Services & Trade

Contrary to the trend of foreign investors net selling billions of dollars from HoSE in 2024, foreign investors have been net buyers of DSE shares. Notably, Consilium Investment Management from the USA net bought more than US$ 6.6 million shares on July 2, accounting for more than 2 percent of DNSE’s value. Earlier in January, Finland’s Pyn Elite Fund also invested in DNSE buying 12 percent of the firm’s equity. As of July 5, foreign investors held 13 percent of DNSE’s shares–as a securities firm there is no foreign ownership limit…

Information disclosures on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange have been cited by key stock market index makers FTSE Russell and MSCI as one criteria holding the local bourse back from being upgraded from frontier to emerging. The irony here is that these securities firms stand to probably benefit the most from a stock market upgrade…

Prior to Quyet’s arrest, FLC had been a major real estate developer in Vietnam. The company had properties all over Vietnam as well as an airline–Bamboo Airways–with Quyet at one point reportedly a US dollar billionaire. Well known in Vietnam–idolised by some for his business savvy–his arrest drew a lot of media coverage and his trial will likely too…

It’s worth noting that a lot of Vietnamese firms are carrying a lot of debt and there is increasing pressure on the local currency that is only being kept at bay through issuing treasury bills and spending US dollar reserves which are being run down pretty quickly. The point being, that It wouldn’t take much for the State Bank to raise interest rates and if that were to happen it would likely do some pretty hefty damage to the VN-Index…

Last year was not a great year for the Vietnam Stock Exchange. Interest in the market as a means of raising capital was lacklustre with just three IPOs completed by the end of November worth just US$7 million. Furthermore, foreign investors exited the market to the tune of over US$1 billion as greater global uncertainty weighted heavily on the local bourse.

In 2018, SK group bought 109.9 million shares in Masan Group for VND 100,000  or US$4.29 per share for a total of just over US$470 million. Masan, which trades under the ticker MSN, closed at VND 76,200 or US$2.99 Friday valuing the company’s holding at about US$328.6 million. A sizable loss if sold at current prices. SK Group, however, reportedly has a put option whereby it can sell its shares back to the firm at the price in paid back in 2018. It seems unusual that SK Group would not exercise this option under the current circumstances…

Both investments have lost considerable value since SK Group bought into these firms in 2018. Of note, SK Group bought 205.7 million shares in Vingroup–which trades under the ticker VIC–in 2019 for VND 113,000 or US$4.85 at the time for just shy of US$1 billion dollars.  Vingroup shares last traded at VND 41,650 or US$1.64 valuing the firm’s current holding at US$337.4 million…

This net selling momentum hasn’t been limited to Fubon. Foreign investors in general have been net sellers in the Vietnamese market, of late. From the beginning of 2024 until June 17, foreign investors hadhave net sold US$1.7 billion worth of Vietnamese securities listed on HoSE…

It’s not clear why it failed to make quorum nor when another annual general meeting might be scheduled. That said, it’s also not clear that this is necessarily a big problem, however, it does speak to a bad run for VNDirect which was shut down for a week by hackers back in March. This has seen its share price on a steady decline since falling from VND 21,278 on March 21 to just VND 17,500 as of today–a decline of just shy of 22 percent.

Of the 18 criteria listed, on six Vietnam had no issues, on four it had no major problems but could use some improvement, but for the remaining eight it was marked as needing improvement. Vietnam has been actively courting an upgrade to its market classification from FTSE Russell and MSCI. Though it still looks to be some ways away this latest report from MSCI does suggest it is moving in the right direction.

This is in line with a broader exodus from Vietnam’s stock markets of foreign investors. Since the start of the year, just shy of US$1.58 billion has been withdrawn by non-Vietnamese investors for a number of reasons like exchange rate pressures, higher returns elsewhere, and general uncertainty with respect to the local economy…

Of note, this is the total volume of accounts and Vietnamese investors can open accounts at more than one brokerage. With this in mind, in September. MB Securities closed the inactive accounts it had on file totalling 543,753 accounts. This was just one securities firm…