NZ stocks: Tower soars, Telecom stumbles on flat sharemarket

6.45pm

Interest in Tower and Telecom dominated an otherwise quiet pre-Christmas session on the New Zealand sharemarket today.

Pressure on Telecom's share price outweighed a lift in Tower's price, pushing the NZSE-40 capital index down 0.26 points to 1930.64. Turnover was worth $58.1 million.

"It's a bit of a disappointing showing ... on a day when we had some pretty positive GDP figures out," said John Cobb, head of private stockbroking at JB Were.

His brokerage represents a mystery buyer who over the last 24 hours has snapped up 3.5 per cent of troubled Tower, lifting the share price 30c to 210 on $21.6 million worth of shares.

Tower, which reported an annual loss of $75 million this month, said it was in the dark as to the identity of the buyer but confirmed that someone was making a stand in the market for up to 10 per cent.

Speculation fell largely on GPG but it declined to comment and closed steady at 151. Other suspects were Active Equities AMP and ASB Bank, which denied it was involved.

"If (the purchaser) moves to buy more, go that 5 per cent level, I guess then they'll have to disclose their holding," said Mr Cobb, referring to the rules on substantial shareholdings.

Telecom started the day well but support for a price around 465 petered out, and the stock ended down 5c to 458 on $14.7 million.

During the day, the Telecommunications Commission announced it was to review an unbundling of the physical phone network, the local loop, which Telecom has a monopoly on.

"Obviously regulatory issues are clearly now starting to have an effect on the share price and I think also obviously the market is still watching their AAPT business in Australia to see what ultimately comes out of that," Mr Cobb said.

However, stocks with high exposure to the robust domestic economy did have a good day. Retail stocks the Warehouse and Briscoe were up 11c to 721 and 10c to 280 respectively. Auckland Airport rose 8c to 539.

However, stocks with exposure to New Zealand's soaring currency were also feeling its effects. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was off 15c to 900, although its twin, F&P Appliances, was up 5c to 990, and Sky TV was up 5c to 325 as its buying power of overseas programming improves.

Other movers included Ports of Auckland, up 18c to 643, Carter Holt, up a cent to 172, Sky City down 10c to 783, Sky City Leisure (formerly Force) up 10c to 185, Infratil up 2c to 182 and Lion Nathan down 10c to 590.

Falls outnumbered rises 49 to 39 on 139 stocks traded.

On Wall St, war jitters outweighed a better than expected second quarter result from the world's number two software company, Oracle.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 82.55 points, or 0.98 per cent, at 8364.80. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 index declined 6.85 points, or 0.77 per cent, to 884.27, while the technology-laced Nasdaq composite index fell 7.28 points, or 0.53 per cent, at 1354.23.

- NZPA