NZ Stocks: Telco trading sets sharemarket buzzing

12.00pm

Hefty pre-market trading in Australian telco Telstra gave the sharemarket a major shot in the arm this morning.

Just after 11am the NZSE40 Capital Index was up 2.94 points to 2078.92 on turnover worth $52 million.

Telstra accounted for $33.4 million of the turnover although its share price remained unchanged. On Friday the telco announced it had resolved a dispute over broadband and data access with AAPT, Telecom's Australian subsidiary.

Telstra was unchanged at 650 ahead of trading in Australia, but Telecom was up 5c to 502 on turnover worth $6.5 million.

Fletcher Building, which closed up 4c at the end of last week, had lifted another 4c to 285 this morning as a new survey indicated rising house prices had not yet come to the end of their cycle.

Sky City was another stock which was enjoying quite a lot of trading last week partly, brokers felt, due to index trading. Today it was up 3c to 578 after media speculation that it and Sky TV could be tempting takeover targets this year.

Sky TV was unchanged at 450.

Genesis Research, named by the Sunday Star-Times as another company ripe for takeover, jumped 23c to 298.

Retail stocks showed signs of running out of steam after a stellar run -- Briscoe shed 8c to 204 on moderate trading and the Warehouse was down 4c to 735.

David Fergusson of Greenslades said there was some sentiment that Briscoe was over-valued but he did not think today's fall was too significant.

"There was very keen volume interest most of last week...a lot of people jumped into it as it was rising up, so (there seems to be) no particular reason apart from a little bit of profit-taking."

GPG was down 1c to 188 after directors in its apple exporting investment, ENZA, recommended a GPG takeover offer.

Other movers included Contact, up 2c to 386; Fisher & Paykel Healthcare up 5c to 995; and Hallenstein Glasson up 3c to 278, reclaiming some lost ground after posting a slightly lower than expected interim profit last week.

So far rises outnumber falls 35 to 25 on 104 stocks traded.

On Wall Street the Dow Jones industrial average rose 36.47 points, or 0.36 per cent, to 10,271.64 as investors shunned volatile technology stocks in favour of safer large-cap blue chip companies.

The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 3.61 points, or 0.32 per cent, at 1122.73. The technology-laced Nasdaq Composite Index was down 19.72 points, or 1.1 per cent, at 1770.03.

- NZPA