Fork in the Road: Stick With Compass Over Sodexo

Research evidence excerpt

Fork in the Road: Stick With Compass Over Sodexo

IdeaM'Big 3' collectively require only a c.1% annual market share shift to outsourcing to

achieve their combined medium-term net new contract targets. (3) The structural

drivers behind the outsourcing trend are broadening beyond simple cost savings and

becoming increasingly complex. (4) Capex ROIs have consistently remained above

20% for the near decade we have tracked this, demonstrating solid returns on

capital, rather than simply buying market share. (5) Over the last 20 years, there

have been several periods of heavy client price pressure and renewed competitor

aggression (2007-10, 2012-13, 2018-19, 2024-26), but no clean episode where either

Sodexo or Aramark's pricing materially derailed Compass’s new business engine or

margin. See Is Competitive Intensity Rising? Assessing Capex ROIs, Historical

Precedents and Data Centres: No Cause For Concern Yet.

Data centres opportunity: We see data centres as a supportive backdrop for

Compass to meet its 4-5% net new sales target. The near-term opportunity is largely

in catering for construction workers during the build-out phase of US data centres,

rather than only servicing operational facilities. We estimate that a typical data

centre project could generate around $4-8m of annual revenue, broadly consistent

with Compass's own estimate of $4-5m per site. Assuming the over 1,000 planned

US data centre projects are built over 4-5 year periods and Compass wins 10-20% of

them, we calculate a potential $80-420m annual revenue opportunity, equivalent to

around 20-80bps of net new sales. Whilst certainly helpful, we only see the data

centre opportunity as a way of meeting its 4-5% net new sales target at this stage.

See Serving the Servers: Feeding the AI Infrastructure Buildout.