Uzbekistan is gathering pace – what to look at now

Uzbekistan has recently been attracting growing attention from investors.

One reason is the country's remarkable demographics. With a fertility rate of 3.5 children per woman – far above the replacement level of 2.1 – Uzbekistan has one of the fastest-growing populations outside Africa.

When the people of a nation with a 100% literacy rate decide to have many children, it's usually a sign that they are optimistic about the future of their country.

Does this optimism translate into promising investment opportunities?

Recent developments suggest it may be worth taking a closer look.

A frontier market long on investors' radar

Uzbekistan barely needs an introduction.

For years, the country has been a widely followed frontier market that many observers expected would attract far greater investor attention over time.

I was among the early voices spreading the message.

In 2019, I was part of one of the first organised investor trips to Uzbekistan. The country had only just begun to move beyond the legacy of the Soviet Union and its late dictator, Islam Karimov. As I described at the time in an extensive three-part article, there were strong indications that Uzbekistan would embark on a programme of capital market reforms and privatisations.

However, the process proved slower than expected. It's difficult to say whether Covid, domestic policies, or a combination of both slowed the reform momentum.

In any case, modernisation took longer than many investors anticipated. For several years, investing in Uzbekistan largely remained the domain of a relatively small number of frontier market specialists willing to venture off the beaten path.

The long time it took the Uzbekistan investment case to gain traction also served as a reminder that the allure of the exotic – and the fun that comes with travelling to such places – can sometimes cloud investors' judgment.

Besides, for most of the ensuing years, frontier markets were about as "out" as an asset class can be.

Recently, however, circumstances have begun to change, both for frontier markets in general and for Uzbekistan in particular. The country's demographics have also attracted growing attention from investors, amid the global debate about low birth rates and their knock-on effects on economies and asset prices. Over the past four years, Uzbekistan's population has grown by an average of 700,000 people per year – more than the population of the country's second-largest city, Samarkand.

The valuation of one specific company first made my ears perk up, and subsequent research convinced me that now may be a good moment to revisit the Uzbek investment case.

Uzbekistan's first fintech unicorn

For a frontier market to attract international attention, it often takes only one successful company.

Examples include Fawry (ISIN EGS745L1C014, EGX:FWRY) in Egypt (see my previous article here), and PT GoTo Gojek Tokopedia Tbk (ISIN ID1000166903, IDX:GOTO) in Indonesia (see my previous article here). Companies like these can put their home markets firmly on investors' maps.

In Uzbekistan, Uzum may do just that.

The company began as an e-commerce marketplace but has since expanded into financial services, consumer lending, and express food delivery. Its integrated ecosystem could eventually resemble the "super app" model that has delivered spectacular investment successes elsewhere.

Today, Uzum's ecosystem reaches about 20 million users – more than half of Uzbekistan’s adult population.

Early investors in the company will be delighted.

Founded less than five years ago, Uzum is already valued at USD 2.3bn. On 10 March 2026, it announced a new funding round at a valuation 53% higher than the one completed just seven months earlier.

Still described as a "startup" in media reports, Uzum generated revenue of USD 691m in 2025, up from USD 505m the previous year. Net income reached USD 176m.

These figures will make many investors envious of those who backed the company when it was still an actual start-up in 2022. Suddenly, waiting a few years for Uzbekistan's investment story to unfold doesn't seem so bad in retrospect.

Which raises the question: what else is worth looking at?

My readers got in early

Regular Undervalued-Shares.com readers will know that once a year, I organise the Weird Shit Investing conference – an ideas pitch event held each June in Hong Kong, London, and New York.

The conference brings together not only fund managers but also private investors managing their own wealth. Free from institutional constraints, self-directed investors are often the ones who generate the most original ideas for returns that are either outsized or uncorrelated – or both.

At last year's conference, Uzbekistan appeared among the investment ideas presented – not once, but twice!

At the Hong Kong event, participants heard a private investor pitch UZEX Uzbek Commodity Exchange (ISIN UZ7043200003, UZEX:URTS), the country's largest trading platform for commodities and industrial products. Operating as a quasi-monopoly, the company combines high operating leverage with a year-long track record of more than a decade and a low valuation. At the time, the stock traded at a p/e ratio of around 4 and offered a forecast dividend yield of 20% in local currency (som). Potential privatisations were among the catalysts that could have driven a re-rating.

The stock has since appreciated from UZS 3,800 to UZS 8,100, and is expected to pay a dividend of UZS 780 for 2025. Over the same period, the som appreciated 5% versus the US dollar.

