Index slips by 0.5% as rollercoaster week comes to a close

Z shares declined at the end of a volatile week that saw Donald Trump win the US presidency. Orion Health Group and Kathmandu Holdings led the index lower, while Trade Me Group rose.

The S& P/ NZX50 dropped 35.93 points, or 0.5 per cent, to 6697.79. Within the index, 32 stocks fell, 12 rose and seven were unchanged. Turnover was $ 177.3 million.

“We’ve had a bit of a rough day and I think we’ve got more in store,” said David Price, broker at Forsyth Barr. “A good thing to remember is this isn’t going to blow over in the course of a few days. We’ll have quite a lot of volatility before things really get bedded down offshore. You have seen quite a strong sell- off in the interest- ratesensitive stocks. The market’s had a pretty strong run over a long period of time. It has been stretched on historic multiples and there’s probably room for it to come back a little further.” Orion fell 6.7 per cent to $ 2.80. “It’s fallen on a lack of volume and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment; the movements are accentuated by a lack of volume,” Price said. “We’ve had a lot of people domestically who’ve been allocating offshore, because they feel offshore assets are better value, so when something comes through it’s not met with the wall of buying that we had seen previously.”

Kathmandu Holdings dropped 4.5 per cent to $ 1.91 and Auckland International Airport dropped 3.3 per cent to $ 6.11.

Infratil fell 2.2 per cent to $ 2.88. The listed infrastructure investor reported a 7.1 per cent fall in earnings as its Perth Energy division faced difficult retail conditions in Western Australia, and the company now sees its annual result tracking at the bottom end of its forecast.

Trade Me Group was the best performer, up 3.7 per cent to $ 4.72. Westpac Banking Corp rose 3.6 per cent to $ 33.60, and Australia & New Zea- land Banking Group gained 2.9 per cent to $ 29.80.

Sky Network Television advanced 1.4 per cent to $ 4.30. The date for a decision on its Commerce Commission application to merge with Vodafone NZ has been pushed back to December 21 to let the regulator process new submissions and cross submissions.

Warehouse Group was un- changed at $ 3. The retailer increased first- quarter sales with uplifts across all its brands ahead of the key Christmas trading period.

Outside the benchmark index, Seeka was unchanged at $ 4.50. The kiwifruit grower says it has settled a second insurance claim from a 2015 fire, and has updated its earnings guidance to reflect the “extraordinary gain” of $ 3.6m.

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