• Tigere grew distributable income 94.8% while EPU rose only 13.4%, a gap traced to acquisition financed unit placements rather than the fund’s newly announced scrip dividend programme
•  Tigere trades at a 23 to 25% premium to NAV despite this dilution mechanic, evidence the market is pricing the growth and liquidity story above book value rather than discounting future unit growth
•  Zimbabwe’s pension sector holds 44% of its assets in investment property against a 20% prescribed asset requirement, a concentration that plausibly supports demand for Tigere’s units though not yet proven at the register level

Tigere REIT grew distributable income 94.8% year on year in HY26 while earnings per unit grew only 13.4%. Weighted average units outstanding rose approximately 72% over the same period, from 1.07 billion to 1.84 billion.

That gap traces to two specific acquisition financed unit placements, not to Tigere’s scrip dividend programme, which only reached unitholders as a notice due for publication in the week of July 20, 2026, after the entire comparison period this growth gap covers. Highland Park Phase 2 added 351.282 million units in 2024, and Greenfields Retail Centre together with the Zimre Park Drive Thru added a further 770.5 million units in November 2025, representing 41.8% of the enlarged unit base on its own. A cash electing holder under the scrip programme, once it runs, is not automatically diluted in the way a straightforward reading of unit count would imply, since that holder converts part of their return into cash rather than losing value outright, the real tests are the issue price relative to NAV and market price, whether the retained cash earns an adequate return elsewhere, and whether distributions per original unit keep growing regardless of what other holders elect. Acquisition financed placements are the more consequential mechanism here, and they carry a different and stricter test.

Whether Tigere’s expansion is creating value per unit or simply enlarging the balance sheet turns on whether each placement clears that stricter test, not on unit count alone, which is the question the next two placements in the pipeline will actually answer.

Three tests, not one

Highland Park Phase 2 lifted NAV per unit 1.42% and EPU 17.96% to 3.18 US cents and 19 US cents respectively, a placement that cleared both the NAV and the earnings test at once.

An issue price above NAV per unit supports NAV accretion by construction, since new capital comes in above the existing book value per unit, but that alone says nothing about earnings or dividend accretion, which depend on whether the acquired asset’s incremental distributable income per new unit issued exceeds the fund’s existing distributable income per unit after transaction costs and management expenses. Greenfields and Zimre Park priced at an implied 3.26 US cents per unit, a 2.536% premium to the 3.18 US cent NAV per unit as of June 2025, which clears the NAV test on the same logic Highland Park Phase 2 did. What the disclosed figures do not separately establish is whether that placement’s incremental income per new unit matched or exceeded the fund’s existing distributable income per unit once its full run rate is reflected, since the 94.8% aggregate income growth against 13.4% EPU growth reported for HY26 reflects both placements combined, not either one in isolation. EPU is still growing, which rules out the placements being outright destructive, but the pace at which it is growing lags the aggregate closely enough that each future placement deserves the same three part test applied individually rather than assumed from the fund’s overall trajectory.

If future placements continue clearing the NAV test at only a small premium while the earnings test remains unconfirmed at the individual transaction level, EPU growth risks continuing to trail aggregate growth by a wide margin indefinitely, which is the outcome the three part framework exists to catch before it compounds further.

Two premiums, measuring two different things

Tigere’s implied issuance price for the Greenfields and Zimre Park placement carried a 2.536% premium to NAV as of the October 2025 circular. Tigere’s secondary market price in late April 2026 implies a premium closer to 23% to 25% against NAV per unit at that time, using an estimated interbank exchange rate for the conversion.

These are not the same measurement and should not be read as one continuous trend. The issuance premium reflects the price at which the fund and a specific seller agreed to settle a transaction in new units at a fixed date. The secondary market premium reflects whatever price public trading has settled on months later, built from a market price, an estimated exchange rate, and a NAV figure that may not all fall on the same date, a gap worth resolving before either number is treated as precise. Tigere’s unit price fell 30.1% in ZWG terms from the start of 2026 to late April, a decline too large to explain through ZWG currency movement alone, since the ZWG itself weakened only around 5% against the dollar over the trailing twelve months. Some of that decline reflects value genuinely leaving the fund through the distributions Tigere paid across the same window, including a Q1 2026 distribution of 0.0544 US cents per unit, and REIT unit prices mechanically fall around distribution dates for exactly this reason. Only the residual, price return net of distributions received and NAV movement over the same matched dates, could fairly be described as a contraction in the premium the market is willing to pay, and that residual has not been isolated here.

Until price return, distributions received, and NAV movement are compared over identical dates, no forward projection of where the premium heads next can be drawn with confidence, and any claim that Tigere is converging toward NAV within a given timeframe should wait for that reconciliation rather than extrapolate from four months of unadjusted price movement.

Liquidity supports execution, not the premium on its own

Tigere’s share turnover ratio of 11.19% ranks third of all twenty entities listed on the ZSE, and average monthly traded value reached 1.46 million dollars in HY26, up 161% year on year.