A summary of the pitch and contact details for requesting the full deck remain available in the Weird Shit Investing Manual 2025.

At the London event, another reader presented the idea of investing in Uzbek corporate bonds. One example was Biznes Finans (ISIN UZ6057687AC0), though there were over 30 issues available. As he pointed out, even after assuming an average depreciation of the som of 4% p.a. against the US dollar, these bonds offered potential returns of ≈23% p.a. in dollar terms. Given that the som has recently been appreciating rather than weakening, and that Uzbekistan's macroeconomic backdrop remains sound, this investment has also performed well.

Here, too, a summary and contact details can be found in the Weird Shit Investing Manual 2025.

These developments raise an obvious question: what other opportunities might exist – and how can private investors research them?

Other options for gaining exposure

Undervalued-Shares.com is essentially a two-legged research and idea generation operation, and it cannot possibly produce deep-dives on every market development around the world.

However, there is also an increasingly powerful network of well-informed investors behind this website. My role is often to connect the dots in ways that benefit the broader community.

At one of the recent Best Ideas dinners I hosted in London, a reader (an active frontier market investor with over two decades of experience in markets such as Ivory Coast, Nigeria – and Uzbekistan) presented an analysis of Chilonzor Goods Trade Complex Joint Stock Company (ISIN UZ7038380000, UZEX:CBSK). The company owns and operates one of the largest retail and wholesale complexes in central Tashkent. It's a microcap trading at a low valuation relative to earnings while offering a 10% p.a. dividend yield.

The full summary of the analysis is available on Undervalued-Shares.com, where summaries of ideas presented at my dinners are made available in a dedicated section of the website (access is included in the USD 49 Annual Membership).

You can also follow the reader's investing in Uzbekistan (and elsewhere) on his Substack, FrontierViking.

For information on opening a local brokerage account or accessing new issues, contact Jason Wong of Flag Ventures. Jason, originally from Hong Kong, has carved out a niche advising investors on opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe. It was he who presented the Uzbek bond opportunity at last year's Weird Shit Investing conference (and he'll participate again this year).

Many investors may understandably shy away from opening a brokerage account in a distant frontier market. Soon, however, another option for getting exposure may become available.

Uzbekistan's national investment vehicle, known as UzNIF, plans to list on the Tashkent Stock Exchange with a likely secondary listing in London. The holding company will contain stakes in several state-owned enterprises. Plans for such an IPO have circulated for years, and sceptics will say they'll believe it when they see it. Nevertheless, 2026 increasingly looks like the year it might finally happen. Media coverage of the planned listing has been picking up in publications such as The Times, Bloomberg, and The Diplomat. This may partly explain why a number of locally listed securities have been performing well recently. Well-connected frontier market investors appear to be positioning themselves ahead of a potential wave of international attention around the IPO. Some of these investors are already swapping notes and research material in a dedicated Telegram group.

Finally, there is always the option of letting specialist fund managers do the hard work for you.

In the past, I have introduced readers to Sturgeon Capital in London. My 2019 visit to Uzbekistan was organised by their team, and I have known their leadership for many years. The firm specialises in venture capital and private equity investments across the region.

Another option is Asia Frontier Capital in Hong Kong, managed by industry veteran Thomas Hugger. The firm runs the AFC Uzbekistan Fund.

Apparently, even frontier market investing legend Jim Rogers has recently deployed capital into Uzbekistan.

Source: Daryo, 10 January 2026.

Research diligently – invest selectively

None of this means investors should rush headlong into Uzbek assets.

Rather, the point of this article is simply that now may be a good time to devote more attention to researching opportunities in the country.

There are also several reasons why Uzbekistan may not yet be an obvious destination for equity investors:

• Valuations are even lower elsewhere in the region.
• Trading liquidity remains limited.
• Some Uzbek companies have lagged the country's overall economic growth.
• Reliable information can still be difficult to obtain.
• Structural inefficiencies in the economy remain substantial.
• Questions remain about UzNIF's corporate governance and management structure.
• Uzbekistan has experienced several false starts in the past.

It's also possible that publicly listed equities are not the most efficient way to gain exposure. Corporate bonds, private equity or venture capital may offer better opportunities.

Consider this Weekly Dispatch a starting point for exploring a new frontier – and for building on the research already carried out by some of your fellow readers. As one reader emailed me while I was researching this article: "Swen, thanks for reporting on this back in 2019 – that's what put UZ on my radar."

As always: conduct your own research before investing.

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