Prices take a dive at the close of the day
The NZ sharemarket took a late dive yesterday as global investment manager BlackRock rebalanced its stocks, but four leading companies that were hit earlier had nice bounce-backs. The S&P/NZX 50 Index, taking a breather from a flurry of company financial results this week, traded flat for most of the day before falling 61.08 points or 0.5 per cent to
12,182.25 in the last half hour.
There were 88 gainers and 57 decliners over the whole market on light volume of
26.9 million share transactions worth $105.27 million.
Shane Solly, Harbour Asset Management portfolio manager, said investors have “a bit of digesting to do over the company results. By and large the results have been okay, but it’s their outlook statements that have been clouded and made investors cautious.
“It’s been an exciting market reacting to news flow, and the latest reporting season means people will have to refresh their earnings forecasts. This might be as good as it gets for a little while, while we see what happens with [economic] growth. Even the Reserve Bank is starting to take the punch out of the party.”
The local market has fallen 10 per cent since reaching its January 8 all-time high of 13,558.19 but is still more than 12 per cent ahead for the past 12 months.
Making the bounce-backs were retirement village operators Ryman Healthcare, up 24c or 1.87 per cent to $13.06, and
Summerset Group Holdings, gaining 29c or 2.39 per cent to $12.40.
Auckland International Airport, facing unfounded fears of the transtasman travel bubble bursting, recovered 29c or 4.14 per cent to $7.30; and a2 Milk increased 18c or 3.16 per cent to $5.88.
Airport software firm Gentrack,
reporting signs of growth, rose 13c or 6.91 per cent to $2.01; Tourism Holdings
climbed 8c or 3.31 per cent to $2.50; AMP
gained 5c or 4.17 per cent to $1.25; and Turners Automotive Group increased 5c to $4.19. Fonterra Shareholders’ Fund
was up another 7c to $4; and Sanford
increased 8c to $4.71.
Market leader Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, one of the stocks that provided a confusing outlook, fell 49c to $29.21; Freightways was down 45c or 3.75 per cent to $11.54; Mercury Energy declined 40c or 5.76 per cent to $6.54; Pushpay Holdings shed 5c or 2.86 per cent to $1.70; and Goodman Property Trust decreased 6c or 2.63 per cent to $2.22.
Transportation tech firm EROAD rose 15c or 2.77 per cent to $5.56 after posting a 93 per cent gain in net profit to $2.01m on revenue of $91.63m, up 13 per cent.