Old Mutual Investment Group Zimbabwe, plans to grow its exposure in tourism-oriented land holdings as it moves to diversify its property portfolio into foreign currency generating sectors, a senior official with the firm has said.
This comes at a time when the financial services group is widening its net away from the traditional asset classes and sectors.
Old Mutual Investment Group Zimbabwe (OMIG) traditional line of business in the property sector is anchored on office and retail space provision, but the group is now channelling its efforts towards provision of industrial space taking advantage of the growth in demand.
While presenting the asset management firm’s results for the half-year to June 2021, OMIG managing director and chief investment officer Marjorie Mayida indicated that the property portfolio would be routing its efforts to non-traditional schemes.
“For the property portfolio, we continue to make effort to realign our portfolio by increasing our exposure in tourism-oriented land holdings as well as through foreign currency generating development projects.
“The bulk of the group’s rentals come from office and retail space but our exposure to industrial space is coming up and we have seen quite a strong demand from that space and its contribution to total rentals has been going up.
“In line with our strategy to diversify our portfolio away from the traditional asset classes and sectors, we made significant progress in our private equity deployments in the first half,” said Mayida.
In the period under review the firm’s line of business gross inflows grew by 53 percent to close the half-year period at $2, 022 billion, outstripping the $1,324 billion recorded in the prior comparable period.
Net client cash inflows soared to $1,327 billion from $213 million which was recorded in the same period in 2020.
Also, in the first six months of 2021 OMIG witnessed growth in funds under management (FUM) buttressed by listed equities growth following above inflation ZSE all share index growth.
The period was also characterised by general growth in property occupancy and rental collections despite the limitations brought about by Covid-19 induced lockdowns.
“Collections and occupants have held up despite the Covid 19 lockdown disruptions, so collections as at half-year were at 85 percent, occupants were at 83 percent and our gross yield was at 6,7 percent,” she said.
As part of its diversification efforts, OMIG recently constructed a $21, 4 million Small to medium, Enterprise Eastgate complex to help emerging businesses formalize into organised profitable ventures.
The one-stop-shop complex has 12 000 square meters of prime retail space configured to accommodate a diverse range of SME businesses models under one roof. – Herald
