• Net assets rose from ZWG 7.26m to ZWG 9.40m, outperforming ZSE All Share’s 28% gain, driven mainly by Delta +47.8% and Innscor +107.3%, but portfolio is 72.5% concentrated in just those two stocks.VFEX outpaced ZSE 2.5x in 2025
• VFEX All Share gained 70% vs ZSE’s 28%, yet Datvest is now fully ZSE-denominated after National Foods delisted from VFEX in Jan 2025, exposing the fund to ZWG risk and the structural premium investors place on USD-settled assets
• With 999 unitholders but 61.7% held by just 4 investors, the ETF is too small for institutional participation; OK Zimbabwe collapsed 75% but is only 0.3% of the basket, showing weighting methodology limits downside but also highlighting formal retail distress

Harare- The Datvest Modified Consumer Staples Exchange Traded Fund has reported a 45% year-on-year growth in the fair value of equity investments for the year ended 31 December 2025, with net assets attributable to unitholders rising from ZWG 7.26 million to ZWG 9.40 million on an inflation-adjusted basis.

This was disclosed in the abridged audited financial results signed off on 31 March 2026, under the direction of CBZ Asset Management's General Manager T. Muzadzi and Chairperson H. Joshi, with the fund's financial statements prepared under the supervision of CBZ Holdings Group Chief Finance Officer Joel Makombe and audited by Kreston Zimbabwe Chartered Accountants, which issued an unqualified opinion.

The fund's performance tracks the blended exposure of ten ZSE and VFEX-listed consumer staples companies, Delta Corporation, Innscor, Meikles, Simbisa Brands, OK Zimbabwe, TSL, Dairibord, Hippo Valley Estates, African Distillers, and National Foods Holdings , and its 2025 results are the most instructive single data point available on how Zimbabwe's FMCG equity market performed across both exchanges simultaneously.

The headline growth rate is real and earned, but the more significant story in the Datvest results is not the 45% return, it is what the fund's portfolio composition, market pricing, and unitholder distribution reveal about the structural state of Zimbabwe's capital markets, specifically the divergence between ZSE and VFEX performance trajectories, the concentration of equity value in one or two counters within a supposedly diversified basket, and the fund's absolute scale, which at ZWG 8.84 million in equity investments remains too small to attract the institutional participation that would make it a genuine market-making instrument.

The fund manager's report noted that the ZSE All Share Index gained 28% during 2025 while the VFEX All Share Index gained 70% , a divergence of 42 percentage points between the two exchanges over the same calendar year. The VFEX's outperformance is not an isolated data point, but  reflects the sustained re-rating premium that USD-denominated listing commands among institutional and high-net-worth investors who are deliberately moving exposure away from ZWG-denominated assets and into USD-settled instruments on the VFEX.

For the Datvest ETF, which is itself a ZWG-denominated instrument listed on the ZSE, this divergence creates a structural tension. The fund holds National Foods Holdings,  the only VFEX constituent in its basket which delisted from the VFEX in January 2025, leaving the fund's equity portfolio entirely ZSE-denominated by year-end. The fund therefore captured the ZSE's 28% gain across its full portfolio but was progressively exposed to ZWG currency risk as the VFEX component exited.

The 45% fair value growth the fund reported outperformed the ZSE's 28% index gain, suggesting that stock selection within the ZSE consumer staples basket delivered alpha above the broader market , primarily driven by Delta Corporation and Innscor, which together represent 72% of the fund's total equity holdings.

The portfolio concentration embedded in the Datvest ETF is the most important feature of its design, and the 2025 year-end holdings expose it clearly. Delta Corporation held 201,931 shares at a market price of ZWG 20.7 cents per share, producing a market value of ZWG 4.18 million , 47.3% of total equity investments. Innscor Africa held 89,549 shares at ZWG 24.88 cents, producing a market value of ZWG 2.23 million , 25.2% of total equity. Combined, these two counters account for ZWG 6.41 million out of ZWG 8.84 million in total equity, or 72.5% of the entire portfolio.

The remaining eight counters collectively represent 27.5%. Simbisa Brands contributes ZWG 1.13 million (12.8%), Hippo Valley ZWG 237,000 (2.7%), African Distillers ZWG 229,000 (2.6%), TSL ZWG 138,000 (1.6%), Dairibord ZWG 103,000 (1.2%), Meikles ZWG 125,000 (1.4%), and OK Zimbabwe ZWG 25,000 , a negligible 0.3% of the basket. National Foods' delisted position carried a valuation of ZWG 447,000 at year-end.

