NZ stocks: Hesitancy continues on sharemarket

12:00 pm

The sharemarket opened quietly this morning, with the NZSE-40 capital index at 1974.80 at 11am, up 0.6 of a point from yesterday on a turnover of $21 million.

Rob Gwyther, senior investment adviser at JB Were, said Fridays were normally quite a good day on the market, but since September 11 "Fridays can be just a little bit tougher, a tailing off day as people are not wanting to take the initiative ahead of the weekend in case something develops."

Mr Gwyther also attributed some of this morning's hesitancy to the Australian election tomorrow.

On the positive side, he said the UK rate cut overnight was quite good, the Australian market was factoring in a 50 basis point cut, and bank bills in Australia were at their lowest level ever.

These factors were giving support to banks, reflected in the performance of Westpactrust which reached a new high this morning of 1730.

Today is the final day before Fisher and Paykel's split and listing on the Nasdaq and the stock was continuing its slide of the last two days. After closing at 1510 on Monday it slipped 6c on Tuesday, 55c on Wednesday, and 70c yesterday. This morning it had fallen another 14c to 1360.

Mr Gwyther said investors had had a good run with the stock but many now wanted to exit the appliance side of the company in order to play the health care side.

Another stock headed for a split, Sky City, was up 10c to 1240 after falling 35c yesterday.

Auckland International Airport has responded to the settlement of the landing charges issue with Air New Zealand and was up 5c to 355.

Frucor was down 1c to 240.

"People are perhaps having a few second thoughts on Contact (Energy), whether they would stay with the bid and it's probably washing over a little bit to Frucor."

Tourism Holdings which has slipped a little lately due to unfavourable recent tourism figures was starting to get more support. It rose slightly yesterday and was up another 2c today to 124.

DB group shares were up 10c this morning to 560. Heineken controlled majority shareholder Asia Pacific Breweries is looking to buy out DB's minority shareholders, it was reported this morning.

Other rises and falls this morning included Air NZ B shares down 1c to 28, Fletcher Forests normal shares up 1c to 27, and Richmond down 8c to 262.

There were 36 rises and 29 falls on 106 stocks traded.

- NZPA