NZX follows Asia-wide decline to end strongest month

Spark New Zealand and Xero are day's biggest losers. Photo / Greg Bowker

New Zealand shares fell, joining an Asia-wide slide, even as the benchmark index finished its strongest month this year, with Spark New Zealand and Xero leading the decline.

The S&P/NZX 50 index fell 74.01 points, or 1 per cent, to 7611.44. Within the index, 32 stocks fell, nine rose and nine were unchanged. Turnover was $184 million.

"It's obviously pretty weak across the board because we had global markets that were off the boil quite a bit overnight," said Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners. "Just about everywhere in the Asian region is following suit. It's still not too bad " New Zealand will still finish the week, month and quarter up pretty strongly."

Spark led the index lower, down 3.6 per cent to $3.78. The telecommunications company held its investor day today.

"It has had a few strong days lately so it might be a bit of profit taking or some people might have been expecting something more exciting to come out of the day and nothing did," Lister said.

Xero dropped 2.7 per cent to $25.20, which Lister said was probably on the back of a bit of weakness in US tech stocks, while Comvita fell 2.7 per cent to $5.80 and Sky Network Television declined 2.3 per cent to $3.45.

Restaurant Brands New Zealand was the best performer, up 2 per cent to $6.26.

"It's just going from strength to strength. It'll finish the week a good 5 per cent higher and it paid a dividend not long ago as well," Lister said.

Stock market operator NZX was unchanged at $1.12. It will carry out an extensive review of its business with the results due in November and although shareholder Tony Falkenstein wasn't elected to the board, his observations would be considered as part of that review, chairman James Miller told today's annual general meeting.

Outside the benchmark index, Tilt Renewables CX, the wind and solar generation facilities operator, which split from Trustpower last year, has warned earnings will be as much as A$12m lower for 2018 after a weak start to the year. The company also announced it will build a $105m wind farm in Victoria.