During the month of June, market activity on the Tashkent Stock Exchange continued to improve relative to May 2025, and certainly when compared to the 2022 to 2024 period, when the market saw continued downward pressure after its initial re-rating. We are now consistently being approached by institutional investors several times each month seeking to learn about the market and consider opening accounts to begin investing. Further, we are visibly seeing an expansion in market depth of individual equities (specifically in our top holdings) with consistent bids for shares, which also happen to be rising as share prices move higher. Additionally, as new foreign capital enters the market, these new investors are looking to secure blocks of shares and brokers are reaching out to us asking if we want to sell our entire holdings in certain names, to which our response is a resounding “no thanks!”, as equity valuations and growth prospects remain in our view far too cheap. This is what we have been expecting to happen in the market as more foreigners catch wind of Uzbekistan’s economic transformation, and that is why over the past several years we have concentrated the AFC Uzbekistan Fund's holdings in the “blue-chip” names listed on the exchange, since we believe they will be the first to benefit from a rise in liquidity.

The market appears to be in a slow but steady start on its next leg higher, after a three-year correction. We are looking forward to IPOs of state-owned enterprises slated for privatisation, which are planned to start in the fourth quarter of 2025 and which should dramatically enhance visibility of the Uzbek capital market to foreigners. This process should also attract Uzbeks to open tens of thousands of brokerage accounts as they will be able to participate in the IPOs at a slight discount to what foreign investors will be offered, providing an attractive incentive to get involved in owning some of the country’s “crown jewel” companies. In due course, this will also hopefully accelerate retail participation in the market.

Beyond visibly seeing the market structure change over the past several months, as we are active on a daily basis, seeing new money enter the ecosystem and move prices higher, during June, broader Uzbek news flow was fairly quiet.

From 9^th to 12^th June 2025 the Tashkent International Investment Forum was held in the capital. However, while there were many memorandums of understanding signed between Uzbekistan and governments of multiple countries, China most notably, as well as various regional sovereign wealth funds, finalising deals on projects, this annual forum is more of a marketing exhibition to attract foreign eyes to the country. The turnout was strong and it will be interesting to see what potential deals and partnerships Uzbekistan announces in the coming months as its gravitational pull, being the most important Central Asian country (geostrategic, population wise, militarily, and in due course economically), only continues to grow.