For a fund marketed as providing diversified exposure to the consumer staples sector, a portfolio where two companies account for nearly three-quarters of value is a concentration risk that investors must price explicitly. Delta and Innscor are genuinely dominant businesses , Delta's beverages franchise and Innscor's food manufacturing platform are the two deepest moats in Zimbabwe's consumer sector , but their combined dominance in the ETF means the fund's unit price is functionally a blended proxy for Delta and Innscor performance, with a small residual contribution from the other eight names. OK Zimbabwe's ZWG 25,040 market value , 0.3% of the basket , is analytically irrelevant to the fund's return profile. The ETF's investors are buying Delta and Innscor with Simbisa and Hippo Valley as minor satellite positions and everything else as rounding errors.

Meanwhile, the Datvest ETF's net asset value of ZWG 9.4 million is , at the prevailing conversion rate of ZWG 27 per USD  approximately USD 348,000. This is the total pool of capital under management in Zimbabwe's oldest consumer staples ETF product, which has been operating through at least two financial years of results now published. USD 348,000 is smaller than the cash and cash equivalents disclosed on the balance sheets of every one of its investee companies. It is smaller than the monthly salary bill of a medium-sized Zimbabwean manufacturing company. It is not an institutional investment vehicle by any recognisable international standard, but a pilot product.

The unitholder distribution confirms the retail nature of the current investor base. Of the 999 unitholders on record, 893 hold between zero and 50,000 units , small retail positions. Only 15 unitholders hold above one million units, and four hold above ten million units. The four largest unitholders collectively represent ZWG 5.46 million , 61.7% of the fund's total equity value , which means the fund's effective decision-making is dominated by four investors whose simultaneous exit would collapse the unit price.

This is the inverse of what a liquid, institutional ETF looks like. In mature ETF markets, diversification across thousands of unitholders with no dominant bloc is the feature that provides the liquidity and price discovery that makes the product commercially viable. 

The structural limitation is not Datvest's fault as a fund manager. It reflects the early-stage development of Zimbabwe's collective investment schemes market and the limited pool of investable savings currently channelled through formal fund management vehicles. Zimbabwean pension funds, insurance companies, and asset managers collectively manage a growing pool of assets, but their allocation to ETF structures specifically remains underdeveloped relative to direct equity holdings and fixed income.

The fund's ZWG 9.4 million NAV after at least two full operating years suggests that ETF product awareness has not yet crossed the adoption threshold that drives scale.

Reading the Datvest portfolio as a sector report rather than as a fund filing produces the most actionable insights. Delta's share price appreciation from ZWG 14 cents in December 2024 to ZWG 20.7 cents in December 2025 , a 47.8% gain , is the strongest single indicator of the health of Zimbabwe's beverages market. Delta's dominance in lager, sorghum beer, soft drinks, and sparkling water means its equity re-rating is a direct reflection of volume growth and margin expansion in the consumer segment that most closely tracks household disposable income.

The 47.8% share price gain against a ZSE All Share Index of 28% means Delta outperformed the broader market by approximately 20 percentage points , consistent with the narrative of resilient consumer spending in an economy that grew 5% in 2025 against the backdrop of an improved agricultural season.

Innscor's appreciation from ZWG 12 cents to ZWG 24.88 cents , a 107.3% gain over the year , is the most striking individual counter movement in the basket and suggests the market significantly re-rated the group's earnings trajectory. Innscor's diversified food platform across baking, quick service restaurants (through Simbisa), chicken production (through Irvine's), and milling positions it across multiple consumer spending categories simultaneously, and a doubling of the share price implies either a material earnings upgrade expectation or a correction from what the market judged to be prior undervaluation.

 At the other end of the basket, OK Zimbabwe's share price compression from ZWG 0.53 cents to ZWG 0.13 cents , a 75% collapse , is the basket's distress signal. OK Zimbabwe is Zimbabwe's largest formal grocery retailer, and a 75% share price decline in a year when the broader market gained 28% indicates a fundamental deterioration in the market's assessment of the company's earnings prospects or balance sheet resilience.

That the ETF holds ZWG 25,040 in OK Zimbabwe ,  less than USD 1,000 at current rates , means the weighting methodology has correctly minimised exposure to what has become a near-worthless position within the basket, but the price signal itself is the FMCG sector's warning that formal retail is losing ground to the informal sector and competing grocery formats in ways that are structurally difficult to reverse.

In a Zimbabwean reporting environment where qualified audit opinions have become common, ZB Financial Holdings carries an IAS 21 qualification, Revitus REIT carries a BDO emphasis of matter, multiple banking sector audits carry currency-related caveats , the Datvest ETF's clean unqualified opinion from Kreston Zimbabwe is a genuinely differentiating positive.

The fund's assets are entirely listed equities and cash, marked to observable market prices at every reporting date under a Level 1 fair value hierarchy. There is no estimation uncertainty in the primary asset class, no currency translation complexity on financial liabilities, and no going concern issue. The simplicity of the fund's balance sheet , equities, cash, and a small creditor balance , produces clean financial statements that an auditor can render an opinion on with confidence. That structural simplicity is, paradoxically, both the fund's governance strength and its commercial constraint, the cleanest collective investment scheme on the Zimbabwe market is also the smallest.

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