THE MARKET Index at new high

Press, 2 May 1985, Page 29

THE MARKET Index at new high

Strength in the market leaders pushed the Barclay’s index to yet another record on the New Zealand sharemarket yesterday; it closed at 1552.63 — 1.13 points above the previous all-time high set only last week.

Turnover was lowest this week as 4,560,052 shares changed hands, worth $6,622,088 — but the number of issues traded and the number of separate parcels, was very high.

The market was again very busy yesterday, said Mr Max Mathias, a Christchurch sharebroker. “There is still a lot of money out there.” Apart from the strong gains by the top leaders such as Fletchers and Brierleys, there was good interest in some of the new floats, especially the Queens-town-based ones, Mr Mathias said.

The market had been exceptionally active in the last few days, with the leaders showing a distinct amount of firmness, said Mr Phil Bothamley, a partner in the Wellington sharebroking firm Harcourt

Longuet Hume and Co. A share like Brierleys can still manage to pick up as much as 5c a call after having drifted for a few days, he said, and another aspect of the underlying strength of the market was the way it shrugged off the strong rise in interest rates.

Market leaders to firm were Brierley Investments up 8c to 462, Cable Price Downer up 5c to 325, Wattie Industries up 5c to 395, Lion up 5c to 260 and Carter Holt up 2c to 312. Aggressive buying took Fletcher Challenge up 7c on a string of big sales, to finish at 352.

ANZ Banking, down 5c to 327, Crown down 1c to 152, Farmers Trading Company, down 2c to 153, and NZ Forest Products down 2c to 315, were the more important losers. Shares in Canterbury Frozen Meat shot up 60c ex dividend to 350 on the strength of its directors acceptance of a takeover offer from Apex Group, Ltd. Apex itself rose 2c to 272. Similarly, shares in fellow meat processor R and W Hel-

laby were up 24c to 112 on a string of big sales after the Crown Corp subsidiary, Aotearoa Meat, Ltd, announced that it was standing in the market for 20 per cent of Hellabys. Aotearoa has included an escalation clause, so that its offer price for parcels of 100,000 shares will go up as Hellaby share prices escalate. More than 307,000 shares in NZI Corp sold at 166; the big sale appears to be a sign that people were catching up after the stock had traded thinly over the past few days. Buying interest in gas companies showed through, with shares in Auckland Gas rising 25c to 315 and in East Coast Gas Supply firming 2c to J 77. Rarely-traded stocks to firm included Manthel Motors, up 30c to 500, and Otago Press and Produce, up 10 to 530. Leisureland rose 7c to 85, and Rainbow possibly on the strength the fact that it is a promoting company of Omnicorp (the rights for which trade today) rose 7c to 85.