NZ stocks: Good performance on NZSE

6.00pm

The New Zealand sharemarket went its own way today enjoying a solid day's trading while overseas markets had lukewarm sessions.

The NZ50 gross index rose 17.46 points or 0.891 percent to 1977.87 while the NZSE-40 capital index was up 15.2 points or 0.781 percent to 1962.05 at local close.

Broker James Snell of First NZ Capital said today's trading was "a good performance in light of the offshore markets".

Helping the market upward today were Fisher & Paykel's appliance and healthcare divisions.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances was up 26c to 1091 and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare rose by 10c.

Mr Snell said the appliance division's rise was a result of "people taking the view that the kiwi-aussie cross rate coming back is actually quite good for (Fisher & Paykel) Appliances".

He said the healthcare division was helped out by a report in the Australian media of United States interest in the company's Rezmed product.

"That's stimulated a little bit of extra demand on the stock market," he said.

Meanwhile, The Warehouse, which suffered a major fall in its price last week following a profit warning, regained more ground today as its third quarter profit result was released.

"It was towards the top end of the range," Mr Snell said.

"In particular I think people were concentrating on the red sheds -- the New Zealand stores -- which came in at up 8 percent total and same store sales were up 6 percent. So that was at the top end of the 5 to 6 percent range that the company had given as guidance when they gave a profit warning a couple of days ago.

"I think there's a few people heartened that the bigger part of the value of the business is still ticking along quite nicely."

The Warehouse was up 13c to 444 today.

The other big noise on the market yesterday was AMP, whose shares plunged by 35.6 percent or 352c to $6.28 yesterday -- a fall matched on the Australian market.

Trading in AMP resumed yesterday after being halted last week in in advance of the company's announcement of plans to demerge its struggling British insurance and funds management business and beef up its balance sheet with a capital raising.

Today, the company's shares fell a further 8c to 620.

The company was also having "a pretty woofy day" in Australia, Mr Snell said.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission today said it was inquiring into "unusual trading" of futures contracts ahead of AMP's demerger announcement.

Also across the Tasman, the Australian banking sector "looked like it was down across the board today", Mr Snell said.

Back in New Zealand he said "ANZ was pretty much in line with that", falling 23c to 2050.

Westpac Investments was also down, falling 2c to 1670.

Mr Snell said it looked like tourism stocks "got hit a little bit today".

Sky City was down 5c to 790 and Auckland Airport down 8c to 507.

Meanwhile, market giant Telecom rose 9c to 479.

Other risers were Baycorp Advantage up 4c to 168, Briscoe up 5c to 195 after announcing a "satisfactory" first quarter profit result, Contact Energy up 4c to 434, Michael Hill up 17c to 442 after posting solid sales results yesterday, Sanford up 10c to 575, and Tower up 6c to 225.

Stocks to fall included Air New Zealand down 1c to 45, Hellaby down 5c to 343, Independent Newspapers Ltd down 1c to 410, Sky TV down 1c to 405 and Tourism Holdings down 1c to 95.

Turnover was a relatively healthy $101 million on 33 million shares traded.

There were 50 rises and 38 falls on 127 stocks traded.

- NZPA