How much is 'dumpling boss' Tho Phat valued at?

Kido Group (Code: KDC) has just announced its separate financial report for the third quarter of 2023, revealing the value of its investment in Tho Phat International JSC, a 40-year-old steamed bun brand with the largest market share in Southern Vietnam.

Kido invested over 810 billion VND to acquire 51% of the shares at the end of September, making Tho Phat the 7th subsidiary to join this ecosystem. With this data, the "dumpling tycoon" is now valued at nearly 1,600 billion VND.

Not stopping there, Kido recently announced that it would increase its ownership stake in Tho Phat to 68% of the charter capital in October, becoming a crucial piece in its strategy to expand into the confectionery industry. With this new stake, the group will invest more than 1,000 billion VND.

This valuation makes Tho Phat the third largest company in Kido's ecosystem, after Vocarimex and Tuong An, two key businesses in the vegetable oil industry.

	Investment capital	Ownership percentage (%)
Vocarimex	2,658	87.29
Tuong An Oil	1,176	72.24
Tho Phat	810	51
Kido Nha Be	41	51
KidoFood	30	100
Kido Trading & Services	9	100
Kido Long An	0.1	100

Established in 1987, Tho Phat is currently the largest steamed bun brand in Southern Vietnam with over 4,000 sales outlets. The company specializes in the production and distribution of various types of steamed buns, pork rolls, sticky rice, baked goods, fried pastries, etc. The business owns a factory in Ho Chi Minh City with an area of over 22,000 m2 and a production capacity of 10,000 tons of products per year.

The steamed bun company aims to develop 1,000 distributors, 1,200 mini Bao stores, 100,000 retail outlets, and achieve 100% coverage of MT stores (modern stores) nationwide.

While Kido is a leading corporation in the food sector, it leads the market in the ice cream industry with a 44.5% market share and the margarine industry with 74.9%, ranking second in the cooking oil industry with approximately 30% market share.

In 2021, the company officially returned to the bakery industry with the KIDO's Bakery brand after selling its confectionery business to Mondelez International five years ago. Following Tho Phat, this major player stated that it continues to seek M&A deals with the goal of returning to the top of the confectionery industry by 2025.

According to the consolidated report for the third quarter, Kido recorded a nearly 29% decrease in consolidated revenue to VND 2,356 billion. However, thanks to significant cost reductions, the company still had a highly profitable business period with a profit of VND 82 billion, 2.7 times higher than the same period last year.

Adding to the positive results in the first half of the year thanks to the partial divestment of KidoFoods, this diversified group announced a net profit of VND 647 billion in the first nine months of 2023, a 75% increase compared to the same period last year and almost reaching the annual target.

Kido continues to maintain stable cash flow with cash and cash equivalents at the end of the third quarter reaching VND 2,058 billion, nearly double compared to the beginning of the year. The Group has investments held to maturity totaling VND 764 billion (primarily comprising VND 480 billion in Rồng Việt Securities bonds and bank deposits). The company also has an advance of VND 1,393 billion to Asia Investment Co., Ltd. to purchase target shares.

Having achieved huge profits in the first half of the year, Kido continues to increase mooncake production. For the 2023 Mid-Autumn Festival season, Kido Group increased the production of KIDO's Bakery mooncakes by 60% compared to the same period last year, exceeding the initial forecast by 10%.

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