ZIMBABWE Stock Exchange (ZSE)-listed beverage maker, Delta Corporation, was last night crowned the best performing company on the local bourse for last year at the Financial Gazette’s Top Companies Survey 2022 sponsored by financial services giant, Old Mutual Zimbabwe.
Mobile network operator Econet Wireless and Simbisa Brands were named the first and second runners-up respectively.
“Delta comes out supreme in the 2022 Top Company survey following a similarly rigorous exercise of quantitative and qualitative evaluation factors.
Whilst Delta may not have come out tops in each of the evaluation factors, it did score consistently high in both the qualitative and quantitative factors in this years’ survey of deserving Top Companies.
“The complexities of the Zimbabwean environment when it comes to assessing the financial performance of listed companies made the task equally more cumbersome in this year’s edition of the Top Company Survey,” Top Companies Survey 2022 judges’ chairperson Simbiso Musa said.
Delta also won the Disclosure and Investor Relations award after scoring a fair balance in the transparency of its financial statements.
“It did this by being bold enough to recognize significant auditor oversights when comparing the substance of actual business reality versus what is legally and technically compliant in the reporting of its financial performance.
“The qualitative attributes of the company in fairly disclosing the strides made in expanding into the region through the acquisition of major players in the opaque (sorghum) beer markets in Zambia and South Africa started to reflect on the company’s financial statements and shine a good light on leadership aspects of the survey,” Musa added.
Ecobank Zimbabwe was also named Top Banking Institution 2021, Nicoz Diamond also got the Top Insurer (short-term) accolade while Doves Life Assurance took the Top Life Insurer gong.
The Best tangible Investor Returns Award went to Simbisa Brands, while the Special Mention Award was taken by TelOne and Hippo Valley Estates snapped up the Most Improved Disclosure and Investor Relations Award.
The 2022 Top Companies Survey 2022 ran under the theme “Innovating for growth in a VUCA environment”. This largely sums up the operating environment in Zimbabwe, which is very volatile, unclear, complicated, and ambiguous
For this year’s survey, Musa said it was clear that the local market was still struggling with timely publication of results, which, on the other hand, is a critical component of creating efficient markets.
“We continue to have more than 90 percent of our listed companies missing the regulatory deadlines and most financials carrying qualified opinions. Our challenge to the accounting bodies is to protect the market’s reputation by changing the current status quo and strive to raise our standards,” Musa further said.