Research archive for BID

On Monday the 18th of September I had the pleasure of meeting with Bidcorp's CFO David Cleasby at their head office in Sandton. Bidcorp as you may know is our largest holding in the food sector.

Yesterday we had solid full year results from Bidcorp. These are the first full year numbers since the Bidvest split. This business is well diversified geographically, operating in over 30 countries. Ironically Rand strength had a big negative impact on the numbers. Headline earnings per share grew 9.4% to 1181c. On a constant currency basis, this would have been a 19.1% uptick. That is encouraging considering the developed markets they operate in such as Australia, the UK and big parts of Europe. For a good idea of the segmental analysis you can look at the image below. Remember there are still a few irregularities there from the Bidvest split.

Bidcorp reported results for their first half to end December last week Thursday. Since the results, the stock price is up around 15 percent, in just two trading sessions. In fairness, the stock price was trading near (about four percent above) an all time low before their rally. Before you saw "WHAT?", remember that the company was unbundled from Bidvest less than a year ago, so their unbundling has been less than 12 months. So perhaps it is more fair to say that they were trading at a 12 month low.

Bidcorp made a relatively low level announcement two days ago, one that possibly has further reaching implications in time. The SENS announcement is as follows: BidCorp Food Africa and Puratos establish a joint venture. Who are Puratos? As they say in the release, this is a bakery solutions business. I snooped out their website a couple of days ago, Puratos (a Belgian based business) supplies chocolatiers, bakeries and patisseries with ingredients. In other words, in the busy lives of a bakeries, you need and want a proper partner to deliver your key products on time and make sure that they are of a very high standard. Puratos supply everything from glazes to fillings, emulsifiers (not the favourite of everyone), bread improvers and the like. Good looking bread is sometimes better tasting bread, is that right?

Bidcorp delivered another trading update to analysts yesterday. It was a Management update on general trading conditions. This follows on a similar type of statement from two weeks back at the AGM. They talk about Brexit and currency volatility. In their UK operation they have managed to lock in a customer for the next five years and the pipeline looks good, the market is fragmented and they have an opportunity to consolidate further. Eastern Europe looks better than Western Europe. The South African business amongst their emerging market businesses looks decent enough. Mainland China is good, Hong Kong not so much, the tourist numbers are lower. Things in Brazil have seemed to have steadied.

Bidcorp stuck out a trading statement in the afternoon, that coincided with their AGM. It was more of an update than an actual trading statement, as they only have around 4 months of data to work with. Plus, as they have a significant business in the UK, you can imagine that they are all trying to work out what this means, the implications of a weaker UK currency and potentially weaker UK economy. Bidcorp also, as a result of the splitting of the business from the original Bidvest, have very little from a comparisons point of view.

Yesterday we had the maiden results from Bidcorp since their listing on the JSE. What makes looking at these results a bit tricky is that there are no comparative figures to work with, management have provided pro forma numbers based on the assumption that the current entity existed in its current format a year ago.