NZ stocks: Telecom pulls sharemarket down from highs

The sharemarket's seven day winning streak came to an end today, led down by top stock Telecom.

The telco giant fell 8c to 583, after its 19 per cent rise in first quarter net profit failed to impress investors.

In the four trading days leading up to the result release the telco giant had risen 14c in an anticipation of a strong profit.

ASB Securities' Stephen Wright said while the $193m net profit was pretty much in line with expectations it was not startling.

Telecom will pay a fully imputed dividend of 9.5cps on December 10. Mr Wright said the stock was likely to rally in the lead up to the ex-dividend date.

Telecom's decline saw the benchmark NZSX-50 gross index fall 11.77 points to 2873.00, and the NZSX-All capital index slip 4.42 points to 950.06.

Among the 162 stocks traded today, 53 gained and 57 fell. Total market turnover was a modest $92.2 million.

Last night TelstraClear announced it had filed two applications with the Commerce Commission concerning Telecom. One is about the wholesale unbundled bitstream service (UBS) that Telecom has been regulated to provide as an alternative to opening up its network to competitors, while the other is for private office, a business data service. Telstra was down 6c to 507.

Clothing retailer Postie Plus also faltered today, falling 1c to 97c, after reporting a one per cent fall in same-store sales for the first quarter.

Other retail stocks to take a hit today included The Warehouse down 2c to 407, Pumpkin Patch down 2c to 218, and Briscoe down 3c to 140.

AMP fell 17c to 738, as rumours continued to swirl about a possible linkup with ANZ, which was up 5c at 2280.

Calan Healthcare today announced the unconditional sale of a site in Takapuna, to Metlifecare for $12.825m. Calan fell 1c to 92, while Metlifecare was down 4c at $2.48.

Among the few top stocks to notch up gains today were: Air New Zealand up 1c to 154, Contact Energy up 3c to 618, Tenon up 2c to 222 and Fisher & Paykel Appliances up 5c at 420.

- NZPA