【英文】巴克莱报告：疫情之后全球增长或急剧放缓（81页）

We see the robust performance of most ingredients stocks since Covid-19 changed the  world as unsurprising, given their strong links to food production. Overall food consumption  is unlikely to decline because of Covid-19.  However, we are seeing a channel shift away from food service to at home consumption,  which affects some of the ingredients stocks we cover, and explains why Chr Hansen, with a  high-weighting to retail sales has performed so much more strongly than Kerry, which is  heavily weighted to out of home eating. In the short term, ingredients companies with higher exposure to fragrances are also likely  to face a slowdown in sales of cosmetics, but this is not obviously reflected in the share  price performance of Givaudan, Symrise or IFF.

We think that in a post-Covid-19 recession ingredients stocks may perform less well than  their recent share price moves indicate. As well as the potential disruption caused by Covid-19 and the threat of recession, it is also  worth remembering that the sector will look very different when IFF’s merger with DuPont’s  Nutrition & Biosciences business is due complete in 1Q21. This will create a new market  leader with sales of $11bn – 30% more than the current leader Kerry. While ultimately the  new IFF will have a more complete product offering than any of its competitors, we do  wonder the degree to which IFF could successfully pull off the biggest integration in history  of two ingredients companies and if this distraction could represent opportunity for some of  its competitors. IFF / DuPont said in December 2019 when their merger was announced  that they were targeting $400m in run-rate growth synergies.