Kido sold its snack crown jewel to Mondelez and rebuilt around cooking oil

Kinh Do was Vietnam's leading confectioner when it sold 80% of its snack business to Mondelez International in 2014 for $370 million, then the remaining 20% in August 2016 for about VND2 trillion. Renamed Kido Group, the company had around half a billion dollars in hand and no core business — and chose cooking oil as the category to rebuild in.

The move into oil started with stakes: Kido held 24% of state-linked Vocarimex and, in 2015, explored a cooking-oil joint venture with Malaysia's Felda Global Ventures and Indo Trans Logistics. In late 2016 it launched a tender for Tuong An Vegetable Oil (TAC), a market leader with roughly VND4,000bn in annual revenue and two refineries, and raised its offer from VND78,000 to VND82,000 per share to win.

By November 24, 2016, Kido had completed the purchase of more than 12.3 million shares — about 65% of TAC — for VND1,012bn, and installed group CEO Tran Le Nguyen as TAC chairman. With Vocarimex holding another 27% of TAC, Kido's push to lift its Vocarimex stake toward 51% would have given it effective control of about 92% of the country's leading oil maker.

Kido paid VND1,012bn for 65% of Tuong An, a VND4,000bn-revenue market leader, and moved toward 92% via Vocarimex; in 2022 it sold its Cai Lan stake for VND2,158bn.

Kido's core asset after the Mondelez sale was a distribution network reaching hundreds of thousands of outlets, which transfers naturally from candy to cooking oil.

Cooking oil is a staple with steady demand, unlike confectionery, where it already faced multinational competition.

Raising the Tuong An tender price by VND4,000 per share bought certainty — control of a market leader instead of a prolonged fight.

Chaining stakes — 24% of Vocarimex which itself held 27% of Tuong An — let Kido reach effective control with less cash.

Selling the business you dominate can fund the next one — if you redeploy the proceeds into an adjacent category where your distribution is the real asset. Pay up once for scale, then integrate fast.

Under Kido, Tuong An set a 2017 pre-tax profit plan of VND165bn, roughly double the prior year. Kido went on pruning: in November 2022 its subsidiary Vocarimex sold its 24% stake in the Cai Lan Oils and Fats joint venture for VND2,158bn ($87 million) to Wilmar's Siteki, keeping Tuong An as its single cooking-oil brand while analysts pointed to its 450,000-outlet network as the moat. The snacks money ultimately returned several times over.