21 Jul 2011

NZ sharemarket flat

2:06 pm on 21 July 2011

The New Zealand sharemarket's benchmark NZX50 index rose 7 points to 3415 in Thursday morning trading on turnover of $36 million.

At 12.30pm, Fletcher Building was up 1 cent to $8.13, Contact Energy was unchanged at $5.36 and Telecom was up 2 cents at $2.575.

Vector was down 1 cent at $2.38 after reporting customer numbers fell 10% in the year to the end of June.

Sky City Entertainment Group was up 1 cent at $3.56, Sky Network TV was up 1 cent at $5.79 and Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down 1 cent at $2.57.

Mainfreight was unchanged at $10.22, NZX was up 6 cents to $2.28.

Auckland International Airport was unchanged at $2.285.

Argosy Property Trust was unchanged at 82 cents after its independent directors backed a plan to pay out the manager and bring the management of the property portfolio in-house.

Goodman Property Trust was unchanged at $1.22 after extending its $80 million short term bank facility by five years.

Diligent was unchanged at $1.26 after Carroll Capital Holdings has reduced its stake in the company.

Heartland Bank was unchanged at 63 cent after releasing more detail about its $35 million stock purchase plan for shareholders, which will help fund its acquisition of PGG Wrightson Finance.

Across the Tasman, the Australian 200 index was up 16 points, or 0.36%, to 4566

In currency markets, the NZ dollar was trading at US85.59 cents, 79.58 Australian, 52.97 pence, 67.52 yen and 0.6006 euro. The TWI stood at 73.66.