NZ stocks: Market closes on fresh highs, helped by Telecom surge

5.30pm

The New Zealand sharemarket finished the year on a positive note with both major indices hitting fresh highs by the end of its holiday-shortened session, a broker said.

At 12.30pm, the benchmark NZSX-50 was up 8.41 points at 2450.34, its highest since its inception in March this year.

The NZSX-40 capital index was up 6.12 points at 2278.33, its highest level since May 1998.

Trading was moderate in the last day of 2003, with $21.4 million worth of shares traded on volume of 10.6 million.

Among the 109 stocks traded were 40 rises and 29 falls.

Telecom closed on the year up 7c at 537, its highest since February 2002, having traded $7.1 million worth on volume of 1.3 million.

First NZ Capital research manager Barry Lindsay said the two indices had performed well thanks to Telecom.

"The major area of strength (on NZX) was Telecom, which has been a good market this week and late last week."

Overall and in capital terms, NZX was about "about midfield and clearly nowhere near as strong as the likes of Germany and Singapore," Mr Lindsay told NZPA today.

"The gains over the last nine months (after the war in Iraq and severe acute respiratory syndrome concerns) have been very, very significant for equity investors in all equity markets around the world," he said.

"A lot of it's been to do with the improving economic outlook internationally and, or course, New Zealand itself has enjoyed economic growth."

The NZSX-50 closed at 1886.12 on March 3, indicating a 29.9 per cent gain in the 10 months to December 31.

On January 5, the NZSX-40 closed at 1950.40, meaning it had gained 16.8 per cent in the December year.

Shares on the rise today included: Baycorp Advantage up 4c at 315, Fletcher Building up 3c at 424, GRD Macrae up 2c at 226, Independent Newspapers Ltd up 5c at 515, Kirkcaldie & Stain up 6c at 327, NZ Refining up 13c at 1548, and Turners Auctions up 5c at 475.

Among those on the slide were: Allied Farmer down 2c at 208, Contact Energy down 2c at 538, Infratil down 4c at 278, Repco down 2c at 280, South Port down 10c at 140, and Carter Holt Harvey down 3c at 188.

Overseas, the Dow Jones was down 27.11 points at 10,422.89, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down 1.24 points at 1108.24, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was down 1.32 points 2005.16.

In London, the FTSE 100 benchmark index closed up 12.9 points, or 0.3 per cent, at 4470.4, after hitting 4477.0, its highest since July 2002.

- NZPA