BinDawood CEO says 2020 results reflect business strength; COVID-19 impacts Q4 performance

Abdulrazzaq bin Dawood, CEO of BinDawood Holding

BinDawood Holding Co.'s strong financial results for 2020 demonstrated the strength and resiliency of its business, given that its operations faced numerous COVID-19-related headwinds that affected performance, particularly in Q4 2020, CEO Ahmad Abdulrazzaq BinDawood said in a company statement.

The Tadawul-listed company mainly focused on supporting its clients to overcome the pandemic in 2020, BinDawood added.

"We were optimistic at the end of Q3 that a gradual shift to normalization would occur around these cities. However, with the second wave of COVID-19 ensuing, the consequential safety restrictions on tourism had a negative impact on our supermarket revenue in Makkah and Madinah," the CEO said.

He added that other headwinds faced during the year included the absence of promotional campaigns, shift in consumer spending to e-commerce due to e-learning and work from home trends, restrictions on promotional space in adherence to social distancing safety measures, and an increase in value-added tax (VAT) last July.

"We also accrued additional costs, meeting restocking demands, during lockdown to ensure our procurement and logistics functions ran smoothly. Nevertheless, we continued to operate effectively, navigating the challenges strongly and posting both sales and net profit increase,” the CEO noted.

According to data compiled by Argaam, BinDawood posted a rise of 7% in 2020 net profit to SAR 447.7 million, compared with SAR 419.1 million a year earlier. It also reported a net profit of SAR 57.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2020.