Stocks to watch: Contact, Heritage Gold, Mainfreight, NZX

Monday 7th December 2009

The following stocks may be active on the New Zealand exchange after developments since the close of trading yesterday.

Themes of the day: The US dollar soared against the euro and the yen in New York on Friday after government figures showed the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 10% from 10.2% in October. In New Zealand, investors are awaiting the central bank’s monetary policy statement on Thursday that may point to stronger economic growth while keeping the official cash rate unchanged at 2.5%.

Contact Energy (CEN): The biggest utility on the NZX 50 chose Indian IT firm Wipro for a $60 million upgrade of its software systems. The deal may involve outsourcing about 65 jobs to Wipro as part of the deal, according to the Dominion Post. Call-centre workers aren’t affected. The shares were unchanged at $5.85 on Friday.

Heritage Gold NZ (HGD): The stock surged 18% to 4.6 cents on Friday after the miner announced it had been granted a 25-year permit to extract gold and silver from the site of the old Talisman mine near Paeroa. The company is in talks with potential Chinese investors about the project.

Mainfreight (MFT): The transport company is rated ‘market perform’ by ASB Securities analyst David Boyce, according to the ShareChat website. Boyce said He raised his forecast for full-year net profit by 21% to $30.6 million, down from last year’s $40 million, and raised his valuation on the stock to $5.26 from $4.67. The shares were unchanged at $5.60 on Friday.

New Zealand Oil & Gas (NZO): Commercial oil and gas flowed for the first time from the Kupe gas field on Friday. NZOG announced the commissioning of the plant to process about 254 petajoules of natural gas, 1.1 million tonnes of LPG and 14.7 million barrels of light oil expected to be extracted from Kupe. The shares rose 1.2% to $1.72 on Friday.

NZX (NZX): The stock exchange operator and regulator will increase its liquidity after it announced a three-to-one share split, boosting the number of shares on offer to 123 million. NZX will also increase its dividend payment to shareholders by at least 1 cent annually for the next five years. The shares gained 0.5% to $7.90 in trading on Friday.

Businesswire.co.nz

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