NZ stocks: Market bogged down by ex-dividend stocks

12.00 pm

The sharemarket struggled to shake off Monday morning blues today, bogged down by several stocks going ex dividend.

"A few good lines of stock pre-market cross but on-market activity seems to be starting pretty quietly," said institutional dealer Nigel Scott of ABN Amro Craigs Equities.

Two things that were expected to be drivers in the market today were the tumbling New Zealand dollar against the Aussie, and a drop in oil prices.

At the start of business, the kiwi plunged to A79.70c -- a level not seen since July this year -- against A80.41c late Friday, the combined effect of several currency moves.

The downward spiral in oil prices would be good for business and therefore the stock market, said Mr Scott. "It's great for transport operators, great for you and I, margins..."

But things were quiet around 11am, with the NZSE-40 capital index down 7.65 points to 2016.20, on total turnover of $33.5 million.

Trading in Fisher & Paykel's healthcare division was strong. The stock was down 60c to 1490 with $10 million worth of shares crossed.

The falling capital index was also due to dividends being paid out by several important stocks including Contact, which was trading at 393, down 12c this morning. Eleven cents of the fall was due to its dividend, but on the NZSE gross index -- which does not count the dividend -- Contact had fallen 3.3 points.

The Warehouse, which was paying a 4c dividend today, was down 9c to 642.

Still to be traded were Sanford, ex-dividend 12c today, and DB Group, ex-dividend 15.5c.

Shareholders showed their approval for Sky City's 2:1 share split which takes effect today, sending the stock up 22.5c to 660.

Market heavyweight Telecom was up 2c at 489 and Mr Scott said Carter Holt Harvey was down 7c to 160 on "a bit of profit-taking".

Frucor, another takeover target, was down 5c to 245 but the market continues to value the stock higher than Groupe Danone's offer of $2.35.

Telstra was up 9c to 626 after announcing last Thursday that it was buying Clear Communications, positioning it to merge with Telstra's New Zealand pay TV and phone company, TelstraSaturn.

Infratil was up 5c to 175 -- the company posted a strong result last week and reported that it saw good prospects ahead for its utility investments.

Wakefield was down 8c to 190 after reporting a 60 per cent fall in its half-year profit on Friday, due to a drop in cardiac surgery.

Air NZ shares were both up to 32, its NZ resident-only A shares up 3c and the freely tradable B shares up 2c.

So far there have been 40 rises and 29 falls among the 113 stocks traded.

Over the weekend on Wall Street, stocks slipped from big gains during the week as investors pulled some money off the table .

The Dow Jones industrial average gave up 5.40 points, or 0.05 per cent, to 9866.99, according to the latest data. The Nasdaq composite eased 1.98 points, or 0.10 per cent, to 1898.59. The broad Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 3.59 points, or 0.31 per cent, to 1138.65.

For the week, the Dow ended with gain of 2.7 per cent, the Nasdaq rose 3.8 per cent and the S&P 500 gained 1.6 per cent.

- NZPA