NZ Stocks: Shares ease on light turnover

12.00 pm

Share prices drifted lower in typically light Monday morning trading today.

Brokers said trading was a continuation of last week's directionless pattern where the market is trading in a tight pattern and stocks were moving individually.

The NZSE-40 capital index was down 3.46 to 2046.54 by just after 11am. Turnover was just $23.7 million.

Indicative of the lack of interest was that less than 2 million dollars worth of Telecom had traded. The market leader was off 7c to 546. Its Australian counterpart, Telstra, was up 9c to 698.

Topping the turnover was Trustpower with over 1.9 million shares worth $6.9 million traded. It was up 50c to 365.

Action is expected in TrustPower in the last week before the Takeovers Code comes into effect.

Infratil, one of four major holders said it expected progress in resolving long-standing shareholder issues.

All four major shareholders in TrustPower - which between them hold nearly 90 per cent of the company - have given notice they may seek to increase their holdings.

The Australian Gas Light Co holds 20.5 per cent, Alliant 17.6 per cent, Infratil 26.4 per cent and the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust (TECT) 22.7 per cent.

AGL's other big New Zealand holding, Natural Gas Corp, fell 3c to 88c. On Friday, NGC announced AGL had to stump up with a $65 million emergency bailout of the country's largest power retailer. AGL provided $65 million to cover the company's short-term cashflow crisis and that loan could be raised to $100 million.

AGL had also agreed to guarantee up to $177 million to the New Zealand Electricity Market (NZEM) for NGC's energy purchase commitments.

NGC had warned it expected a $280-310 million loss for the June year included a number of significant one-off losses.

Air NZ B shares rose 1c to 136 while the As rose 2c to 113. The company said its Plan B for refunding was to sell off loss-making Ansett to Singapore Airlines. Plan A is to persuade the government to allow SIA to increase its stake from 25 percent to 35-40 percent.

Fisher & Paykel fell 10c to 1160. Another to have a good recent run, Sky City, eased back 15c to 1110.

Montana was unchanged at 480. The Montana Standing Committee, which met over the weekend, has yet to decided how many of Lion Nathan's 62 percent will be declared defaulter securities. Lion was off 1c at 540.

Westpac NZ shares rose 15c to 1625.

There were 30 rises and 33 falls among the 111 stocks traded.

- NZPA