Fletcher woes drag index lower for third day

Builder tumbles 2.4% but good gains in lands of milk and honey

New Zealand shares fell yesterday, dragged lower by Fletcher Building for a third day running, while exporters Comvita and a2 Milk continued to make gains. The S&P/NZX50 Index dipped 1.75 points, or 0.02 per cent, to 8084.99. Within the index, 24 stocks fell, 18 rose and eight were unchanged. Turnover was $220 million.

Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners, said the index had fallen this week with Fletcher Building’s falling share price leading the index lower.

Fletcher was the worst performer for the third day in a row, dropping 2.4 per cent to $7.28.

“It’s obviously slipped a bit further. It did look for a while that it had found a bit of a bottom . . . around $7.50 but it seems to have weakened later in the week,” Lister said.

“There are still two schools of thought on that one — there are definitely people who think that it might have kitchen-sinked it and all the bad news is out there, but obviously there is an equally large amount of cynicism about whether it’s done enough to get things back on track.”

Weakness in the kiwi dollar has also driven stocks this week, Lister said, with export stocks such as Comvita and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare making gains.

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare touched a record $13.49 yesterday, and ended up 0.4 per cent to $13.30, while Comvita led the index, up 2.4 per cent to $8.55.

A2 Milk rose 2.4 per cent to $8.60, with its supplier Synlait Milk also rising 2.3 per cent to $7.96. Property For Industry rose 0.9 per cent to $1.625.

It wants to raise $100 million through a new bond offer to repay existing bank debt.

Outside the benchmark index, Bethunes Investments jumped 90 per cent to 1.9c, Blis Technologies dropped 39 per cent to 1.7c and IkeGPS gained 21 per cent to 34c.