NZ stocks: Market ends up, but war keeps it in holding pattern

New Zealand shares ended the week quietly positive but provided few highlights, as global markets kept a watching brief on the war in Iraq.

The major features of the day were hefty falls in retail darlings Briscoe Group and Pacific Retail after disappointing annual results or forecasts.

Turnover was still relatively high at $93.2 million, a characteristic of this week's trading as the start of the war gave world markets more certainty.

But brokers said the 0.31 per cent rise in the benchmark NZ50 gross index was almost solely due to a positive day for Telecom. The index rose 5.96 points to 1908.03 , while the older NZSE40 capital index gained 6.54 points, or 0.35 per cent, to 1891.39 .

"General tone is that markets here and globally have gone into a holding pattern," JB Were senior broker Peter Stokes said.

"Needless to say, we are continuing to observe how all this unfolds in the Northern Hemisphere."

Telecom continued a recovery streak, gaining 1.5 per cent or 6c to 432 on a solid $26.7 million worth of shares.

Briscoe Group plunged 41c to 188, 18c off its year low, on solid turnover - despite posting a 35 per cent rise in first-half profit to $23.6 million.

Andrew Kelleher of ASB Securities said the market favourite had been expecting a result about $3 million higher.

"It was a company that was trading at levels with a fair bit of growth built into it, and it disappointed."

But Briscoe Group chairman Rod Duke stood by his company's past strong earnings and said he was still expecting double digit growth in the coming year.

He said the sticking point for analysts had been gross margins, which were lower as a result of a late summer, and the company had consequently discounted goods heavily to get rid of old stock.

Another retailer, Pacific Retail Group, also suffered after announcing its annual result would be impacted by difficult trading conditions.

Pacific Retail fell 21c to 200 after advising there had been no improvement to an earlier warning that post-Christmas sales had been disappointing. Its full year results are due in May.

Directors estimated in February that net profit after tax for the group would be a modest improvement on the previous year's $17.4 million.

On the upside, Trustpower gained 10c to 405 after announcing a two-for-seven share buyback post-market yesterday and one of its major shareholders, Infratil, notched up 7c to 162 after announcing a limited share buyback and a higher annual earnings forecast.

Infratil is predicting higher full year gross earnings to the end of March of $54 million, compared to $40.6 million the previous year.

Other moves included Contact Energy, down 5c to 445; Allied Farmers, up 8c to 200; Fletcher Building, down a cent to 354; and the Warehouse, up 3c to 583.

Air New Zealand ended up 4c to 54, possibly due to dropping oil prices. Today, aviation expert Nawal Taneja said the airline appeared to be well-positioned to survive any impact from the Iraqi conflict.

There were 49 rises and 28 falls on 123 stocks traded.

Offshore, sharemarkets were more volatile. Wall St stocks gyrated between gains and losses but ended on higher groun d as investors bet that the US-led war on Iraq would be over swiftly.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average ended with a gain of 21.15 points, or 0.26 per cent, at 8286.60, after skidding almost 135 points earlier, and the broad Standard and Poor's 500 index eked out a rise of 1.82 points, or 0.21 per cent, to 875.84.

- NZPA