Harare- The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) has notified the investing public of the voluntary termination of listing of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited, effective 31 March 2026, hence, Econet securities can no longer be traded on the ZSE with effect from 1 April 2026.

The resolution authorising the delisting was passed by shareholders at an Extraordinary General Meeting on 26 February 2026, with the special resolution approved by over 95% of minority votes after the majority shareholder recused itself.

Econet, after nearly thirty years on the ZSE, one of the most famous initial public offerings in Zimbabwean corporate history, is no longer listed on the exchange that gave it its public market debut.

Econet represented approximately one third of the ZSE's total market capitalisation at the time it issued its first cautionary announcement in December 2025, when its market cap was equivalent to approximately US$628 million. A rally in the weeks following the announcement lifted that figure closer to US$1 billion before the delisting was executed.

The removal of a counter of that size from the official list produces an immediate reduction in ZSE market capitalisation of approximately 20%, shrinks the exchange's daily trading liquidity at a single stroke, removes the most internationally recognised Zimbabwean listed company from the exchange, and eliminates one of the few counters that institutional investors, including large pension funds and asset managers, held in meaningful size.

The ZSE does not lose one stock, it loses its anchor.

Econet's stated rationale for the delisting is persistent and structural undervaluation. The company disclosed in its circular to shareholders that its market capitalisation on the ZSE at the time of the first cautionary announcement represented less than 20% of its intrinsic value, based on comparative valuation benchmarks of listed mobile telecommunications operators across Africa. African peers trade at 6 to 8 times EV/EBITDA.

Econet, on the ZSE, traded at a significant discount to that range for years. The company cited two specific structural factors that drove the undervaluation. The first is the absence of foreign investors, who were historically some of the largest participants on the ZSE but exited the exchange as the currency environment deteriorated and as the ZiG's convertibility remained constrained. Without foreign institutional capital, the investor base for a company of Econet's scale and complexity is limited to domestic pension funds, asset managers, and retail participants whose capacity to price a US$3 billion intrinsic value technology company in a ZiG-denominated market is structurally constrained.

The second is the illiquidity of the ZSE itself, which forces shareholders who need to sell to accept punitively low prices because the market lacks the depth to absorb meaningful sell orders without price impact. Econet was simultaneously the most liquid counter on the ZSE and an illiquid investment relative to what its business warranted.

The valuation gap is not simply a matter of price, but  a matter of what the ZSE is capable of pricing. Econet holds ownership of its entire tower infrastructure, has fully reintegrated its fintech operations under the EcoCash umbrella back into the core business, and dominates Zimbabwe's mobile market with 88% of voice traffic, 82% of data usage, and 73% of all subscribers. These are assets and competitive positions that a sophisticated institutional market would recognise and price at a significant premium.

The ZSE, denominated in ZiG with limited foreign participation and constrained liquidity, lacks the investor base with the sector expertise, currency confidence, and capital depth to reflect that value in the share price. Econet did not leave because it outgrew the ZSE in some abstract sense, it left because the ZSE demonstrably and persistently could not do its job for a company of Econet's profile.

The restructuring that accompanies the delisting is analytically important and has received less scrutiny than the delisting announcement itself. Econet's mobile network operator business will migrate to an Over-the-Counter platform administered by the VFEX, remaining a public company producing publicly available financial information, with shares tradeable through stockbrokers on the OTC system. Simultaneously, a new entity, Econet InfraCo, which holds the group's real estate, telecommunications towers, fibre infrastructure, and power assets, will be separately listed on the main board of the VFEX as a USD-denominated infrastructure company.

Econet will retain 70% of Econet InfraCo, with up to 30% used to settle the exit offer to shareholders who wish to exit at the time of delisting. Shareholders who accepted the exit offer received US$0.50 per share, comprising US$0.17 in cash and US$0.33 in Econet InfraCo shares. The US$0.50 offer price was more than twice the ZSE trading price at the time of the first cautionary and more than three times the 90-day weighted average price prior to that announcement, the most direct quantification available of how severely the ZSE was undervaluing the company.

The separation of infrastructure assets into a VFEX-listed vehicle is strategically coherent and commercially compelling. Infrastructure assets, including towers, fibre, and property, are valued by international investors on long-term yield and asset quality metrics that are well understood in USD-denominated property and infrastructure markets. The VFEX, with its hard currency denomination and growing institutional investor base, is a more appropriate home for Econet InfraCo than the ZSE's ZiG-denominated market.

The MNO business, which generates operating cash flows from a subscriber base of millions of Zimbabweans, retains public company status through the OTC platform without the regulatory and compliance burden of a primary exchange listing. The structure separates two fundamentally different asset classes, recurring digital services revenue and long-duration physical infrastructure, and routes each to the market that can value it most accurately. It is the right corporate architecture for what Econet has become. The tragedy from the ZSE's perspective is that it is being assembled outside the exchange entirely.

Econet's departure is the most visible episode in a pattern of delistings and migrations that has been eroding the ZSE's relevance for years. The Old Mutual Top Ten ETF delisted in January 2025. Khayah Cement delisted in May 2025. Truworths exited in July 2025. National Tyre Services departed effective December 2025. Powerspeed delisted citing the same undervaluation argument Econet subsequently made. Over the five years to 2025, Padenga Holdings, Axia Corporation, and Bridgefort Capital exited the ZSE, while Innscor Africa, National Foods, Simbisa Brands, and Zimplow migrated to the VFEX. The pattern is not random.

It is a systematic migration of better-performing, more sophisticated, and more internationally oriented companies away from the ZiG-denominated exchange toward the USD-denominated alternative. What remains on the ZSE after Econet's departure is a market of reduced depth, diminished liquidity, and a concentration risk around the remaining heavyweights, principally Delta Corporation, whose own fiscal pressures from the sugar tax and import surcharges create a different set of structural concerns.

The ZSE's response to this pattern has been to note that new listings in the mining sector and Real Estate Investment Trusts are expected to add depth in 2026. Tigere REIT, Revitus Property Opportunities REIT, and the ZSE's own self-listing through ZSE Holdings have attempted to offset some of the losses from departing companies. These are legitimate additions to the market. They do not address the fundamental structural problem, which is that the ZSE is a ZiG-denominated exchange in an economy where the ZiG is used for less than 20% of formal transactions, carries a 30% parallel market premium, and has not yet achieved the confidence of the institutional and foreign investor base that gives a stock exchange the depth and pricing efficiency it needs to value large, complex, internationally comparable companies correctly.

The fungibility problem, the inability to seamlessly transfer securities between the ZSE and VFEX, remains an unresolved structural barrier that fragments Zimbabwe's capital market into two disconnected pools of liquidity rather than integrating them into a single efficient market.

Until that barrier is resolved, the gravitational pull of the VFEX will continue to attract the companies and the capital that can choose where to be.

The exchange that listed Econet at its IPO nearly thirty years ago, watched it become Zimbabwe's most valuable technology company, and now watches it leave for a better-valued future on a USD platform, has an obligation to its remaining listed companies, its institutional investors, and the Zimbabwean public that saves through pension funds and unit trusts to explain what happened and what changes. 

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