NZ stocks: Sharemarket fails to bounce on solid start

12:00 pm

The sharemarket raced off towards a solid days' trading this morning but it was not enough to kick price indexes into gear.

At 11.30am the NZSE-40 capital index was down 7.14 points to 2035.35 on a turnover of $40.7 million worth of shares.

"It's hard to figure where we're going to go today - offshore markets are all off a little bit ... a fairly directionless day at this point," said ASB Securities broker Andrew Kelleher.

Dominating the turnover were three or four big pre-market trades. They included most of Telecom's $9.7 million turnover, off 5c at 491, and $3 million in Ports of Auckland, which was steady at 550.

Fisher and Paykel's Healthcare continued to correct after last week's listing on both the Nasdaq and New Zealand sharemarkets. It fell 24c to 1470, topping the turnover by value at $11.3 million.

The Warehouse's share price continued its "rollercoaster ride", falling 7c to 635. Plans by retail rival Briscoe Group to list on the stock exchange next month were giving people an alternative, but Mr Kelleher said Warehouse was still the bigger company, and he was struggling for a reason why it had dropped around 50c in the last two weeks.

Contact rose 6c to 401, but shareholders still appear to be eschewing Edison Mission's takeover bid at $4.14 (plus an 11c Contact dividend) .

"The call was it would probably fall back to 380 if the bid doesn't succeed and all indications are that it won't now," said Mr Kelleher. He felt the share price would rise again but that the factors leading to that rise were not yet there, and that the market had not yet priced in the long term value it obviously believed Contact held.

Edison Mission has called a press conference this afternoon.

Other stocks to move included Trustpower up 6c to 331, Baycorp down 1c to 1184, Port of Tauranga up 10c to 715, and Sky City up 5c to 625. Air NZ A shares were down 1c to 35 and B shares up 1c to 37.

All up there were 27 rises and 33 falls on 103 stocks traded.

- NZPA