Telecom retreat sends NZ sharemarket lower

By NZPA

Tuesday 27th March 2007

A retreat by Telecom in early trading following yesterday's 11c spike on the sale of its Yellow Pages unit sent the sharemarket down today.

The Yellow Pages sale for $2.24 billion raised hopes of a healthy capital return for shareholders and yesterday sent the market heavyweight's shares up 11c. But today, reality set in and the stock had retreated 7c to $4.72 by 10.10am.

The NZSX-50 benchmark index was down 10.77 to 4094.28 following yesterday's 1% rise.

Hallenstein Glasson was down 5c to $5.10 after it posted an 8.6% fall in half year net profit after tax to $9.97m, which it blamed on the cool early summer.

Fletcher Building rose 3c to $10.99, while Air NZ was down 2c to $2.23.

Contact Energy, which gave a briefing in Taupo today, was down 3c to $9.05. Sky TV was up 4c to $5.45.

Cadmus was unchanged on 19.5c. Over 20 million shares, 8%, of the company traded yesterday. No substantial security holder notice has been filed and the company said it did not know who had purchased the parcel.

On Wall Street, US technology stocks rose, pulled higher by positive broker comments on companies such as Dell, but renewed signs of weakness in the housing market halted a five-day winning streak for the Dow.

Blue chips initially fell on weak new-home sales data but losses were trimmed as Exxon jumped 0.7%.

The Dow ended down 11.94 points at 12,469.07 -- ending its longest winning streak since early February. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 1.39 points to end at 1,437.50 and the Nasdaq inched up 6.70 points, or 0.27%, to close at 2,455.63.

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