Metro Glass and A2 the highlights
Fund manager suggests investors may be taking some profits
New Zealand shares rose, led by Metro Performance Glass and A2 Milk Co, while Fletcher Building eased back again after giving up a 20c dividend. The S&P/NZX50 index rose 1.72 points, or 0.02 per cent, to 7062.55. Within the index, 22 stocks rose, 19 fell and nine were unchanged. Turnover was $186.5 million.
Metro Performance Glass led the index, up 4.3 per cent to $1.45, continuing its recovery after weakness following its results.
A2 Milk Co gained 2.5 per cent to $2.84, Sky Network Television rose 2.4 per cent to $3.78 and Ryman Healthcare advanced 1.8 per cent to $8.35.
Fletcher Building was down 2.7 per cent, or 22c, to $7.92, after giving up rights to a 20c interim dividend. The shares plunged over 10 per cent on Monday after it unexpectedly cut full-year earnings guidance by $110 million because of losses related to construction projects. The downgrade came just four weeks after the company affirmed earlier guidance for the full-year while announcing its firsthalf results.
“It’s a reasonable volume day. It got up to 10 million on the 20th and for the past few days we’ve had high fours, low fives, which is quite a lot of volume — at the higher end of the range,” said Shane Solly at Harbour Asset Management. “Certainly some offshore investors may have gotten a bit of a surprise at this. It has been very well owned and invested in, particularly by some Australian institutional investors. There’s a bit of disappointment rolling through. Perhaps it’s investors taking a view on New Zealand in a broader context, saying it’s been a very strong economy, a very strong market, and we’ll just take some profits.”
Xero dropped 2.8 per cent to $19 while Argosy Property dipped 1 per cent to $1. Heartland Bank fell 2.4 per cent to $1.61. The New Zealand Shareholders Association has criticised Heartland over $40m of capital completed this month after its discounted share purchase plan closed more t han t hree t i mes oversubscribed.
The lender raised $20m selling shares to existing investors at $1.46 apiece in March, and the offer was scaled back because it received applications for $62m of shares. That added to $20m it raised via a place- ment to institutional investors at the same price in December.
Spark New Zealand declined 0.4 per cent to $3.385, while TeamTalk rose 6.4 per cent to 83c.
Spark says an independent valuation range for TeamTalk, which it has in its sights to take over, lacks credibility and the top end of the range amounts to an “absurd premium”. TeamTalk shares surged after the report was released and are now higher than Spark’s offer price.
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