NZ stocks: Shares rally on Sars hopes

The New Zealand sharemarket backed up yesterday's one per cent gain with another similar sized rally today as fears over the deadly Sars outbreak eased slightly and the global economic outlook began to look up.

The NZ50 gross index piled on 20.27 points, or 1.02 per cent, to 2013.31 by close, while the NZSE-40 capital index added 25.11 points to 1985.41.

Turnover totalled a solid $100 million.

"People are now starting to look at the Sars thing and put it into a bit of perspective," ASB Securities broker Andrew Kelleher said.

"Sentiment swirled around the Iraq war in terms of will it have an economic impact or won't it and we tended to have day to day surges in sentiment and I think the same thing is happening with Sars.

"One day sentiment is such that people think it is going to have a very large impact and some days they think it isn't."

The World Health Organisation scrapped a travel warning to Toronto, Canada, overnight, saying the outbreak was less severe than had been believed just one week before.

The local bourse was also buoyed by another rally on Wall St, where the Dow Jones reached highs not seen since January and the Nasdaq touched December levels following strong consumer confidence data.

The US Conference Board's index of consumer confidence leapt to 81.0 in April from 61.4 in March - the biggest one-month gain since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

The Dow closed up 31.38 points at 8502.99, while the technology-laced Nasdaq added 9.06 points to 1471.30.

That helped the New Zealand market shrug off an extremely gloomy National Bank business confidence survey locally.

Top stock Telecom led the local rally, touching a high of 482 before closing up 9c at 479.

Tourism stocks also rallied, with Auckland International Airport up 15c to 518; Air New Zealand up 4c at 43c; Sky City - which has a big tourist customer base - up 5c to 830; and Tourism Holdings Ltd up 3c at 95c.

In all, rises outnumbered falls by 56 to 32 among the 135 stocks traded.

Other stocks to gain included: Briscoe Group, up 2c at 194; Fletcher Forests, up 3c at 100; Baycorp Advantage, up 4c at 169; Fisher and Paykel Appliances, up 10c at 1070; sister stock F&P Healthcare, up 15c to 1075; Michael Hill, up 6c to 440; Independent Newspapers, up 8c to 414; Sky TV, up 9c to 405; and NGC Holdings, up 3c to 157.

On the flipside, The Warehouse lost 5c to 560; Tranz Rail dipped a cent to 40c; Lion Nathan fell 2c to 622; and Contact Energy dropped 2c to 435 ahead of its first half result tomorrow.

Contact is expected to post a higher March half year profit as it benefits from high wholesale electricity prices in the second quarter caused by low hydro lake levels.

The average expectation of four analysts surveyed by Reuters was for a net profit after tax of around $41 million, up from $30 million a year ago.

- NZPA