New Zealand Refining Company's share price jumped 16c today to $3.40 – a rise of nearly 5% – on the back of a high-profile official opening of its $195 million Point Forward expansion, which has lifted the refinery capacity by 15% to around 1
New Zealand Refining Company's share price jumped 16c today to $3.40 – a rise of nearly 5% – on the back of a high-profile official opening of its $195 million Point Forward expansion, which has lifted the refinery capacity by 15% to around 135,000 barrels a day.
The company now produces about 80% of the diesel, petrol and jet fuel used in New Zealand and it has described the expansion as a long term investment.
Air New Zealand shares slipped back to where they started the day – at $1.03c each – despite the company's denial that it had actually bought any shares in airline Virgin Blue, causing a brief flurry of excitement and a 1c lift in the share price.
The two airlines are seeking regulatory approval for an alliance on transtasman operations, and there has been media speculation that Air NZ is considering taking a cornerstone stake of up to 15% in Virgin Blue.
Air NZ has not directly ruled out such a move and said it would advise the market "in the event of any such investment."
The benchmark NZX-50 index was not so indecisive – it fell a further 16.556 points to 2985.760, down 0.5%, after slipping 25.1 points yesterday amid weakness in offshore markets.
There were 20 rises and 20 falls among the 44 stocks traded. A total of 22.5 million shares worth $52.04 million were traded and over the week those tallies were 140 million shares valued at $292.37 million.
Today, Wall Street's tepid performance continued to shadow other markets, and Asian shares were mostly lower.
The Nikkei stock average in Japan and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong both slipped, while Australian shares were also down and trading in a narrow range in the run-up to the weekend.
In New Zealand, Auckland Airport's shares fell 2c to $1.94 after the company said it was to further delay the building of a planned second runway: it said the existing runway could cope with traffic growth for a few years longer than previously expected.
Contact Energy shares finished steady on $5.74 and Port of Tauranga was down 5c to $6.85, Freightways fell 3c to $2.65, Sanford fisheries 6c to $4, Fisher and Paykel Health dropped 4c to $3.02.
On a more positive note, 1c rises lifted Telecom to $1.89, Pumpkin Patch to $1.93 and Rakon to 93c, while the Warehouse retail chain rose 2c to $3.52.
Australian shares opened flat today after losing ground on Thursday because China reported a slightly weaker-than-expected economic growth.
On Friday the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index gained a tiny 0.2% shortly after the market opened and then began dropping, finishing the day down 19.8 points at 4442.6.
