NZ stocks: Shares dip as Warehouse blues revealed

12.00pm

The sharemarket slipped in morning trade today as discount retailer the Warehouse said its Australian businesses were showing a stubborn lack of improvement.

By midday the benchmark NZSX-50 gross index was 5.3 points or 0.23 per cent lower at 2334.02 while the NZSX-40 capital index was 4.6 points or 0.21 per cent lower at 2224.72.

The Warehouse told shareholders at the annual meeting today that it is still experiencing problems with its "unsatisfactory" Australian operations which were unlikely to improve on last year's operating loss.

"The Australian trading environment continues to be difficult for us," chairman Keith Smith said in a statement.

The Warehouse shares dived more than 5 per cent on the news in the first minutes of trading. By midday the stock was 21c lower at 528.

"The market really has spoken about this just in the initial fall", ASB Securities' Stephen Wright told NZPA.

Direct Broking equities manager Brett Wilkinson said: "the question that must be weighing on investors' minds now is when will the turnaround occur?"

"As another year goes by it puts further doubt on the Australian acquisition. Stocks only have a certain number of times they can announce bad news before they lose their premium sharemarket rating."

Meanwhile among other lead stocks, market heavyweight Telecom was unchanged at 517 and Carter Holt Harvey was down 2c to 176, and Fletcher Building was down 2c to 403. Contact Energy was down a cent to 540.

Mr Wilkinson said corporate action and institutional buying had pushed up forestry and biotechnology company Rubicon. At midday the stock was 2c higher at 77.

Elsewhere, trading was halted in AMP and Turners Auctions shares this morning.

AMP was scheduled to brief analysts today on the planned listing of its British business HHG plc. Its shares last traded at 670 yesterday.

Turners Auctions said it had been advised that 19.9 per cent shareholder Guinness Peat Group (GPG) intended to quit its stake in the company.

GPG said the sale of shares would be by an "accelerated book build offering" conducted by Goldman Sachs JBWere. Turners Auctions shares last traded at $4.50 yesterday. GPG shares were unchanged at 184.

Shotover Jet rose 5c to 98 this morning after South Island tribe Ngai Tahu sweetened its takeover bid to 90 cents per share from 71.25 cents. Ngai Tahu already owns 88.3 per cent of the company.

Shares in transport operator Owens Group were unchanged this morning at 108 after it posted an operating loss of $513,000 in the September half year.

The company -- 80 per cent owned by Mainfreight and 12 per cent owned by Toll Holdings, today reported a net profit of $7.0 million compared with $0.5 million a year earlier but that came about through abnormal gains (including tax) of $7.5 million.

Stocks to move by midday included: Auckland International Airport down 3c to 660, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare up 5c to 1205, Hallenstein Glassons up 5c to 303, Independent Newspapers Ltd up 4c to 495, Infratil up 2c to 261, Ports of Auckland up 3c to 803, Ryman Healtchcare down 3c to 210, Sanford up 4c to 534, and Tourism Holdings up 3c to 145.

By 11.30am there were 29 rises and 25 falls on 104 stocks traded. Turnover was $28.38 million.

- NZPA