As China’s instant noodles are at their peak during the long holidays, one of Master Kong’s executives has been in the microblogging spotlight for inappropriate comments. As of this writing, the microblogging topic has been read by more than 150 million people.
The manager of Master Kong said the COVID-19 pandemic is “God help us” was recorded as a major fault
According to the Southern Daily News on September 30, an internal employee of Master Kong revealed to the newspaper that at the end of June this year, when the pandemic was most intense in Guangdong, the general manager of Master Kong’s instant noodle marketing company in the Pearl River Delta, Pan Xgang, made inappropriate remarks related to the pandemic during a meeting with employees.
The recording of the meeting shows that Pan Xgang said, when talking about the performance of Master Kong instant noodles this year, “At this time, God helps us …… to have a pandemic.” When talking about Zhongshan’s performance, Pan Xgang said to the Zhongshan regional manager, “Zhongshan so far there is no pandemic, Shenzhen has it, Dongguan has it, Guangzhou has it, Foshan has it, Zhongshan doesn’t …… God is not helping you.”
After the content of the above meeting was exposed, Pan Xgang responded by saying, “Improper remarks, only on behalf of an individual, I apologize to the public, to all, deeply review and admit all mistakes.”
The internal staff of Master Kong told the Southern Daily that Pan Xgang’s remarks made many employees very angry.
On August 16, Master Kong has announced the internal results of the treatment of Pan Xgang. An internal announcement “announced the punishment of Pan Xgang” shows that Pan Xgang was given a major demerit for inappropriate personal remarks.
For the company’s treatment, Pan Xgang said: “I accept any treatment plan and opinion of the company. Has been many rounds of interviews, including the record have been doing, including have talked about the action of removal.”
The income of instant noodles increased sharply last year and returned to normal this year
The COVID-19 pneumonia pandemic has had a huge adverse impact on many industries, and instant noodles are indeed one of the industries that have bucked the trend of growth under the pandemic.
Looking at 2020, Master Kong’s instant noodle business reported sales revenue of 29.51 billion yuan, up 16.64% year-on-year. During the reporting period, the gross margin of instant noodles rose 0.29 percentage points year-on-year to 29.3% due to product upgrades as well as production optimization.
As a result of the year-on-year increase in revenue, the year-on-year increase in gross margin and the year-on-year decrease in distribution cost ratio, the profit attributable to shareholders of the instant noodles business for the full year 2020 rose by 24.25% year-on-year to RMB2.733 billion. Among them, high-priced noodles and high-end noodles are the first core products to be consolidated by the instant noodle business. Sales growth of bag noodles and large portion products is particularly evident due to the increase in indoor consumption and surge in demand for cost-effective products as a result of the pandemic.
According to Nielsen, the world’s leading market monitoring and data analysis company, sales in the Chinese instant noodle industry rose by 4.7% year-on-year in 2020. 46.3% of Master Kong’s sales market share in 2020, ranking first in the market, is a veritable “instant noodle king” in China.
During the same period, the main rival of Master Kong instant noodles – Uni-President instant noodles business revenue of 9.055 billion yuan, an increase of 7.2% over the same period last year.
Entering 2021, with the pandemic easing, the performance of instant noodle companies is also returning to normal. In the first half of the year, the revenue of the Uni-President instant noodle business was 4.398 billion yuan, a decrease of more than 600 million yuan compared to last year’s revenue of more than 5 billion yuan.
According to Master Kong’s semi-annual report, in the first half of this year, the instant noodle business achieved revenue of 12.722 billion yuan, affected by last year’s pandemic “high base” factors, down 14.67% year-on-year.
Nielsen data show that in the first half of 2021, the overall sales volume of the instant noodle industry fell by 7.7% year on year, and sales fell by 7.3% year on year. While Master Kong’s sales declined year on year, the market share of sales volume rose to 45.4% and the market share of sales was 47.9%, up 2.1% year on year, ranking first in the market.
Master Kong and Uni-President, the “two giants” of Chinese instant noodles, are also making corresponding changes, starting to become “high-end”. Now, even if it is an instant noodle, it is not uncommon for it to sell for 30 yuan. Source