Refinery shines in a thin day's trade on NZX

New Zealand Refining Company's share price jumped 16c today to $3.40 - a rise of nearly 5 percent - on the back of a high-profile official opening of its $190 million Point Forward expansion, which lifted the refinery capacity by 15 percent to around 135,000 barrels a day.

The company now produces about 80 percent of the diesel, petrol and jet fuel used in New Zealand and described the expansion as a long term investment.

But Air New Zealand shares slipped back to where they started the day - at $1.03c each - despite the company's denial that it had actually bought any shares in airline Virgin Blue causing a brief flurry of excitement and a 1c lift in the share price.

The two airlines are seeking regulatory approval for an alliance on trans-Tasman operations, and there has been media speculation that Air NZ is considering taking a cornerstone stake of up to 15 percent in Virgin Blue.

Air NZ has not directly ruled out such a move and said it would advise the market "in the event of any such investment".

The benchmark NZX-50 index was not so indecisive - it fell a further 16.556 points to 2985.760 - down 0.551 percent - after slipping 25.1 points yesterday amid weakness in offshore markets. There were 20 rises and 20 falls among the 44 stocks traded. A total of 22.5 million shares worth $52.04m were traded and over the week those tallies were 140m shares valued at $292.37m.

Today, Wall Street's tepid performance continued to shadow other markets, and Asian shares were mostly lower, with the Nikkei stock average in Japan and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong slipping, while Australian shares were also down and trading in a narrow range in the run-up to the weekend.

In New Zealand, Auckland Airport's shares fell 2c to $1.94 after the company said it was to further delay the building of a planned second runway: it said the existing runway could cope with traffic growth for a few years longer than previously expected.

Contact Energy shares finished steady on $5.74 and Port of Tauranga was down 5c to $6.85, Freightways fell 3c to $2.65, Sanford fisheries 6c to $4, Fisher and Paykel Health dropped 4c to $3.02.

On a more positive note, 1c rises lifted Telecom to $1.89, Pumpkin Patch to $1.93 and Rakon to 93c, while the Warehouse retail chain rose 2c to $3.52.

In the United States, Wall Street closed down a little, even though the market pared most of its early losses after as BP said no more oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the well which blew out in April. This lifted BP's US-listed shares 7.6 per cent, but the news did not completely compensate for disappointing economic data including inflation figures, manufacturing in New York and industrial production across the country.

The Dow Jones industrial average dipped 0.1 per cent to end at 10,359.31, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index added 0.1 per cent to 1096.48, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was off 0.03 per cent to 2249.08.

Australian shares opened flat today after losing ground on Thursday because China reported a slightly weaker-than-expected economic growth. On Friday the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index gained a tiny 0.2 per cent shortly after the market opened and then began dropping, finishing the day down 19.8 points at 4442.6.

- NZPA