Published: 10 June 2013

The ZSE Industrials gained 4.4% to close the week at 163.3. On the Zfn board, the All Share Index was up 4.48% to 109.67 on $10.5 million trades. The Top 10 index was up 5.75% to 113.54 and it constituted 82.4% of value of trades. All the other Zfn indices with the exception of the Property and the Tourism traded positively driven by the manufacturing index, which surged 10.21% to 185.11 on the back of rising demand for Delta shares. A third of the market is now Delta and with the rising foreign interest on breweries (together with telecoms, banks and infrastructure plays) in the sub-region the share price can only continue rising as the fundamentals (volumes growth, customers switching to high margin products etc) on the ground remain strong.

Since the Zfn sectoral indices debuted value has been created mostly in retail (driven by OK Zimbabwe) and manufacturing (driven by Delta) while the worst performing have been Mining and Tourism.
 
Foreign mood on the market is bullish, constituting 54% of purchases a d only 19% of sales. For a long time foreigners have been net buyers and this has seen foreign holding rising significantly. They have kept the market active and have been a good source of liquidity for the local investors who have largely been net sellers.
 
Smart money this week went into Delta ($4.1 million), Econet ($2.6 million) and Innscor ($1.5 million), while there have been notable trades in Dairibord and SeedCo. No trades were recorded in 18 counters while the continuous suspension of some counters is now becoming an eyesore on the board. How many people still remember what business TZI was doing? What needs to be done for some of the suspended companies which are now defunct to be delisted altogether?
 
Winding up this week on the issue of transparency, there must be something that Delta is doing right (which deserves to be emulated) for the share to continue to get so much attention and thumps up from the investors, both foreign and local. Call it leading by example, thanks Delta.

- zfn

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