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Zimbabwean businessman Zinona Koudounaris has seen his net worth rise by millions of dollars in recent months thanks to a $14.5-million increase in his stake in Harare-based holding company Axia Corporation since the year began.
Koudounaris, a multimillionaire serial investor and one of Zimbabwe’s richest men, owns a 20.9-percent stake in Axia Corp, a specialty retail and distribution company founded in Zimbabwe.
His stake in the Zimbabwean-based investment holding, which totals 113,982,912 ordinary shares, is valued at ZWL8.1 billion ($25.1 million), making him one of the richest investors on the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange.
The multimillion-dollar increase in the value of his stake can be attributed to an increase in Axia Corp shares, as investors digest the group’s trading update for the first quarter of its 2022 fiscal year.
The group stated in the update that despite the impact of the COVID-19 Level-4 lockdown on the group’s operations in the first two months of the quarter, its retail operations recorded solid volume growth for the quarter.
As of press time on Feb. 14, Axia Corp shares were trading at ZWL70.89 ($0.22), 57 basis points higher than their opening price on the local bourse on Fri., Feb. 11.
Since the start of trading on the local bourse this year, shares in the specialty retail and distribution company have risen from ZWL30.05 ($0.093) to ZWL70.89 ($0.22) at the time of writing this report, representing a 135.9-percent gain for shareholders since the year began.
In addition to being the second-best-performing stock on the local bourse after Zeco Holdings, a Harare-based engineering company, Axia Corp is the twenty-first most traded stock on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in the past three months.
Over the period, 9.47 million shares worth ZWL425 million ($1.3 million) changed hands on the bourse, with an average of 150,347 traded shares per session.
The market value of Koudounaris’ 20.9-percent stake has increased from ZWL3.4 billion ($10.6 million) on Dec. 31, 2021 to ZWL8.1 billion ($25.1 million) at the time of writing this report as a result of the upward price movement of Axia Corp shares.
This amounts to a total gain of ZWL4.7 billion ($14.5 million) for the multimillionaire businessman, who also owns significant stakes in Simbisa Brands Limited and Innscor Africa, an industrial group that produces consumer staples and durable goods for the mass market.
