NZ stocks: Telecom leads sharemarket lower

6.45pm

Top stock Telecom led the drift lower on the sharemarket today, in a low-volume trading day.

After a positive start to trading this morning, the market slipped as the day wore on, closing with the benchmark NZSX-50 gross index down 11.36 points to 2776.65, while the NZSX-All capital index dropped 3.88 points to 933.70.

ASB Securities head of advisory Stephen Wright said the relatively low turnover was due in part to the market holiday in Australia's New South Wales today.

"In my opinion there's nothing in particular (behind today's fall) and just a bit of profit taking and just a bit of drift," Mr Wright said.

Bellwether Telecom hit a three-year high of 615 in intraday trading, but later fell off to 609, down 3c on Friday's closing price.

The company is set to announce it full year results on Thursday and analysts are expecting information on plans for dividends or capital returns.

Mr Wright said he expected Telecom's price to rise slightly in the lead up to the result, which analysts are tipping to be between $733 million and $762 million compared with $709 million last year.

Telecom's turnover today was $13.3 million in mild total market turnover of $63.2 million.

Other leading stocks to fall today included: Carter Holt Harvey down 3c to 218, Fletcher Building down 11c at 487, Sky City Entertainment down 9c at 476 and Auckland International Airport down 12c at 696.

Urbus Properties, which held its annual general meeting last Friday, was unchanged at 97c. This morning the company announced resolutions had been passed to raised directors' fees from a total of $115,000 to $268,000.

Bucking the downward trend today was Contact Energy up 2c at 604, Lion Nathan up 5c at 775, Steel & Tube up 7c at 443, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare up 12c at 1464 and Ports of Auckland up 5c at 705.

Of the 159 stocks traded today there were 50 rises and 51 falls.

- NZPA