MARKET CLOSE: NZ shares mixed, Synlait, A2, Fisher & Paykel gain

Wednesday 17th January 2018

New Zealand shares were mixed, with Synlait Milk, A2 Milk Co and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corp leading gains.

The S&P/NZX50 Index rose 47.13 points, or 0.6 percent, to 8,297.67. Within the index, 24 stocks fell, 18 rose and 8 were unchanged. Turnover was $114 million.

"It's still pretty quiet, markets are still a bit subdued," said Mark Lister, head of private wealth research at Craigs Investment Partners. "We've had a string of slightly down days, but yesterday and today have been positive."

Synlait Milk led the index higher, up 3.7 percent to $7.05, while A2 Milk rose 3.1 percent to $8.25. A2 said today it plans to roll out its US business to nine states on the eastern seaboard, which it expects will expand its retail footprint by more than a third.

"They've been through a period of a little bit of consolidation, some minor weakness early in the year after such a strong run last year but they have had a bit of a rebound in the last couple of days," Lister said. "They've just clawed back all of the weakness we saw through the back end of last week, back to where they were in that first week of January."

Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Corp gained 2.8 percent to $13.39.

"It fell quite sharply through the first 10 or 12 days of January - it had a very strong end to 2017, but also the US dollar was quite weak in the first couple of weeks of the year," Lister said. "The New Zealand dollar rose from in the high 60s right up to 73 cents, so they were weakening off a bit. It feels like we might've seen the bulk of that NZ dollar strength for the time being, the currency has come off the boil a bit in the last 24 hours and maybe that has seen a few bargain hunters take another look at FPH."

Kathmandu Holdings was the worst performer, down 2.9 percent to $2.31, with Port of Tauranga falling 2.8 percent to $4.94 and Ryman Healthcare dropping 2.5 percent to $10.64.

(BusinessDesk)

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