KEY POINTS:
Strong trading in Sky City was the standout feature of a broadly languid sharemarket today.
On Friday Sky City shares shot up as much as $1.23 to a record peak of $5.56 after the company said a party had shown interest in taking it over at a premium price.
But brokers noted there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether the bid would go ahead, and that some shareholders seemed to want to lock in the gains rather than wait.
The share price slipped back 14c today to $5.14 on a turnover of $65.9m.
Otherwise, trading was virtually flat on the NZSX-50 today, the index up just 1.51 points to 4232.67 on total turnover of $124m.
Market leader Telecom fell 2c to 427 but No 2 stock Fletcher Building recovered from a 27c pullback earlier today, ending flat at 1280. Fletcher gained 40c on Friday after raising $323m on the US debt market.
The Warehouse dropped 48c to 560 as the stock went ex-dividend by 35c.
PGG Wrightson put on 3c to 188 after announcing its subsidiary Agri-feeds is to buy the business of 4 Seasons Molasses from Gardner Smith NZ. Gardner Smith will buy Agri-feeds' port operations for about $5m.
Tourism Holdings Ltd remained on trading halt while 10 per cent shareholder MFS Living and Leisure conducted a book build to offload its stake, following a failed takeover bid.
Other major shares to lose ground today were Sky TV, off 7c to 545, Auckland International Airport down 8c to 316, Port of Tauranga down 10c to 688, Infratil down 3c to 295, F&P Healthcare down 6c to 339 and Fisher & Paykel Appliances off 6c to 351.
Hellaby Holdings steamed up 20c to 310, apparently bolstered by its ceo buying into the company, and Postie Plus lost 4c to 80 after posting a significantly lower annual net profit on Friday.
GPG gained a cent to 190 after being fined by European competition regulators last week; Trustpower jumped 11c to 851 and Contact rose 2c to 935.
Falls outnumbered rises 49 to 42 on 139 stocks traded.
- NZPA