NZ sharemarket: Auckland Airport takes off on slow sharemarket

12.15 pm

Auckland Airport was one of the few big movers during quiet turnover on this morning's sharemarket.

Turnover this morning was light, just eight million shares worth $21.7 million.

Brokers said there was no real direction from overseas, particularly overnight with the London stock market closed for a bank holiday.

But Auckland Airport surprised, initially shooting up 10c then easing to 5c up on 390, after two million shares traded off market.

Mid-morning, the NZSE-40 capital index was down 5.91 points at 2081.10.

Nevertheless, it had to be remembered that the New Zealand sharemarket had performed exceptionally well this year, according to David Price of Credit Suisse First Boston.

"New Zealand has the highest yielding market in the world. We pay out very large dividends, so if you keep looking at the NZSE-40 you could actually go back and see the thing was at 2055 years ago and say 'Gee, our market goes nowhere'."

But if investors looked at a different index which included dividends in the performance, the picture looked quite different, with many share prices rising 50 per cent this year.

Mr Price said telcos around the world had taken a drubbing and because Telecom made up such a large part of the New Zealand stock market it appeared the overall market had not performed much, but that was to ignore many star performers.

Some of those stars included Baycorp which was up 10c this morning at 1380; Fisher and Paykel down 22c to 1430; Guinness Peat Group steady at 169; and Sky City up 13c to 1198.

Telecom fell 6c to 510 and Telstra, which is expected to report a fall in profit tomorrow, was down 3c to 607.

After a steady rise over the last fortnight, the Warehouse was unchanged on 600. On Friday it announced it would not be taking over the New Zealand K-Mart chain, although possibly individual stores.

Tower, which has seen a steady improvement over the last week, fell 5c to 540 on light volumes. Since hitting a record $5.90 in May, the group returned a disappointing $38.9 million half-year profit, and Tower's shares were languishing near $5 until the beginning of last week.

Rises outweighed falls this morning, 39 to 27, on 112 stocks traded.

- NZPA