Fleet management company Eroad was one of the biggest gainers in the market today, with its share price up 49% from last week when it fell to its lowest share price ever.

The S&P/NZX 50 Index rose 57 points or 0.51%, to 11,169.24. Turnover was light at $94.2 million.

Grant Davies, an investment adviser at Hamilton Hindin Greene, said it had been a good week for NZ’s equities market.

“We’ve seen commodity prices start to start to normalise which is clearly one of the drivers of inflation at the moment and that’s been warmly greeted by the NZ market,” he said.

“We're closing the week in reasonably good shape.”

He said fleet company Eroad had struggled with issues in the last twelve months but had managed to recover some of the lost ground over the last week.

“There’s still a good company in there which has had their issues in terms of monetising and continuing to grow their market share,” he said.

“But the key thing is that the market is recognizing that there's still a quality company there and the share price is starting to recover on the back of that.”

He noted that there hadn’t been a huge amount of volume movement of the stock either.

“It’s not the most liquid of stocks so it can be moved around a lot by one motivated seller or one motivated buyer,” he said.

Eroad shares were up 10% to $2.29 at midday before ending the day up 5.3% to $2.19 – 72 cents higher than last Friday.

Biggest fall

SkyCity Entertainment Group had the biggest fall today, falling 6.2% to $2.58.

The stock has been struggling all week since the news was released that South Australia's gaming regulator would be conducting an independent review of SkyCity Adelaide as part of a broader Australian inquiry into the casino industry.

“From an investor's point of view, there’s probably an element of increased uncertainty around what will happen with that,” Davies said.

“And investors don't like uncertainty – there's a reason for some to sell on the back of that.”

Global logistics firm Mainfreight was up 1% to $71 and dairy co-op Fonterra's shareholder fund units were down 0.31% to $3.19. 

Mainfreight and Fonterra have been affected by the latest farmer protests in the Netherlands where both companies have operations there.

Dutch farmers have once again taken to the streets to protest their government’s nitrogen policy, which is aimed at slashing nitrogen oxide and ammonia by 50% by 2030.

Mainfreight and Fonterra said there have been some minor issues and delays that have arisen for both companies due to the strikes.

AGM

Property investor Goodman Property Trust shares were up 0.73% to $2.06 at midday and after its AGM this afternoon, its shares rose 1.2% to $2.07 by the end of the day.

The meeting’s resolution – re-appointing Keith Smith as an independent director – was approved by unitholders after the meeting, with 86.9% of unitholders in favour and 13.1% against.

Napier Port released its latest volume data for its third quarter and nine months ended June 30 today and told the NZX that its containerised cargo volume increased by 1.5% and bulk cargo volume decreased by 2%. 

The port operator’s shares were up 0.72% to $2.80 at end of day trading.

The British pound barely budged over the announcement of the resignation of UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson and was trading at US$1.20 (NZ$1.95) at the end of today.

Independent treasury adviser Peter Cavanaugh said this clearly showed the markets were expecting the politician’s resignation.

“Boris Johnson has been a goneburger for some time – so long that it's gone cold,” he said.

“The markets had already decided that that was going to happen and now that's happened, they're going, well what's next.”

The NZ dollar was trading at 61.84 US cents at 3pm in Wellington, down from 61.60 cents yesterday. The trade-weighted index was at 70.34, from 70.27 yesterday.