NZ stocks: Energy bounces but Warehouse slides

The Thanksgiving holiday in the United States meant the sharemarket here had very little to be thankful for yesterday.

The NZSE-40 capital index ended the week down 6.84 points at 1964.83.

Fletcher Energy was again the main mover, finishing up 14c at $8.88 on turnover of 3.6 million shares valued at $31.80 million.

Total turnover was 47.94 million shares, valued at $95.48 million.

Cavill White equities dealer Richard Burton said the markets traded within a tight range with the US markets closed for Thanksgiving.

"The main recovery was Energy, which was oversold on Thursday," he said.

"There are various ways to approach Energy, but if you add up Capstone Turbine shares at $US20, the US dollar content of the bid, and what Rubicon might be worth you can get some interesting results.

"So in terms of buying Energy because it looks cheap compared to the bid, which it does, there are a number of assumptions one has to make in terms of what the Capstone price will be and what the US dollar will be.

"If people are going to buy Energy and arbitrage it, they have to sell so much of a Capstone share and some Forest shares, so that puts pressure on the Forest price."

The Warehouse lost 15c to $6.20 after announcing that same-store sales in the first quarter, adjusted for the acquisition of Clints and Silly Solly's in Australia, was up 4.4 per cent on the same quarter a year ago. That was the lowest increase for the October quarter since the Asian crisis. Sales for The Warehouse were $235 million, up 11.9 per cent.

Auckland Airport lost 6c to $2.94. It announced it had signed a co-operation agreement with Singapore's Changi Airport.

Lion Nathan was up 3c at $5.78, Nufarm gained 4c at $3.95 and Tourism Holdings was up 5c at $1.95. Fletcher Building rose 1c to $1.92, while Forest rights dropped 0.1c to 0.6c.

On the down side, Telecom shed 3c to $5.66, Sky City lost 9c to 757, Contact Energy lost 4c to $2.81 and INL lost 3c to 325.

Montana shed 11c to $3.70 and DB Group lost 2c to $3.70.

- NZPA