Bidcorp food truck. (Photo: Bidcorp group) In an effort to shine a light on two other stories that may have been lost in the noise, I’ve decided to cover the latest numbers at Bidcorp and Santova.
At first blush, they don’t have much in common. Bidcorp is a food service business that helps restaurants and hospitality businesses efficiently procure what they need to feed customers. Santova is a logistics play, with freight forwarding operations and, more recently, an ecommerce fulfilment focus in Europe.
The services have no overlap, but there is one characteristic that they share: they offer investors exposure to offshore operations through a JSE-listed stock. Santova makes almost 85% of its revenue offshore, while Bidcorp is even higher.
But if you dig deeper, you’ll find that Bidcorp offers a far more predictable business model than Santova. This is reflected in the relative valuation of the stocks, with Santova trading at half of Bidcorp’s P/E multiple.
As Bidcorp is by far the more impressive of the two, we can begin there.
Bidcorp: An almost palatable valuation
In the 10 months to April 2026, Bidcorp grew revenue by 5.1% and trading profit by 7.0% in constant currency. The rand-denominated growth rates are lighter (3.8% and 6.1% respectively) due to the relatively strong performance of our currency over the past year.
When you consider the broader geopolitical and trade environment in which Bidcorp has achieved these numbers, it’s not just our currency that can be described as resilient. With HEPS up by 7.1% in constant currency (and 6.6% in rands), they’ve delivered decent growth at a time when consumer spending has been under assault from macroeconomic pressures.
Aside from management’s commitment to building and operating an efficient group, Bidcorp shareholders have also benefited from share buybacks during a time when the share price has been under pressure. With repurchases of 0.7% of shares in issue during this period, there are fewer mouths at the table to feed. This helps the remaining shareholders get a bigger slice of the pie.
Although we will need to wait for detailed full-year results to know for sure, it looks like gross margin has been the major source of margin uplift here. They are struggling with operating costs thanks to factors such as wage inflation. We can also safely assume that fuel costs are a major pressure point in the final trading months of the year.
Bidcorp has more exposure to the conflict in Iran than just the oil price. Performance in the broader Middle East market (like Dubai) was severely affected by the destabilisation of the region. Importantly, Bidcorp notes that normal levels of activity have returned in the markets in which they operate.
In case you’re wondering, even food businesses need to be thinking about AI. Bidcorp has established a dedicated office in Amsterdam to drive the group’s efforts in digital platforms and AI enhancements. This is a sensible strategy, as they need to keep finding ways to protect margins through efficiencies.
With a P/E multiple of around 15.5x, Bidcorp is a lot more palatable than it used to be. But even at these levels, this stock only makes it on to my watchlist. The paltry shareholder returns over the past three years (a total just of 3% including dividends) provide a cautionary tale about buying stocks at demanding valuations.
Santova: A hostile global trade environment
Santova has an odd delay between the release of results and the hosting of the analyst presentation. These things normally happen on the same day, or perhaps one day apart. For whatever reason, Santova needed almost a week between results and the presentation.
The 2026 financial year was a wild ride for the company, mirroring the extraordinarily volatile conditions we saw in global trade. Tariffs caused absolute chaos in 2025, with Santova’s interim profit down 23.4%, giving investors many new grey hairs. But in the full-year results, they achieved a substantial improvement in momentum and came in only 5% down for the year (on a normalised basis, excluding Seabourne Group).
The Seabourne deal is interesting, as it gives Santova exposure to eCommerce trends in Europe. Fulfilment of online orders is a very different game from shipping in bulk across the world, so this represents useful diversification for investors in terms of business model and trade lanes.
Speaking of diversification, one of the most interesting things about this group is the variance in profit margin across the geographies. The strongest is Africa, with a meaty margin of 28.5%. Europe is the lowest at just 9%. Technically, North America is the lowest thanks to its operating losses, but that doesn’t represent the steady-state business in that market (hopefully, at least).
With different business models and structurally different margins across the various geographies, Santova isn’t an easy business to manage or forecast with any degree of accuracy. Adding to the difficulty is the lack of dividends, as investors don’t have a yield to pay them to wait.
The share price has been a weak overall performer in recent years (down 15% over three years), but underlying volatility has allowed punters to make plenty of money if they got the timing right. To be taken seriously by long-term investors, Santova will need to chart a course that includes steady growth and strong execution of the Seabourne opportunity.
It would also help matters tremendously if the sheer amount of disruption to the global trade environment were to calm down. DM