NZ stocks: Prices hold up well

Trading was reasonably brisk on the New Zealand sharemarket for a Monday morning, bolstered by a sterling performance in the United States markets last week.

By mid-morning the NZSE-40 capital index was up 2.64 points, or 0.13 per cent, at 2085.06 with turnover of 7.30 million stocks, valued at $16.65 million. Topping that turnover was Telecom's $3.73 million, followed by Mainfreight with $1.57 million.

Greg Arnott of DF Mainland said the market was holding up well. "All in all fairly robust prices here for a Monday. We're shaping up for a moderate day ... albeit lacklustre as per normal. But until we get a lead from the US tomorrow, we won't really know what sort of week we're in for."

Telecom, which went ex-dividend today to the tune of 5c, was holding steady, down 1c at 504 about 11.15am.

Discount retailer The Warehouse today posted a 13.8 per cent increase in after-tax profit to $59.1 million, for the half year ending January 31.

That was just shy of analysts' expectations of a $60 million figure.

The company will pay a dividend of 9.5 cents per share -- up on last year's 8.5 cents -- on April 22.

Mr Arnott said the result was a good one, and boosted its share price by 14c to 671, from its opening price of 660.

"A good report there ... we had an inkling of this report on Friday night, so it was probably a sitting duck to be buying that stock there. That should run on a little bit today."

BIL International had fairly high turnover for a Monday, following a good performance on the Singapore market on Friday. BIL was up 4c at 48, on turnover of 484,728 stocks.

Contact Energy was down 3c at 393 after announcing at its AGM today that its profit was tracking the Grant Samuels forecast of $102 million for the year, a 22 per cent drop.

Casino operator Sky City was up 9c at 605, Carter Holt Harvey was up 2c at 197, Fletcher Forests was up 1c at 24, Independent Newspapers Ltd gained 5c to 410, Mainfreight was up 2c at 150, and Utilico gained 7c to 79.

On the down side, Air New Zealand lost 1c to 33 on light volume, Sanford was down 9c at 606, Fletcher Building shed 1c to 303, and Sky TV lost 4c to 455.

There were 38 rises and 25 falls on the 107 stocks traded.

In the US on Friday, the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average rose 47.12 points, or 0.45 per cent, to 10,572.49; the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite gained 48.04 points, or 2.55 per cent, to 1929.67; and the broad Standard & Poor's 500 was up 6.77 points, or 0.58 per cent, at 1164.31.

- NZPA