20 Aug 2010

NZ and Australian markets down

1:06 pm on 20 August 2010

The New Zealand stock market has fallen on Friday. At 12.42pm, the NZX50 index was down 21 points, to 3008 on turnover of $19 million.

Fletcher Building was down 8 cents to $7.35 after acquiring a roading business in Australia.

Telecom was down 3c to $2.07 after posting a 20% fall in full year profit of $382 million.

Contact Energy was down 7c to $5.70 after reporting a 6% fall in full year profit of $150 million.

Sky City Entertainment was down 1c to $2.87.

Sky Network Television was down 7c to $4.85, despite profits rising 16% to almost $103 million in the year to the end of June.

Air New Zealand was unchanged at $1.18 and The Warehouse was down 1c to $3.46. Mainfreight was unchanged at $6.70.

Michael Hill International down 2 cents to 67 cents, after boosting its underlying earnings by almost half to 31 million dollars.

Freightways was down 4c to $2.88.

Allied Farmers was unchanged at 2.7c as its finance arm, Allied Nationwide Finance missed a payment to investors.

Across the Tasman, the Australian 200 index was down 35 points to 4443.

The New Zealand dollar was trading at 70.70 US, 79.32 Australian cents, 45.40 pence, 60.30 yen and 0.5525 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 66.16.