NZ stocks: Briscoes the only highlight

12.00pm

New Zealand shares kicked off quietly this morning, with a positive quarterly sales report from Briscoe Group one of the few highlights.

The benchmark NZSE-40 index was up 4.25 points at 2077.84 by 11am on mild turnover worth $15.5 million.

"It's pretty flat after Wall St had a bit of a mixed night," JB Were senior investment adviser Peter Stokes said.

Discount retailer Briscoe Group posted sales of $62.7 million for the three months to April, up 11.1 per cent on the same period a year ago.

Sales in the company's namesake homeware division were up 12.5 per cent at $43 million, while sales at its Rebel Sports chain rose 8.3 per cent to $19.7 million.

That saw Briscoe's share price jump 3c to 216 -- just short of a year high of 222.

"The Briscoes (homeware) side of it looked at the upper end of expectations and Rebel Sports perhaps towards the lower end," Mr Stokes said.

"Overall it looked reasonable though and it certainly didn't have any negative surprises."

Elsewhere in the market, investment group BIL was flat at 53c despite news reports the company plans to exit Fraser & Neave Ltd for a handsome profit after barely holding it for two years.

Stockbroking sources told Reuters that BIL, formerly the Brierley Group, was trying to place out a block of 26.5 million F&N shares at $S7.60 ($9.27) a share.

The sale, if successful, would rake in a handsome profit for BIL of some $51 million, as it paid an average of $S6.00 a share when it bought into the beverage manufacturer.

Market leader Telecom was up 2c at 499, Carter Holt Harvey was 2c higher at 191, Contact eased a cent to 405, Baycorp Advantage was up 2c at 437, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare slipped 6c to 889 and its Appliance cousin was flat at 955.

Sky City fell 9c to 628. The casino and entertainment firm today appointed Phil Keber as general manager of its joint venture casino development in Hamilton.

The company also said the casino, its third in New Zealand, had been named the Sky Riverside Hamilton.

Sky City owns 55 per cent of the holding company, Riverside Casino Ltd, with 30 per cent owned by Perry Developments and 15 per cent by the Tainui Maori Trust Board.

The casino is due to open in September 2002.

Sky TV rose 5c to 454, The Warehouse was up 5c at 730, Waste Management added 4c to 299 and Air New Zealand was down a cent at 54c.

Lion Nathan was down 2c at 571 despite yesterday reporting a net profit of $A100.1 million ($121.21 million) for the six months ended March 31, up 12.5 per cent on the same period last year.

There were 31 rises and 31 falls among the 111 stocks traded so far.

"The market is sort of treading water a bit today," Mr Stokes said.

"It hasn't had too bad a week -- it's had some reasonable rises in the middle of the week anyway -- and we're probably looking for a pretty flat close today."

In the United States stocks rose on Thursday as cautious investor optimism over Wall Street's recent rally outweighed weakness in drugmakers after news that Pfizer Inc faces a probe over possibly overcharging the government for top-selling cholesterol drug Lipitor.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average rose 45.53 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 10,289.21, according to the latest figures. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained 7.16 points, or 0.66 per cent, to 1098.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index danced into positive territory after trading lower much of the day, rising 4.88 points, or 0.28 per cent, to 1730.44.

- NZPA