NZ sharemarket edges up on end of month trading

The New Zealand sharemarket made a small gain on a mixed bag of gains and losses ahead of the coming reporting season.

Wednesday, July 31st 2024, 6:35PM

by BusinessDesk

The S&P/NZX 50 Index dipped, rose and then dipped again in a trading day characterised by a lack of discernible character. It closed at 12,405.27, up 14.22 points or 0.11%, after reaching an intraday high of 12,441.5.

There were 65 gainers and 71 decliners over the whole market on volumes of 43 million share transactions worth $162.1m.

Trading volumes rocketed at the end of the day to wrap up the month as traders sorted through their month-end rebalances and adjustments.

Before that, Blair Knight, the head of sales trading at Craigs Investment Partners, said it had been a slow news day and that trading had been “depressed” before the market closed.

The index remains up 5.2% for the month and has gained more than 5.6% for the year.

Gainers

Most of the day's top gainers were micro-cap companies, with Greenfern Industries and TruScreen Group rounding out the top two spots, rising 16.67% to 6.3 cents and 11.76% to 19 cents, respectively.

According to Knight, the “highlight” of the day was Tower Insurance, which rose 4.5 cents or 4.19% to $1.12. Knight said he believed Tower’s success was due to Craigs initiating company coverage on Tuesday at an overweight position with a target price of $1.46.

He said Craigs’ private wealth network is taking an interest in the company in what had been, up until this point, not a well-covered stock.

Hallenstein Glasson rose 32 cents or 5.71% to finish the day at $5.92.

Fletcher Building bounced back 2 cents or 0.65% to $3.12 after a tough couple of days following a negative market update. Late in the day, the company announced it had successfully completed a transaction to divest 50% of its Fiji construction business.

Freightways was up 31 cents, or 3.53%, to $9.10; Gentrack Group was up 39 cents, or 1.63%, to $10.50; Summerset gained 18 cents, or 1.63%, to $11.20; and Warehouse Group added 2 cents, or 1.44%, to $1.41.

Decliners

Micro-cap companies also filled out the bottom rungs on the ladder, with the day’s largest decliner, Being AI, falling 5.13% to 37 cents.

Aged care specialist Radius Care dropped 1c or 4.65% to $2.05, still 11.41% above the $1.84 it was at the beginning of the month.

Argosy Properties fell 25 cents or 2.31% to $1.05, joining Vital Healthcare, which dropped 4 cents or 2.06% to $1.90 and Heartland, down 2 cents or 1.83% to $1.07.

a2 Milk shares fell sharply to start the day before recovering to just 6 cents or 0.75% below the opening price of $7.93 on volumes of $4m. This was after a promising week for the stock, Knight said.

Across the ditch

The big market news came from across the ditch, with the chance of an interest rate hike next week looking less likely following some mixed inflation data.

The Australian consumer price index rose by 1% in the second quarter of 2024, bringing annual headline inflation to 3.8%, above the March quarter figure of 3.6%.

This was largely anticipated, but the drop in “core inflation” to an annual rate of 4% to 3.9% was unexpected. The market appears to have liked the news with the S&P/ASX 50 rallying up 1.29% to 7,940.30 two hours before the Australian close.

The NZ dollar jumped 1 cent to 91 cents against the Australian dollar after the data release.

Tags: Market Close