NZ shares edge up in light trading, led by Air NZ, Fletcher, Xero drops

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand shares barely moved in quiet trading, with Air New Zealand and Fletcher Building leading gains while Xero declined.

The S&P/NZX 50 index rose 7.34 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 7,440.08. Within the index, 21 stocks rose, 21 fell and eight were unchanged.

Turnover was $131.1 million.

Trading was quiet for a second day, having been muted when much of Australia was closed for a public holiday yesterday.

Blue chip stocks led gains with Air New Zealand the best performer, up 3.5 per cent to $3.07, while Fletcher Building gained 2.5 per cent to $7.74 and SkyCity Entertainment Group advanced 2 per cent to $4.50.

Tegel Group was unchanged at $1.09, although 10.65 million, or 3 per cent of shares on issue, were traded today, well ahead of their 90-day average of around 583,000 shares traded. Of that, some 10.3 million changed hand in a single transaction at $1.075.

"Yesterday we had our lowest volume day this year, obviously with Australia closed but today I don't think we've done much better," said David Price, broker at Forsyth Barr.

"If you strip the Tegel trade out, some of the things are just tiny, volumes are very spartan. Our market has been bouncing along in a holding pattern for a while now, some of the risk we've been worried about has come to pass but domestically there's a lack of any real corporate news."

The dual-listed banks rose with Westpac Banking Corp up 2.1 per cent to $32.10 while Australia & New Zealand Banking Group gained 1.9 per cent to $29.56.

Vital Healthcare Property Trust increased 0.2 percent to $2.23. The Auckland-based property investor has continued its acquisition spree with the purchase of a private psychiatric hospital in Sydney for A$30.3 million. It bought the 59-bed The Hills Clinic, which offers specialist inpatient programmes operated by Australian private hospital operator Healthe Care, which will sign a 30-year lease with Vital.

Xero was the worst performer, down 2.4 per cent to $24. The stock has pulled back this week after a strong run of gains led it to a three-year high of $26.50 last Wednesday, but is still up 41 per cent in the year.

Vista Group International dropped 1.8 per cent to $5.95 and Auckland International Airport declined 1.7 per cent to $6.95.

Spark New Zealand dipped 0.3 per cent to $3.67. Auckland-based Spark bought Auckland-based marketing automation firm Ubiquity Software for an undisclosed sum. The country's biggest telecommunications firm will use its Qrious data warehousing service to inform Ubiquity's marketing platform to "gain scale and critical mass significantly quicker than if Qrious was to develop this software capability on its own", it said.

Fonterra Shareholders' Fund dropped 0.8 per cent to $5.90. ASX-listed Bellamy's Australia plans to raise A$60.4 million from shareholders and will pay nearly half of that to New Zealand's Fonterra Cooperative Group in order to change their milk supply contract in its quest to comply with Chinese import regulations.