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Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Dec 31, 2025

1/10 Zimbabwe's Largest Media Business made a loss of USD $1 million in 6 months.

Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) has reportedly not paid salaries for over 10 months, so I looked at Zimpapers' financial statements to see if the challenges are specific to AMH or more industry-wide.

Zimpapers is the largest media business in Zimbabwe.

It runs the most circulated print newspapers in Zimbabwe, including the Herald, The Chronicle, and the Sunday Mail.

It also owns radio channels like Star FM and runs the video channel ZTN Prime.

In short, it is the biggest and arguably most influential media business in the country.

Despite this, it made a loss of ZiG 33 million or about US $1 million in the first 6 months of 2025.

Where were the losses coming from?

2/10 In the latest results, all the business segments struggled.

The Newspapers business performed the "best" but still generated a loss of over ZiG 19m or about $600k.

3/10 These losses were also not just accounting losses.

When you look at the cashflow statement, you see that operating cashflows were negative while cashflows from financing activities were positive.

In other words, the core operations of the business were losing cash, and the business had to rely on borrowings to keep things going and still ended up with negative cash flow.

Read 10 tweets

Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Nov 10, 2025

How Delta Confirms Zimbabwe’s Economy Is Bigger Than You Think — And Gold Is a Major Reason Why

When Zimbabwe rebased its GDP this year, the numbers seemed almost too good to be true — Zimbabwe’s GDP increased by around 40% to $45 billion.

But was this real growth, or just creative accounting? Delta can help answer that question.

Let's Unpack!

The Delta Test

Delta Corporation is Zimbabwe’s beverage giant and the largest listed company in Zimbabwe.

Its sales volumes serve as one of the most reliable indicators of Zimbabwe’s economic health.

When Zimbabwe grows, Delta's business grows and when the country takes a hit, so does Delta.

This makes sense: beer and soft drinks are constants in day-to-day life. If people aren’t buying drinks, they probably aren’t buying much else either.

With this in mind, I pulled Delta’s sales volumes over the last 20 years for Zimbabwe and layered them against GDP to cross-check if the economic growth made sense.

The blue line represents Delta’s sales volumes, while the blue bars indicate Zimbabwe’s GDP. It is important to note that these figures are based on Delta’s financial year, which ends in March.

For example, FY2005 includes nine months of 2004 and three months of 2005. In this case, the GDP data for 2004 has been layered over this timeline.

As you can see from the below, GDP and Delta’s volumes generally moved together.

When the Economy collapsed during 2008/2009, Delta’s volumes did the same. When the economy picked up quickly post-dollarisation, Delta’s volume followed suit.

What we also see is that from FY21, there was a sharp increase in Delta's volumes, and that rebased GDP number of $44 billion doesn't look out of place.

Read 12 tweets

Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Oct 14, 2025

While most Zimbabwean companies are struggling to grow, Innscor just added $176 million in revenue in one year.

That's more than Dairiboard's entire revenue.

Here's the full breakdown of Innscor's Results, including the big lesson for any business leader.

Let's Unpack!

Innscor’s Financial Results

Innscor posted a solid set of numbers, with the highlight being revenue growth of 19% to reach $1.09 billion.

That increase from last year was $176 million. To put that growth into perspective, it represents more revenue than Dairiboard, which holds a 37% market share in the country's milk market.

In addition, in 2021, Innscor's revenue was about $513 million, so they have added $500 million of revenue in less than 5 years.

To also put that into perspective, it represents more revenue than Seedco, Edgars, NMB, African Sun, Tanganda, Ariston, and Proplastics COMBINED.

Read 12 tweets

Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Sep 14, 2025

We’ve said this a lot lately,

In Zimbabwe, banking does not exist in the typical sense.

In most cases, you have payment processors, custodians, and property companies.

The following visual displays the banks in Zimbabwe with the largest investment property holdings, along with a comparison of select banks in South Africa.

To recap, an investment property is a property held for capital growth and/or earning rental income.

ZB Financial Holdings (ZB) has the biggest investment property portfolio at $137 million. However, this is also because it owns Mashonaland Holdings, which is actually a property company with $93 million in investment property. However, even after that is taken out, ZB still has investment property worth over $40 million.

Part of the reason CBZ wanted to buy ZB was actually due to its property portfolio. Newzwire quoted the CBZ CEO as saying.

"Our main attraction is not really banking, but the other business units, which is your insurance, which is your property.”

To show how significant Zimbabwean banking groups' investment property holdings are, the chart also includes the combined holdings of select South African banking groups for comparison.

If you add up the investment properties held by ABSA, the First Rand Group (comprising FNB, Wesbank, and RMB), and Capitec, the total comes to $62 million, which is less than the individual holdings of Stanbic, FBC, and ZB.

Read 9 tweets

Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Sep 10, 2025

Who are Zimbabwean Banks Lending To?

This visual shows the proportion of total loan balances held in personal lending (loans to individuals) compared to other classes of lending, such as business lending.

In other words, the chart highlights which banks lend the most money to people rather than corporations and other institutions.

The outlier is First Capital Bank at 51%, which we covered this week and highlighted this ratio as a potential driver of its strong performance.

The low ratio of Steward Bank at 8% is surprising. Historically, Steward Bank was positioned to become a leading retail bank through its partnership with EcoCash and Econet, even enabling customers to open a bank account on their phone in just 60 seconds.

I would have thought they would have a stronger presence in retail lending as well, but it doesn't seem to have been the case, as at their year-end, 29 February 2025.

Perhaps this is a temporary situation, as Steward Bank is in the process of transitioning after being acquired by TN Group and rebranding as TN CyberTech Bank, with the ambition of becoming a Neo-Bank (a digital-only bank that operates primarily through mobile apps and websites.)

Another interesting data point to look at is the lending rates for individuals compared to those for corporates.

Based on the RBZ data from August, the average weighted interest rates for banks when lending to individuals ranged from 13.49% to 17.59%, and for businesses, from 10.27% to 15.80%.

The image below also seems to highlight another advantage.
You make more money on loans lending to individuals than lending to corporates.

Read 6 tweets

Tinashe Mukogo

@tmukogo

Sep 3, 2025

First Capital Bank's Financial Results: A Zimbabwean Bank Making Money From Loans, Not Charges?

As EcoCash, Mukuru and Innbucks eye new opportunities, could First Capital's approach be the blueprint?

An argument could be made that in Zimbabwe, banking does not exist in the typical sense.

Instead, what you have are payment processors and custodians.

Proof of this is the fact that the banking sector generated only 10.4% of its income from interest income, which is typically the core of a bank's activities.

First Capital Bank, however, is an exception in that it still generates 46% of its income from interest income from loans and advances. Given the context, this percentage is actually quite high.

But what is more intresting is who First Capital is lending to.

This fact indicates potential market gaps that companies like Mukuru, Innbuck or even Ecocash could take advantage of.

Let’s unpack!

First Capital Zimbabwe’s Performance

Based on their most recent results for the half-year ended June 30, 2025, First Capital reported a strong start, with a 13% year-over-year increase in net income.

This growth was driven by a big jump in net interest income, which rose 32%.

Notably, the income wasn't driven by gains on the revaluation of investment property, which has been a significant source of “income” for other banks in the past.

For First Capital, this was real operational income, not just accounting adjustments.

Operating expenses decreased slightly from the previous year, and considering the 13% income growth, this represents a significant improvement.

This resulted in a cost-to-income ratio of 48% and an improvement from 55% in 2024. Generally, a cost-to-income ratio of less than 50% is considered favourable. It basically means it costs you 50 cents to make a dollar of income.

Read 11 tweets

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