NZ stocks: Little improvement by mid-morning

The sharemarket was off to a very quiet start this morning, with little improvement in turnover by late morning.

The NZSE-40 capital index fell 4.84 points, or 0.23 per cent, to 2062.39, and the NZSE-10 was little better, dropping 1.44 points (0.16 per cent) to 911.70

By just after 11.30am 9.7 million shares had changed hands, worth $13 million. A large portion of the total turnover belonged to Telstra which fought back from a three-year profit low in Australia last week to sell $2.6 million worth of shares.

Its shares were down 4c at 599.

Telecom, the market heavyweight, overtook Telstra to lead with $1.7 million worth of shares traded. Its shares rose 3c to 528

Brokers said most of the action lay with Fletcher Forests . Its preference shares topped the turnover by volume with 2.27 million shares. Its share price rose 1c to 33.

The driving force behind Forests' rise was thought to be media articles about forestry during the weekend and an information memorandum due out this week from the receivers of the failed Central North Island Forest Partnership (CNI).

Forests, along with its former partner the Chinese Government-owned Citic and Carter Holt Harvey, is rumoured to be interested in the assets.

Fletcher spin-off Rubicon dropped 1c to 79, but brokers said there was no clear evidence that Rubicon's share price was influenced by a buy-back scheme starting today.

Rubicon has given notice it may acquire up to 95 million of its shares as a way of raising the value of its shares.

Newcomer to the sharemarket, Blis Technologies, listed quietly today at 105. Blis, a company based on bacterial discoveries at Otago University, was not anticipating sales income in the current year while it concentrated on securing assets and developing its products.

However, Blis said it had enough capital and resources to fund its activities for the next three years.

Fisher & Paykel was down 15c on light trading leaving its price at a respectable 1305. Brokers said the share price reflected relatively high expectations leading up to the separation of the company's appliance and healthcare divisions.

Strong results from some of its US and Australian healthcare counterparts appear to have raised F&P shareholder expectations, they said.

Trustpower was down 4c at 336 also on small volume after announcing a profit downgrade on Friday night.

In other movements, Montana was down 8c at 452; Lion slid 1c to 550; Sky City rose 3c to 145; Fletcher Building was down 3c to 265; The Warehouse was unchanged at 567; and BayCorp was also steady at 1226.

To date there have been 20 rises and 33 falls for the 105 stocks traded.

- NZPA