NZ stocks: Market trundles through lacklustre day

The sharemarket finished slightly up after a lacklustre day's trading with little corporate news about, a broker said.

At 5pm, the benchmark NZSX-50 index was up 4.27 points at 2323.81, while the NZSX-40 capital index was up 1.43 points at 2216.18.

Market heavyweight Telecom finished the day at 499, having earlier been down 4c at 495 on $27 million worth of shares.

There was $61.7 million worth of shares traded on volume of 26.4 million on the New Zealand Exchange today.

Among the stocks traded were 30 rises and 60 falls.

ABN Amro Craigs operator Matt Willis said the market had trundled through a lacklustre day.

"I think we've gone in to a period where there's not a lot of news floating around and as such there's not much to give this market direction," he told NZPA today.

"In saying that, the market is holding up alright," he said, adding that Contact Energy was the standout performer today.

Contact shares surged to an all-time high of 530 today, but retreated to close up 8c at 523, after it confirmed a September year profit of $118.3 million on Friday.

The profit was 11 per cent up on last year and was buoyed by a 27 per cent rise in electricity prices.

Fifty-one per cent Contact shareholder Edison Mission is to hold a teleconference tomorrow morning NZT to "discuss developments", it said on its website today.

Mr Willis said it would be interesting to hear what Edison, which failed in a takeover bid for Contact last year, had to say.

The market was speculating as to whether Edison would sell its shareholding, he said.

Meanwhile, shares in Carter Holt Harvey were up 2c at 181 after reports in Australia that the forest product company was considering selling its consumer brands division.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances today told NZX it had completed its four-for-one share split and now had 261,084,720 ordinary shares on issue.

The whiteware manufacturer's shares were up 0.7c at 372, having traded between 231 and 383 this year.

Other shares on the rise today were : Sky City up 7c to 469 after a two-for-one share split, and NGC Holdings up a cent to 177.

Among shares on the slide were: Fletcher Building, down 2c to 408; Tower, down a cent to 134; Westpac, down 5c to 1720; Ports of Auckland, down 12c to 788; Hellaby Holdings, down 10c to 455; and the Warehouse was down 2c to 580 after going ex-dividend by 4c.

Air New Zealand was unchanged at 47c, and transport company Mainfreight steadied at 138 ahead of its first half result on Tuesday.


By market's close some $89,000 worth of shares were traded on volume of 160,000 on the new New Zealand Alternative Exchange. Of the five stocks traded there was one rise -- Comvita which rose 2c on a small number of shares -- and Oyster Bay stood at 196.

Overseas, Dow Jones industrial average dipped 69.26 points to 9768.68, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 8.06 points to 1050.35, while the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 37.09 points to 1930.26.

- NZPA