We met with Bfood and came away feeling neutral about the group’s prospects going forward. As the meeting yielded no major surprises, we keep our forecasts unchanged. We keep our BUY call and TP of RM1.85 based on an unchanged 25x PE tagged to FY20 EPS of 7.4 sen. While we are optimistic on KRR business strategy of closing high rent locations in favour of small format stores, Bfood’s key value comes from the robust growth of Starbucks Malaysia, which we expect to continue to open 25-30 stores per annum.

We met with Bfood and came away feeling neutral about the group’s prospects going forward.

Starbuck’s GrabFood tie up to add volumes. Bfood shared that Starbucks has recently been made available for sale on GrabFood platform. With approximately 50 stores on the platform, this makes up is 1 in 6 operational Starbucks outlets, as Bfood currently has 300 operational Starbucks outlets. While we understand that orders generated through the platform have thinner margins than orders sold in store (as Grab takes a cut of up to 25% of the sale), we are positive on this venture as we estimate that this venture could add between 5-10% of sales volume for outlets listed on the platform.

KRR continues tweaking its business model. KRR will continue to close unprofitable large format stores and open small format outlets instead (Figure 1). Since the closure of KRR in Sky Avenue (Genting), Bfood have closed a further 3 unprofitable stores in 1Q20. In FY20, Bfood intends to open 10 more KRR outlets, with just 2 of those being regular format stores and the remaining 8 being small format ones. We note that small format store requires just a fifth of the capex requirements of regular store’s start-up cost given the smaller real estate required in addition to lower rent. This is due to small format store having minimal seating area as it focuses on take away transactions.

High effective tax rate to remain. We expect the group’s high effective tax rate of ~40% to remain for the foreseeable future. We understand that this is due to (i) a large chunk of the group’s interest cost being non-tax deductible as the borrowings are held at the holding company level (which was borrowed to fund the acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in Starbucks Malaysia operations); as well as (ii) much of the renovation costs for Starbucks outlets being non-tax deductible.

Outlook. We believe Bfood’s profitability will continue to be driven by the opening of 25-30 new Starbucks outlets annually. Despite posting wide EBIT losses of RM12.4m in 14MFY19, we expect KRR Malaysia to narrow this in FY20 as we understand the bulk of the losses stemmed from one-off expenses associated with the closure of non performing stores. Going forward, we expect Bfood to continue to roll our small format outlets (small real estate requirement and minimal seating space) which have been successful for the group in recent times.

Forecast. As the meeting yielded no surprise, we keep our forecasts unchanged.

Maintain BUY, TP: RM1.85. We keep our BUY call and TP of RM1.85 based on an unchanged 25x PE tagged to FY20 EPS of 7.4 sen. While we are optimistic on the KRR business strategy of closing high rent locations in favour of small format stores, Bfood’s key value comes from the robust growth of Starbucks Malaysia, which we expect to continue to open 25-30 stores per annum.

Source: Hong Leong Investment Bank Research - 2 Oct 2019