JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South Africa-based Bid Corporation Ltd (Bidcorp) told Reuters on Wednesday it was keeping its Greater China business, after Beijing eased some of the world’s toughest COVID curbs.
The food services company’s Chief Executive Bernard Berson said in an interview that Bidcorp had received unsolicited offers for its Chinese business during lockdown and had looked at these with an adviser
“I think people assumed that our business was dead and that we’re loss making and that we’d want to get rid of it,” he said.
China opened its borders in January, dismantling a final pillar of a zero-COVID-19 policy that had cut its 1.4 billion people off from the rest of the world.
“Had China stayed locked up and had they stuck to a 5 year COVID zero policy, locked off from the rest of the world, that might have changed the dynamics but that wasn’t the situation we had to deal with,” Berson said.
“So we’re very happy with our Greater China business.”
Bidcorp earlier reported a 45.5% jump in half-year headline earnings per share on resurgent demand across the hospitality, tourism, and leisure sectors.
It said its net revenue rose by 28.1% to 91.8 billion rand ($5 billion) and group trading profit increased by 43.9% to 4.9 billion rand.
Bidcorp said its Greater China business had experienced a tough first half as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions, but with activity levels resuming, it expects a better second-half trading performance.
($1 = 18.2640 rand)
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Rashmi Aich and Alexander Smith)
