NZ stocks: Big volume traded

Hanover Group investors started selling their Allied Farmers shares in numbers today and nine climate change protesters were arrested outside the NZX building in Wellington.

All in all there was a bit more activity that might usually have been expected on the local sharemarket so close to the Christmas holiday break.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 4.424 points, or 0.14 per cent, at 3149.805, having opened down 3.74 points. Turnover was worth $89.6 million. There were 40 rises and 43 falls among the 113 stocks traded.

Allied Farmers shares fell 32 per cent to 10 after Hanover investors issued with 1.9 billion news shares started to offload them.

The turnover today of 8.7 million Allied Farmers shares was small in the context of the size of the issue and is expected to increase as many Hanover investors have to establish relationships with stock brokers.

"The shares have all been issued today but it could well be a drawn out process as to when those shares hit the market," James Smalley at Hamilton, Hindin, Greene said.

"The share price is demand against supply," he said.

Otherwise price movements in leaders offset each other to leave the market index little changed. Telecom fell 5c to 244 but Contact Energy rose 6c to 602 and Fletcher Building rose 4c to 770.

Infratil fell 2c to 163 after signing a letter of intent relating to the potential acquisition of Shell's downstream assets.

PGG Wrightson was giving up some ground gained after its rights issue completed last week, Mr Smalley said. It fell 4c to 62.

There was a large volume of Pyne Gould Corp shares but the price closed unchanged at 46.

Nuplex rose 7c to 286 and was likely still benefiting from a profit upgrade earlier this month.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances rose 3c to 62.

NZX rose 15c to 885. TrustPower rose 4c to 730, Port of Tauranga rose 14c to 705.

APN fell 5c to 275. NZOG fell 3c to 165.

Comvita rose 7c to 135 after saying it has completed a heads of agreement for a $6 million deal with Derma Sciences covering the worldwide licensing rights for Medihoney products.

Xero fell 3c to 157 on a day it said it had signed an agreement with Federated Farmers to roll out its products.

Selected retailers were strong with The Warehouse up 5c at 407, Hallenstein Glasson up 3c at 329 and Briscoe Group up 4c to 122.

Air NZ fell 2c to 119, Mainfreight was unchanged at 565 and Freightways fell 1c to 324.

In the United States, stocks rose on Friday in choppy trade as quarterly results from Oracle and Research In Motion lifted the Nasdaq more than 1 per cent, but the US dollar's climb curbed gains in both the Dow and the S&P 500.

The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.2 per cent to 10,328.89, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 0.6 per cent to 1102.47, and the Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 1.5 per cent to 2211.69.

- NZPA