NZ stocks: Telecom leads slump in sparse session

Telecom led a slump in the New Zealand sharemarket yesterday in quiet pre-Christmas trade.

"The sharemarket was down 19 points and 11 of those were Telecom," Nigel Scott of ABN Amro said.

The benchmark NZSE-40 index closed down 21.92 points - 1.15 per cent - at 1879.49. The small capital index bucked the trend, rising 25.91 points to 5024.04.

Mr Scott said trading was "pretty thin on the ground".

Turnover was 15.31 million shares valued at $32.71 million.

"With the thin nature of our market and it being only a half day, people were looking at trying to complete their orders," he said.

Markets closed for the Christmas break at noon.

Telecom tested six-year lows for the third time this week - down 15c to $4.85. The telco has been under pressure recently because of global weakness in telecommunications stocks and uncertainty surrounding its expansion into the Australian market.

Australian media reported that Vodafone had lodged a proposal to buy Australia's Cable & Wireless Optus for at least $A18 billion. Telecom had earlier indicated it was interested in acquiring the mobile assets.

Lion Nathan was down 10c to $5.10 and Contact Energy closed down 4c tot $2.60. Auckland Airport dropped 5c to $3.10, largely because of a spot of profit-taking after it hit a high of $3.17 on Thursday.

Carter Holt was down 2c to $1.60.

"All the top five or six stocks were showing that there simply wasn't the flow there to complete orders," Mr Scott said. "A lot of people have just shut up shop."

Kiwi Income Property Trust closed down 4c at 88c on reasonable volume of 1.3 million shares after Thursday's announcement it was to take over fellow real estate investor Kiwi Development Trust.

"People are obviously just trying to position themselves for the fact that more scrip might be issued out of Kiwi Income to pay for KDT," Mr Scott said.

Cedenco was up 1c at $1.36 after announcing it would not meet its end-of-year deadline for announcing a preferred bidder for the company.

Savoy Equities was untraded at 5.2c after saying it had sold two technology subsidiaries and was forecasting a loss for the financial year.

Fletcher Energy was unchanged at $8.12. Mr Scott said the volatility of overseas markets had "put people on the sideline."

"The 10 per cent plus rally in the currency means that obviously people will be contemplating their positions. If they put money overseas around the 40 to 42USc mark it is obviously hurting them at this stage.

"There will be quite a few strategy thoughts over the next couple of weeks," he said.

- NZPA