KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand sharemarket hit another record high today, propelled skywards by Fletcher Building's nearly 3 per cent gain.
The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed at 4289.71, up 0.2 per cent, on turnover totalling $264.1 million. Rises outnumbered falls 62 to 60.
"It's been a good market, obviously a good lead from offshore. There's been a lot of volume through the market today," said Joe Gallagher of Goldman Sachs JBWere.
"You continue to see a lot of strength in Fletcher Building which is really dragging this market up higher. A fair bit of speculation surrounding the stock, is it the next target in terms of M&A (merger and acquisition)...?" Mr Gallagher said.
Fletcher Building closed up 36c at 1285, 5c below its record high earlier in the session. As well as being in a sector rife with company takeovers, Fletcher Building is expected to benefit from last week's budget which promised increased spending on infrastructure.
Telecom fell 2c to 482, continuing to tread water.
"We saw the stock rally into the capital management announcement, that's come and gone, and looking forward there's a big dilemma in that the stock screens well on valuation and yield but it has a lot of issues," Mr Gallagher said.
Contact Energy continued last week's bounce back, adding 9c to close at 888. The company said today it had won a six-year battle for resource consent to continue operating its Taupo geothermal plants.
Ahead of their annual results this week, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down a cent at 360 and F&P Appliances was flat at 374.
Auckland Airport fell 2c to 267, while Sky City was up 7c at 492 ahead of an analyst briefing tomorrow morning on its progress in marketing, promotion and cost-cutting.
CanWest MediaWorks was steady at 240 after announcing a special fully imputed dividend of 10cps ahead of the takeover by Ironbridge Capital. The dividend reduced the offer price to 233 per share.
Fellow takeover target Tourism Holdings rose 2c to 276, below MFS Living and Leisure's 280 a share bid. A report by Ferrier Hodgson has valued the company in a range between 267 and 307.
The Warehouse was down 11c at 663, with a decision due from the Commerce Commission on Friday as to whether it can be taken over by grocery companies courting it.
Fund manager Tower, which with The Warehouse will be deleted from index compiler MSCI's Standard Index Series on May 31, fell 5c to 237.
Infratil lost 9c to 673, falling foul of profit-takers after earlier reaching a record high of 685.
Australia's benchmark index was up 0.9 per cent at 6371.6, a few points below its earlier record high, while Japan's Nikkei average rose 1.1 per cent as technology exporters such as Sony and TDK were boosted by the yen's record low against the euro.
On Wall Street, US stocks rose giving the Dow and the S&P 500 seven straight weeks of gains and pushing the Dow to a record close.
- NZPA