NZ Stocks: Energy's goodbye sparks late rally

The sharemarket received a big push towards the end of the day as investors juggled their portfolios to accommodate the departure of Fletcher Energy.

Energy finished its final day on the NZ Stock Exchange up 7c at $9.83, topping turnover with 14.12 million worth $138.56 million. The stock listed in November 1996 at $4.12.

As the result of the Fletcher Challenge separation, tech stock Advantage will be removed from the NZSE-40 and replaced by Fletcher Forests, which will remain in the top-10 index.

Fletcher Building, under acting chief executive Michael Andrews, will list as a separate company on Monday. Although leaving the top-10, Building will remain in the top-40 index.

On the NZSE-30, Tourism Holdings and Energy will be removed, to be replaced by Forests and Building.

On the mid-cap index, freight forwarder Mainfreight will be replaced by Building.

Building closed up 10c at 225 and Forests gained 1c to 34c.

The NZSE-40 capital index bucked international trends, ending the week up 24.87 points, or 1.22 per cent, at 2058.70. The small companies NZSE-SCI capital index was down 10.94 points at 5006.86. Heavy turnover totalled 66.05 million shares, valued at $242.71 million.

Wayne Schuler at Cavill White Securities said about 20 points of the NZSE-40 rise were chalked up in the last five minutes of trade.

"It appears there's been a bit of re-weighting going in terms of Fletcher Energy coming out of the index and obviously the other stocks increasing their weightings.

"So there was plenty of buying across the leaders which obviously are reasonably index-sensitive and prices were pushed along to ensure that they got the stock," Mr Schuler said.

As a result, The Warehouse ended up 13c at $6.20, Tranz Rail was up 30c at $4.10, Carter Holt gained 7c to $1.91, Fisher and Paykel rose 10c to $8.20 and Lion Nathan was up 24c at $5.09.

Telecom rose 2c to $5.72, INL was up 10c at $3.70 and Contact Energy rose 3c to $2.95.

Air NZ B shares were down 6c at $1.64, Richmond shed 5c to $2.40 and United Networks was down 9c at $8.71.

Despite large gains among the leaders, the market remained tentative, Mr Schuler said.

"It was very tentative on opening, and then it found a base reasonably early on and was quite happy to sit there. This buying at the end of the day has shifted the index significantly."

"I'd say it's still tentative - the market's still concerned about what's happening offshore."

The sharemarket had fallen three per cent on Thursday, and overnight the London FTSE-100 was dumped 4 per cent in its biggest one-day fall since October 1992 amid fears that the US economic slowdown would spill over to a previously upbeat Europe.

- NZPA