Market close: NZME biggest gainer; Sky TV shares savaged

Sky Network Television was savaged after reporting a full-year net loss of $156.97 million. Photo / File

The New Zealand sharemarket rebounded as expected after a good day on Wall Street, but there's still a great deal of investor uncertainty over the direction of indices, both here and overseas.

With the leading United States indices picking up more than half of their lost gains from the day before, the S&P/NZX 50 Index gained 72.67 points or 0.62 per cent to 11,811.78. But the index fluctuated between a low of 11,745.89 and high of 11,884.31 during the day's volatile trading.

There were 84 gainers and 55 decliners over the whole market and a solid 73.8 million shares worth $194.76 million changed hands.

Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners, said the Dow Jones Industrial's 400- point rise and that positive sentiment was always going to flow through to this part of the world.

"The New Zealand and Australian markets were up more strongly but as the day progressed they came off the boil. With the reporting season over, the New Zealand market doesn't have much to latch onto and there's a general feeling that the Wall Street volatility is not over."

Lister said the market will be looking ahead to the pre-election economic and fiscal forecast and the June gross domestic product (GDP) report – "that's the eye of the storm in the economic weakness."

ANZ economists predicted the second quarter GDP would fall sharply by 12 per cent based on the latest Stats NZ supplementary data, and per capital GDP will be cast back to levels that prevailed in 2005. However, "now we are in the final month of quarter three, that's likely to bring the sharpest quarterly economic expansion we'll ever see."

Strong movers were Napier Port gained 14c or 4.01 per cent to $3.63; Restaurant Brands recovered 25c or 2.13 per cent to $12; Ryman Healthcare rose 38c or 2.85 per cent to $13.70; Goodman Property Trust increased 8c or 3.54 per cent to $2.34; and Auckland International Airport climbed 10c to $7.11.

Pushpay Holdings was down 19c or 2.52 per cent to $7.35 and Mainfreight slipped 20c to $47.70.

Sky Network Television was savaged after reporting a full-year net loss of $156.97m, though it was an improvement on the $607.8m loss in the previous year. The latest result included a goodwill impairment of $177.5m.

Sky TV's revenue fell 6 per cent from $795m to $747.64m and subscribers totalled 990,000, above expectations, with streaming customers rising 153 per cent to 404,000. It is not paying a final dividend, and Sky TV's share price fell 1.8c or 10.84 per cent to 14.8c after reaching 16.6c the day before. Jarden kept the pay-TV provider at neutral but raised its price target.

Fishing company Sanford fell 15c or 2.52 per cent to $5.80 after it was announced chief executive Volker Kuntzsch was stepping down on September 18.

New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME) was the day's biggest mover, increasing 4c or 10 per cent to 44c after Californian private equity fund Osmium Partners said it had taken an 8.8 per cent stake.

In the United States, the Dow Jones rose 1.6 per cent to 27,940.47 points, the S&P 500 climbed 2.01 per cent to 3398.96 and the technology-driven Nasdaq went up 2.71 per cent to 11,141.56 after falling 4.11 per cent the previous day.

Apple recovered 3.99 per cent to US$117.32 ($175.41), Microsoft was up 4.26 per cent to US$211.29, Amazon gained 3.77 per cent to US$3268.61 and Tesla cut its loss by half after rising 10.92 per cent to US$366.28 following the 21 per cent drop the day before.