Boring can be beautiful it seems. Catering giant Compass, that feeder of office workers, students and occupants of care homes around the world, is back at pre-Covid levels and perhaps more notably feeling sufficiently confident to lift revenue guidance and start buying back shares.
There’s nothing innovative about Compass and what it does but in uncertain times, one certainty is that people will still need to be fed, and the company is very much at the top of the food chain in its industry.
“Compass’ scale creates significant barriers to entry and helps it to keep tight control on costs despite surging inflation in food prices,” said AJ Bell’s Russ Mould.
“If it has the appetite it feels like there is still a very large amount of market share for Compass to snaffle up. Despite its leading position in the global food service market its overall share is only just in the double digits with plenty of smaller regional operators and in-house providers from whom it could take business.
“The current backdrop is encouraging more businesses and organisations which do their catering in-house to turn to Compass, driving new contract awards and helping to make up for any negative impact from the work from home trend.
“And it feels significant that Compass has just posted the highest ever level of client retention on record.”
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