 Capital Index closed on its high of 2029.89, up 10.64 points (0.53 per cent). The NZSE SCI Capital Index of smaller stocks weakened 13.98 (0.27 per cent) to 5101.86.

Turnover totalled $71 million, and rises outnumbered falls 53 to 49.

Market heavyweight Telecom managed to stall its downward spiral, closing unchanged at 750 on light volume of $15 million worth of shares.

"It's symptomatic of order flow into New Zealand," Mr Scott said. "Looking across most of the market, there was a pretty quiet performance, a low level of order flow.

"A lot of transactions were happening off-market, indicating people are happy to deal where they can in lines of stock rather than on-market.

"But overall we continue to move 10 to 15 points either side of the index.

"The tone was very quiet but a lot of other equity markets also have lower liquidity levels in them and that obviously flows over into the smaller New Zealand market."

Elsewhere,Advantage gained 14c to 307, Baycorp was up 10c to $10.40, Fisher & Paykel rose 5c to 660 and Ports of Auckland rallied 10c to 400.

The other Fletcher stocks also gained today, Building up 5c to 212, and Forests and Paper both rising 1c to 82 and 239 respectively.

Carter Holt was steady on 182.

On the negative side, Contact was down 2c to 286, Brierley was off 1c to 33 and recent listing Frucor sank 5c below its 150 issue price to close at 145.

- NZPA