Market close: Contact Energy drives NZ sharemarket higher

Stocks gained slighly on the NZX today. Photo / file

The New Zealand sharemarket struck its ninth successive daily rise, this time led by Contact Energy, and a renewed takeover offer for Abano Healthcare added life to the trading late in the day.

The S&P/NZX 50 Index collected another 76.35 points or 0.62 per cent to close at a record-breaking 12,356.89. There were 86 gainers and 59 decliners across the whole market, with 46.28 million shares worth $174.55m.

With the energy stocks being flavour of the month, Contact surged a further 25c or 3.18 per cent to $8.10 on strong volume of shares worth $20.5m. Its high is $9.05 set on September 3 last year.

Matt Goodson, managing director of Salt Funds Management, said Contact put out a strong monthly operating report that showed the business is travelling well, and there is also the prospect of the stock joining seven other Kiwis in the MSCI World Index.

Contact's entry into the index will be decided on pricing during the last 10 days of this month, and Goodson said the stock is at a high-enough level at the moment and would attract additional global investor interest. "The influence of passive investment funds can be very significant."

The world index of 1607 shares captures the large and mid-cap stocks across 23 developed markets in North America, Europe and Israel, and the Pacific comprising Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The index covers 85 per cent of the market capitalisation of each country and New Zealand is so far represented by Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, a2, Spark, Ryman Healthcare, Mercury, Meridian and Auckland International Airport.

Contact reported that its mass market electricity and gas sales was steady at 398 GWh for September but its contracted wholesale electricity sales increased to 725 GWH compared with 712 GWh for the same month last year. Its unit generation cost was $37.59/MWh compared with the previous $49.07/MWh.

Transtasman dental firm Abano Healthcare announced Bidco, a partnership between Australian BGH Capital and Canadian Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, has increased its scheme of arrangement offer from $4.45 to $4.75 a share.

The takeover offer is backed by the Abano board, and in the final hour of trading the stock surged 50c or 13.16 per cent to $4.30. Abano also reported that unaudited group gross revenue was up 9 per cent to $124.6m for the first four months of the 2021 financial year. Operating earnings (ebitda) was $25.3m including government wage subsidies of $10.6m.

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, up 15c to $34.70, and a2 Milk, a gain of 18c to $15.75, had another good recovery day. Swiss multi-national investment bank UBS Group AG disclosed it had reduced its stake in a2 Milk from 5.83 per cent to 4.98 per cent.

Value stocks Ebos Group increased 63c or 2.54 per cent to $25.39, Mainfreight climbed 46c to $47.96, Ryman Healthcare rose 16c to $14.89, and Synlait Milk added 7c to $5.68.

The other two leading energy stocks also kept rising – Mercury gaining 8.5c or 2.8 per cent to $5.51, and Meridian picking up 6c or 2.78 per cent to $5.55.

Two more movers were Enprise Group, up 9c or 8.91 per cent to $1.10, and NZME, increasing 4c or 6.78 per cent to 63c.

Auckland International Airport was down 15c to $7.47, and Chorus fell 7c to $8.75.

Heartland Bank said it is relaunching its online home loan offering, with a one-year fixed term rate of 1.99 per cent and two-year rate at 2.35 per cent. Heartland Group Holdings increased 3c or 2.19 per cent to $1.40.