NZ sharemarket slips

The New Zealand sharemarket slipped in trading reduced by a holiday in Australia.

The benchmark NZSX-50 index closed down 17.892 points, or 0.631 per cent, at 2816.616, reversing nearly all of the 18.8 point rise on Friday.

Turnover was worth $57.6 million. There were 43 rises and 35 falls among the 118 stocks traded.

Contact Energy's shares fell 13c to 567 after the company said it expected full year underlying earnings after tax to be 30 to 33 per cent less than in the year to June 2008, due to lower than expected wholesale electricity prices.

"The profit downgrade put a bit of pressure on the share price," said Grant Williamson, director at Hamilton, Hindin, Greene.

"It is not exactly unexpected and has to do with wholesale electricity prices," he said.

Among other leaders Fletcher Building fell 6c to 689 and Telecom fell 5c to 256.

Infratil shares rose 4c to 174 after the company said it had granted Australian private equity fund Archer Capital a call option over part of Infratil's shareholding in Brisbane-based Energy Developments.

The call option totals 19.99 per cent of the shares of Energy Developments, in which Infratil has a 32.1 per cent shareholding.

Sanford shares were up 9c to 573 on low volume, Property for Industry gained 2c to 117, Pike River Coal added 2c to 122, Rakon was up 4c to 160, and Sky City was unchanged at 276.

APN rose 5c to 197. TrustPower rose 5c to 790 and Hallenstein Glasson rose 10c to 260.

AMP Office Trust fell 1c to 75 and late today it announced it had raised $201.3m in its rights issue with underwriters picking up 4.7 per cent of the slightly undersubscribed issue.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down 7c to 308, The Warehouse down 2c to 375, and NZ Oil & Gas down 3c to 159.

US stocks flip-flopped throughout Friday's (local time) session, with the major indexes ending split as investors paused to consider conflicting signals in monthly US jobs data.

The Labour Department reported that employers cut 345,000 jobs in May - substantially less than analysts had forecast - but the US unemployment rate hit 9.4 per cent, its highest since 1983.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.2 per cent to 8763.13, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 0.3 per cent to 940.09, and the Nasdaq Composite Index dipped slightly to 1849.42.

- NZPA