Liquidity at this scale genuinely reduces one of the main execution risks associated with listed property, since entering or exiting a position in size carries far less price impact on a counter this actively traded than the property sector’s general reputation for illiquidity would allow. It does not follow that this liquidity is what sustains the premium to NAV. Highly liquid securities trade at deep discounts as often as premiums once expected returns weaken, price discovery and valuation support are related but separate functions, and a market willing to trade Tigere in size today is equally capable of pricing it back toward or below NAV if the growth story loses conviction. The unitholder count crossing 1,177 by June 2026 also does not on its own establish whether that liquidity is institutionally broad or concentrated in a small number of large accounts, which would need top holder concentration, free float, and average trade size to settle either way.

If institutional concentration turns out to be high once that data is available, today’s turnover figures would describe a liquidity base more fragile than the headline ratio implies, since a small number of large holders trading actively can produce the same turnover statistics as a genuinely broad base.

Dividend quality is real, one yield figure needs reconciliation

Payout ratio has run between 95% and 103% of distributable income across recent periods, and debtors to rental revenue improved from 8.1% to 6.9% to 4.3% over the same periods even as revenue itself nearly doubled.

Distributable income growth built on real net property income growth of 61% in FY25, rather than fair value adjustments alone, sits on firmer ground than a dividend funded mainly by revaluation gains, and improving collection quality alongside rapidly rising revenue means the income being distributed is increasingly well collected rather than merely accrued. One figure in the disclosure needs reconciliation rather than acceptance at face value. The Electrosales Zvishavane acquisition at an 11% net initial yield is described as adding 20 basis points to the fund’s annual yield, but a simple NAV weighted calculation against the existing 58.4 million dollar portfolio at 6.8% produces a blended shift closer to 9 basis points. That gap could come from a different existing yield denominator, transaction timing, leverage, acquisition costs, or a distributable income basis rather than a NAV basis, any of which would explain the difference legitimately, so the fair framing is that the 20 basis point figure requires management’s denominator before it is repeated, not that it is wrong.

If the 9 basis point figure holds once reconciled, the Zvishavane transaction remains accretive in direction even if smaller in scale than guided, which would not change the underlying dividend quality story but would matter for anyone modelling the fund’s yield trajectory off the guided figure directly.

The pipeline makes further funding likely, not unit issuance certain

Design Quarter and its parkade complete in August 2026, Midlands Mall Phase 1 in Gweru and the Kadoma retail development both target the first quarter of 2027, and Electrosales Zvishavane awaits Investment Committee approval.

A pipeline of this shape, spread beyond Harare into secondary cities, is broadly consistent with the fund’s own target of reaching 100 million dollars in NAV by FY27, which implies close to 70% further asset growth from the HY26 base. It does not follow that every stage of that growth requires new unit issuance. Debt, retained cash, vendor financing, asset recycling, joint ventures, and staged equity issuance are all available funding routes, and Tigere’s currently low leverage position may provide some capacity to use debt rather than units for at least part of what remains. Whether the completions ahead dilute per unit outcomes depends on the funding mix actually used, the issue price of any units that are issued, and the income yield achieved on each completed asset, exactly the three part test already established rather than a foregone conclusion from the pipeline’s existence alone.

If Midlands Mall and Kadoma complete on schedule and Zvishavane clears approval, NAV growth toward the FY27 target becomes highly likely on asset count alone, and the funding mix chosen for each of those three transactions is what will determine whether per unit outcomes track that same growth or continue lagging it.

Pension concentration is real and verifiable, its link to Tigere is not yet proven

Zimbabwe’s pension sector held 47% of its assets in investment property as of December 2024 and 44% as of June 2025, against prescribed asset holdings of just 12% and 10.4% respectively, both far short of the 20% statutory minimum.

Prescribed assets and general property exposure are different categories under Zimbabwean regulation, prescribed assets are specific government approved instruments tied to infrastructure and productive sectors, while the property concentration figures above reflect commercial and residential real estate holdings more broadly, a distinction worth preserving rather than treating property exposure as if it satisfied the prescribed asset requirement. The regulator’s own reporting has flagged the concentration in property as carrying liquidity risk given how illiquid direct property holdings are, which is precisely the risk a listed, liquid REIT like Tigere is structurally positioned to reduce for an institution holding it rather than direct property. Pension funds this concentrated in property are a plausible natural buyer base for a listed REIT carrying the liquidity profile Tigere has, but establishing that this specific buyer base is what supports Tigere’s premium would require Tigere’s own unitholder register or institutional flow data, neither of which is available from the results deck alone.

If Zimbabwe’s insurance and pensions regulator succeeds in shifting sector capital from property toward prescribed assets over the coming reporting periods, institutional demand for property exposure generally would be the segment most likely to soften first, and Tigere’s premium and liquidity would be the two figures worth watching for any early sign of that shift.

The wider backdrop in one line

Private sector credit growth of 33% year on year and gold driven forex receipts up 48% in H1 2026 are the same dollarisation conditions that make a USD yielding REIT like Tigere attractive relative to ZWG alternatives, though Tigere’s own growth reflects capital finding the most liquid dollarised channel available rather than evidence that Zimbabwe’s broader infrastructure financing gap is closing.