Market close: Pushpay, Vista Group lead sharemarket higher

Pushpay rose 7c or 4.43 per cent to $1.65. Photo / Pushpay

The New Zealand sharemarket got back on an even keel by making solid gains during the day – but it ran out of puff towards the finish line.

The S&P/NZX 50 Index was up as much as 1 per cent – erasing half the loss of the day before – but the index closed at 13,127.29, a rise of 40.82 points or 0.31 per cent. The intraday high was 13,279.96, and overall the index was down 1.5 per cent in a fascinating week.

Trading picked up later in the day, with 50.2 million shares worth $174.88 million changing hands, and there were 82 gainers and 55 decliners over the whole market.

Matt Goodson, managing director of Salt Funds Management, said "we had a little bit of a bounce but it certainly faded as the day progressed – just as the Australian market did.

"We've had quite extraordinary volatility out of the US in the last few days involving the heavily-shorted stocks like GameStop and the hedge funds having to cover their positions. I've never seen so much uncertainty as to what will happen next – but the speculative excess occurs when you can get money so cheaply," he said.

Some calm came over Wall Street overnight. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.99 per cent to 30,603.36, the S&P 500 Index was up 0.98 per cent to 3787.38, the Nasdaq Composite increased 0.5 per cent to 13,337.16, and games firm GameStop fell 44 per cent to US$193.60 ($270.51).

Locally, many of the leading stocks had a recovery day. Fisher and Paykel Healthcare was 14c to $34.64; Chorus climbed 17c or 2.06 per cent to $8.43; a2 Milk rose 21c or 1.85 per cent to $11.54; Ebos Group gained 22c to $28.62; Skellerup Holdings was up 14c or 3.73 per cent to $3.89; and Freightways increased 10c to $11.

The "volatile" energy stocks had a mixed day. Mercury was up 1.5c to $7.125; Genesis increased 7.5c or 1.95 per cent to $3.92; Vector rose 7c or to $4.30; Tilt Renewables was up 13c to $6.28; while Contact was down 18c or 2.16 per cent to $8.17 and Meridian slipped 6c to $7.15. Utilities investor Infratil fell 46c or 6.01 per cent to $7.20.

With no new Covid community cases here, Auckland International Airport rose 28c or 3.9 per cent to $7.45, and Air New Zealand was unchanged at $1.59. The Covid-19 impact on the airline was still obvious – total passengers carried in December were down 51.7 per cent to 881,000, from 1.824 million in the same month in 2019.

Oceania Healthcare increased 4c or 2.6 per cent to a new high of $1.58, while fellow retirement village operator Ryman Healthcare fell 24c to $15.56.

Two of the biggest movers were Pushpay, up 7c or 4.43 per cent to $1.65, and cinema software firm Vista Group, rising 6c or 4.2 per cent to $1.49. Electronics manufacturer Rakon was down 3c or 4.17 per cent to 69c.

Restaurant Brands rose 22c or 1.91 per cent to $11.75 after reporting a 2.1 per cent increase in total sales for the year ending December – and up 8.4 per cent by including four months trading of its new Californian business. Revenue increased $54.5m to $269.1m for the fourth quarter with the American sales.

Kiwi Property reported a 12 per cent increase in December sales, compared with the previous same month, at its Auckland Sylvia Park shopping centre and its share price increased 2c to $1.29. Sales across all the company's shopping centres rose 6.1 per cent for the final three months of last year.

Cannasouth increased 3c or 5.08 per cent to 62c after telling the market it had obtained a Medicinal Cannabis Agency licence for its cultivation facility in the Waikato.

Transport technology services company EROAD fell 33c or 6.2 per cent to $4.99 after providing a mixed update for the three months ending December. The company's contracted units in New Zealand and Australia grew by 1284 but it faced challenging conditions in North America. EROAD anticipates a small increase in revenue in the second half of the present financial year.