Trustpower leads NZ sharemarket lower
Sluggish trading day as world waits for US reporting season
New Zealand shares dropped, led lower by Trustpower and New Zealand Refining Co, while Sky Network Television rebounded from Monday’s sell-off.
The S&P/NZX 50 Index fell 28.72 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 9022.93. Within the index, 27 stocks fell, 16 rose and seven were unchanged. Turnover was $114 million.
“We’ve been a bit sluggish, there’s always the school holidays excuse,” said Peter McIntyre, investment adviser at Craigs Investment Partners. “With the US reporting season opening on Thursday, we’re expecting another really robust reporting season with earning-per-share growth of 8.5 to 9 per cent and revenue growth around 20 per cent. We’ve just got a void of information running through the market prior to that.” Trustpower was the worst performer, down 2.3 per cent to $5.62, with New Zealand Refining Co dropping 2 per cent to $2.47, Skycity
Entertainment Group falling 2 per cent to $4.03, and Kathmandu Holdings down 1.7 per cent to $2.88. Sky TV was the best performer, up 3.1 per cent to $2.70, having been the worst performer on Monday when it dropped 5.1 per cent. A2 Milk Co rose 1.9 per cent to $11.66, Investore Property gained 1.3 per cent to $1.52, and Stride Property was up 1.1 per cent to $1.88.
Summerset Holdings gained 0.4 per cent to $7.56. Its first-half profit rose as much as 26 per cent as stronger development margins made up for a lower volume of new sales.
Gentrack Group gained 0.7 per cent to $6.95. It came out of a trading halt on Monday after raising about $52.4m in a discounted stock offer to institutional investors as part of a twostage share sale aimed at raising funds to repay debt used for a recent flurry of acquisitions. Precinct Properties was unchanged at $1.36. It has refinanced its $760m bank debt facility, which was due to expire in November 2020, extending $460m of the existing facilities in two new tranches expiring in July 2022 and July 2023, with the balance of the facility expiring in November 2020.
Outside the benchmark index, ERoad fell 6.9 per cent to $3.25.
PGG Wrightson rose 4.8 per cent to 66 cents.