Bidvest once off gain from Mumbai airport sale

Bidvest. This is a company that I feel very close to. No wait, that is because their back stairwell is around 10 metres from where I sit daily, no wonder I feel close to this company. The company released a trading update this morning for the six months to end December. "... headline earnings per share are expected to be between 35% and 40% higher than the results of the comparative period (December 31 2010: 539.8 cents per share) after accounting for the profit on the partial sale of the investment in Mumbai International Airport Private Limited, as announced on Sens on October 19 2011."

Back then the company announced that they expected to gain around 400 million Rand from the part sale. Headline earnings for the six months to end December 2010 were 1.723 billion ZAR. So, back of the matchbox (sies, can you use that anymore) calculations suggest that excluding once off items earnings are going to be around 14 percent higher than the comparable period in 2010. Those are my calcs. That seems very good, over the last five years annual turnover has grown by 5.7 percent with the bottom line having grown by 7.9 percent. It is always a struggle for me to include the period of great pity, or what Reinhardt and Rogoff refer to as the second great contraction. Because great suggests abnormal.

The company itself holds the attraction (and negative) that it is hugely diversified, and has their fingers in many different pies. The suggestion that I have heard from some quarters (quarters of a shield emblem?) is that a geographical split of the various business divisions could be a-coming. Although that notion has been pooh-poohed by management in the past, and also this notion that Brian Joffe will step aside soon has also been rubbished. Results are expected to be published at the end of February, we will take a much closer look.