NZ stocks: Flat market gets boost from Telecom and Frucor

12.10 pm

Results from Telecom and Frucor set an otherwise flat sharemarket buzzing this morning with both shares rising in value.

By just after 11 am, the NZSE40 Capital Index was up 3.64 points at 2054.28.

Turnover was over 5 million shares with a value of $20.4 million, although brokers said this had been inflated by a couple of pre-market crossings in AMP shares.

Nearly $8 million worth of AMP shares had been traded at $22.60, prompting the share price to fall 31c to 2250.

Brokers said Telecom's figures were better than expected and its share price initially rose 7c at 725 before slipping slightly to 523 against a quiet overall market.

Write-offs of $192 million dragged Telecom to a fourth quarter loss of $38 million, compared with a $172 million profit in the June 2000 quarter, after aborting a mobile phone network in Australia.

But it was offset by a $245 million one-off dividend in the third quarter from its half-owned Southern Cross Cable.

Overall, the telecommunications giant posted a $643 million June year profit, down from $783 million in the 2000 year.

JP Morgan broker Geoff Brown said that by adding back the $192 million of write-offs, the reported profit would be at $835 million - at the higher end of expectations.

"The cost side of the equation looks reasonably well contained," he said.

Frucor's price also rose by 4c to 174. This morning it announced its net profit after tax fell to $11.7 million for the June year, down 14 per cent from a normalised $13.6 million for 2000.

Wrightson's share price rose 3c to 101 on the back of its annual results to June this morning, a 41 per cent increase in net profit after tax, from $7.5 million last year to $10.7 this year.

Elsewhere in the market Fletcher Building rose 2c to 267; Carter Holt Harvey was steady at 172; Tasman Agriculture was down 3c to 177; and Lion Nathan remained unchanged at 530 after it failed to persuade the High Court to delay the sell-down of its Montana shares.

Montana's share price fell 10c to 440, but brokers noted it was on light volume.

So far this morning there have been 37 falls and 25 rises from the 114 stocks traded.

- NZPA