NZ stocks: Markets eyes MSCI changes

The New Zealand sharemarket traded sideways today with United States investors out of the picture for a Thanksgiving holiday.

"We were left to our own devices with a non-trading day in the US. There's no clear, established trend in today's trading," JB Were senior investment adviser Peter Stokes said.

Offmarket action was strong, however, as the new Morgan Stanley Capital Index (MSCI) weightings kicked in.

The benchmark NZSE-40 Capital Index closed up 5.10 points at 1954.11 after spending most of the day hovering in negative territory.

Solid turnover of 41 million shares worth $137 million - much of that after the market had closed - was dominated by top stock Telecom at $57.65 million.

Telecom is one of the big winners of the end of month MSCI changes. The MSCI is one of the world's most widely tracked indices, and is used by offshore fund managers to balance their portfolios.

The latest revamp, which took effect from the close of trade today, adjusts the weighting of stocks in the local MSCI index to more closely reflect each company's free-float of shares - the proportion of shares which can be freely traded.

Brokers said Telecom, New Zealand's biggest company by market capitalisation, had its weighting boosted by about 5 per cent after 21.5 per cent shareholder Verizon sold down its stake to global institutions in September.

Telecom shares ended up 6c at 483 - a 2-1/2 week high.

Market No 2, Carter Holt Harvey, which with half of its shares controlled by US-based International Paper is much less freely-traded, was up 2c at 171 after a four cent gain yesterday.

The forest products company announced yesterday it was looking at setting up a log exporting partnership with the receivers of the Central North Island Forests Partnership.

Discount retailer The Warehouse added 3c to 711 after saying at its annual meeting in Auckland today that its 50 per cent dividend payout was likely to remain in the short term given the planned level of capital expenditure in the 2002/2003 year.

Meat company Affco closed up 0.2c at 14.8c after posting a full year loss of $12.35 million. The result was well down on last year's $570,000 profit, but chairman Sam Lewis said the company had returned to profit in the second part of the year after a horror first half.

Among the other leaders, Auckland Airport added a cent to 516; Briscoe Group was up 3c at 265; Contact Energy was 4c lower at 382; Fletcher Building lost 2c to 320; Fisher and Paykel Healthcare dropped 5c to 1035; Sky City fell 8c to 742; Tranz Rail was up a cent at 102 and its rights shares were steady at 26c.

Rises narrowly outpaced falls by 44 to 42 among the 139 stocks traded.

US markets were closed overnight for the Thanksgiving holiday and will reopen tonight for a half day.

- NZPA