KEY POINTS:
The sharemarket recovered from early weakness today, but remained in the red as markets struggled to shake off Wall Street's negative close.
The NZSX-50 benchmark index closed down 16.79 points, or 0.4 per cent, at 4054.2 to be about 20 points above its session low. Turnover totalled $115.7 million.
"The market's cut its losses during the day, and a function of that it seemed to really coincide with Hong Kong in particular - most of the Asian markets were weaker," said Stephen Wright of ASB Securities.
"It always had the hallmarks of being negative, and it was."
Helping boost the index were Telecom, which was flat at 420, and Fletcher Building's 10c gain to 1180.
The session highlight was NZ Oil & Gas, which rose nearly 11 per cent to a three-month high of 112 after reporting that estimated oil reserves for the Tui field had increased 30 per cent to 41.7 million barrels.
That was worth an extra $200 million to NZOG, over time.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare lost 2c to 318 after it reported a 28.8 per cent fall in its half year net profit to $18.7 million. It blamed the high dollar for much of the fall.
"Of course it was expected that the bottom line was going to be impacted by the exchange rate, so that held pretty well," Mr Wright said.
Mainfreight continued to prosper after its strong result yesterday, up 10c to 720. Vector rose 4c to 231 after yesterday's forecast of annual profit at the top of analysts' expectations.
Jeweller Michael Hill was up 3c at 108, Port of Tauranga gained 7c to 692, Freightways was up a cent at 374, and Hallenstein Glassons rose 3c to 449.
The rest of the top-50 stocks were flat or negative. Contact Energy was down 10c at 885, Auckland Airport fell 4c to 295, F&P Appliances was down 6c at 351 after announcing it would open a new factory in North America, and Sky City fell 16c to 518.
Nuplex fell 5c to 725, The Warehouse lost 10c to 510, Pumpkin Patch shed 11c to 268, Infratil was down 3c at 282 and Rakon fell 4c to 431.
Among dual-listed stocks, ANZ was down 29c at 3179, Westpac fell 36c to 3130, AMP fell 20c to 1142, and Goodman Fielder was down 1c at 221.
- NZPA