Our strategy

The Group’s strategic ambition of scale and growth, and continually pursuing responsible stewardship, is being achieved by maintaining a strong balance sheet, exercising financial discipline through considered capital allocation, and pursuing organic and acquisitive growth opportunities in our identified areas of strategic focus.

We promote and support our entrepreneurial management teams that empower many enterprises across all our areas of operation to be catalysts for value creation. We further support our teams to create an ecosystem of businesses that actively supports and adds value to our customer base, focuses on cash generation and returns, but at the same time strengthens society and enables it to function efficiently and sustainably.

We foster innovation and an environment in which employees thrive, which in turn drives our advance across markets, geographies and society. We continually seek to maximise our portfolio by broadening our offering, expanding internationally in niche hygiene and facilities management services as well as plumbing related wholesaling, and we allocate capital efficiently, including on bolt-on acquisition and long-dated assets.

During FY2022, we made further progress in advancing our strategy. We started the year with the successful placement of Bidvest’s inaugural, attractively priced,international bond. This is a critical enabler of our growth ambitions, particularly internationally, and a clear external endorsement of such. A good M&A pipeline was proactively built, and several exploratory engagements kicked off. A handful of bolt-on acquisitions were concluded, both locally and offshore. The anticipated scale benefits from the bolt-on acquisitions concluded by Noonan in the prior year, as well as organic growth, is manifesting in an excellent return uplift.

Our steadfast discipline when evaluating opportunities remained firmly intact as we walked away from several acquisition possibilities.