Stocks resilient after rate rise and Wall Street fall

The sharemarket made modest progress yesterday, which was seen as a good effort given mixed performances in overseas markets.

The NZX-50 index closed up 6.89 points to 4069.41.

It had recovered from early losses on the back of a weak performance by Wall Street and news of a quarter point rise in interest rates by the Reserve Bank.

A buoyant housing market triggered an increase in the central bank's benchmark interest rate to 7.5 per cent, which is usually a negative for equity markets.

Fletcher Building was down 2c at $10.99 as one of the few stocks exposed to the housing market the central bank wants to calm down.

Market leader Telecom rose 5c to $4.78. Goldman Sachs JBWere broker Jeremy Coe said investors were still positioning for an announcement on the sale of the company's directories business. Many were expecting a sizeable buyback of shares with the proceeds but "we're in the camp that thinks it might disappoint some people".

The Warehouse was down 12c at $6.76 ahead of its half-year result today. Coe said the stock price was in a bit of a news void with no word from the Commerce Commission yet on applications by both Foodstuffs and Woolworths. The stock looked expensive on fundamentals and there had been a mergers and acquisitions premium in it for some time.

Contact Energy eased 5c to $8.94 after announcing the purchase of the Rockgas business this week.

Steel & Tube was up 12c at $4.38 and Coe said steelmakers in Australia performed well yesterday.

Auckland International Airport was down 2c at $2.35 after reporting that passenger numbers were up but aircraft numbers were down in January from the same month last year.

Air NZ fell 7c to $2.25 on the second highest turnover of 7 million shares.

Fisher & Paykel Appliances rose 3c to $3.75 but F&P Healthcare eased 2c to $3.88. Hellaby rose 9c to $4.15.

Restaurant Brands was unchanged at $1.13 after releasing sales figures and saying its pizza business was not yet meeting targets.

Pumpkin Patch rose 5c to $4.50. SkyCity fell 7c to $4.73 on turnover of nearly 4 million shares.

- NZPA