14 Feb 2011

NZ and Australian markets up

1:13 pm on 14 February 2011

The New Zealand sharemarket was up on Monday morning.

At 12.15pm, the NZX 50 index was up 1 point to 33 67 on turnover of $31 million.

Fletcher Building was down 1 cent at $8.15, Contact Energy was down 2c at $6.21 and Telecom was up 1c at $2.17.

Sky City Entertainment was unchanged at $3.30 and Sky Television was unchanged at $5.45.

Auckland International Airport Ltd was up 1c to $2.23, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare was down 5c to $3.03 and Air New Zealand was up 1c to $1.40.

Freightways was up 5c to $3.25 after reporting an improved half year profit, due to increased demand for its courier and information management services.

Guinness Peat Group was down 2c to 75c after last week announcing it will sell nearly all its assets and return $158 million this year.

Tower, in which GPG has a third stake, rose 1c to $2.00.

The Warehouse was up 1c to $3.54, Kathmandu was down 1c to $2.10 and Pumpkin Patch was up 1c to $1.46.

Infratil was up 1c to $1.93 after buying the Bamarang generation development site for $A9million. The site is 160km south of Sydney and is considered a quality site for the development of a gas fired power plant.

Pharmacy Brands was down 1c to 44c after announcing an agreement to buy Radius Pharmacy for $17.1 million.

Across the Tasman, the Australian 200 index was up 33 points to 4914.

The New Zealand dollar was trading at 75.74 US cents, 75.65 Australian cents, 47.33 pence, 63.18 yen and 0.5604 euro. The Trade Weighted Index was at 67.73.