Tourism Holdings stars in light trade

Kiwi Property Group and Smiths City the worst performers as Top-50 index gains in truncated pre-Xmas session

New Zealand shares traded quietly in a truncated final session before Christmas, rising in light volume. The S&P/NZX50 Index rose 31.99 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 8396.43. Within the S&P/NZX50 Index, 30 shares gained, 11 fell and 9 were unchanged. Turnover was $46 million. Trading was shortened by four hours yesterday with the market closing at 1pm and settling at 1.30pm.

James Smalley, investment advisor at Hamilton Hindin Greene, said trading was “as you’d expect — pretty quiet and lacklustre at the moment”.

“Everyone has got the weekend and Christmas break on their minds. There is very little open market trading going on,” he said.

Tourism Holdings led the index higher, up 2.7 per cent to $5.65, while Kiwi Property Group was the worst performer, dropping 1.8 per cent to $1.38.

Speaking ahead of the Australian market opening at midday, Smalley said the local index may see volumes rise when the ASX began trading but as there was only an hour of overlap, he didn’t expect volumes to increase significantly.

Meridian Energy dipped 0.3 per cent to $2.93. It has agreed to buy Trustpower’s Australian hydro-electric generation assets for A$168 million, which it says will support an expanding retail business across the Tasman. Trustpower rose 0.67 per cent to $5.99.

Outside the benchmark index, Smiths City Group dropped 1.7 per cent to 58c. It posted a 5 per cent fall in revenue and only just broke even in the first half of the 2018 financial year as economic concerns weighed on consumer appetites.

Revenue dropped to $108.6 million from $113.9 million in the six months to October 31, with profit at just $2000 compared to $1.5 million a year earlier.