"A Step Ahead of What We're Used to in the West": Why the Vltava Fund Bought Shares in Kaspik.kz

The Vltava Fund, a European investment fund focused on value investing, added shares of the Kazakhstani fintech company Kaspikz to its portfolio in the second quarter of 2026.

“Kaspi is a company well known among investors. We’ve been closely monitoring it for about six years. We’ve come close to buying shares several times, but this is the first time we’ve actually done so,” wrote Daniel Gladish, the fund’s founder and manager, in a letter to shareholders.

According to him, he made the decision to buy it after a trip to Kazakhstan, where he was able to try out the Kaspi app “in person” for the first time.

“It seemed to me that it’s a generation ahead of what we’re used to in the Western world,” wrote the manager of the Vltava Fund. “I’ve seen people use this app every day, and I’ve learned firsthand that life in Kazakhstan is quite limited without it.” Finally, Kazakhstan itself made a very positive impression on me. When you put all of this together with the fact that Kaspi’s shares are significantly undervalued, that’s what led me to buy them.”

Gladish did not specify the size of his purchase of Kaspikz shares. He only noted that this is Vltava Fund’s second investment in emerging markets, following Mexico’s Quálitas Controladora. According to information on the Vltava Fund website, Kazakhstan accounted for 2.5% of the fund’s portfolio as of the end of the second quarter.

According to Gladish, the company’s uniqueness lies in its penetration rate, frequency of use, and breadth of functionality. According to Kaspi.kz, its services are used by more than 25 million customers and 900,000 partners in Kazakhstan and Turkey. In Kazakhstan, active users of the app make 77 transactions per month.

"This is a level of engagement that even many global platforms would envy," Gladish wrote.

The complexity of the business lies in Kaspi’s ability to monetize its relationship with a single customer in multiple ways: through payments, commercial transactions, credit products, merchant services, advertising, logistics, and other digital services, Gladish notes. From the user’s perspective, it’s a simple app on a phone. For businesses, it’s a comprehensive, data-driven platform that combines elements of services from Visa, PayPal, Amazon, Shopify, a bank, a BNPL (buy now, pay later) provider, and digital government infrastructure. All of this is backed by an exceptionally strong presence in a single local market, the manager notes.

"Kaspi's profitability is very high, and even Visa—which is excellent in every other respect—cannot match it in terms of return on equity," Gladish believes.

According to GuruFocus, Visa's return on invested capital (ROIC) as of the end of March 2026 was 31.39%, while Kaspikz's was 71.02%.

Kaspi shares, which trade on Nasdaq, have risen 12% this year, outperforming the S&P 500, a broad U.S. market index (+9%). Half of the analysts tracking the stock recommend buying it, according to Market Watch.

The Vltava Fund is a relatively small European investment fund focused on long-term investments in stocks using a value investing strategy. The fund was founded in 2004, is registered in Malta as an alternative investment fund (AIF), and is intended for qualified investors.

The fund’s portfolio is fairly concentrated. As of the end of 2025, the portfolio consisted of 24 stocks, with 74% of the capital allocated to the ten largest holdings. These include the U.S. investment holding company Berkshire Hathaway, the British mortgage bank OSB Group, the Canadian investment company Brookfield Corporation, the U.S. holding company Markel Group, and Asbury Automotive Group, one of the largest operators of car dealerships in the U.S.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor