Brian Joffe (Bidvest) year end results and interview

[Partner24]

Here is the Bidvest Group financial results for 2010, wich were impressive given the actual economical context, and an interview with it's CEO Brian Joffe (who's been at the helm since 1988 I think).

 

The results:

 

http://financialresults.co.za/2010/bidvest_audited2010/

 

The Brian Joffe interview:

 

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page299364?oid=503432&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226

 

Like I said recently, Bidvest is one of the most uncovered and underfollowed success story that I know. I guess it might be because they mostly do not buy common stocks, but private businesses, or it's South African roots, or it's very boring industries in wich it's subsidiaries operate into. But in my book, it's in the Fairfax and Berkshire class.

 

Some quotes from the interview:

 

I think that the movements in markets and the opportunities and life changes more dramatically day by day, as compared to what it was two year ago. Also, two years ago, I think that many of the mistakes that were made were covered up by, obviously very buoyant, circumstances and today it's very transparent, very clear, what goes wrong. So, one has got to adapt to that and I think there are more opportunities, potentially, even now because it's a question of you versus the competitors, not necessarily you versus the market at the moment.

 

I think we still, as I said, aren't out of the woods, from an economic point of view. I think money is still reasonably short, not that it's short, you've just got to pay the price for it. I think that we see that there are quite a lot of opportunities coming and we just thought that we should be conservative at this time.

 

one of the things that I'm very conscious of, we could expand the business significantly in a very short period of time, if we decided to advance significant credit in our group. We haven't opted for that particular routing because at the end of the day, we want to have a good and quality, sustainable business over time.

 

Look, certainly if I had to evaluate myself, by in large I'm a conservative manager, if you want to put it that way. For me, it's a question of finding the right opportunities and doing the right things. I think on that basis, you land up with the right result. I just think from a group perspective and I'm just repeating myself again, I think we've always been conservative. When the opportunities come, then I think people may see and evaluate us in a slightly different way because if you make an acquisition, then of course you may be perceived as being less conservative.

[Myth465]

Thanks, when things slow down I plan to dig into this, Sears, and LUK.