VinFast: Vietnam EV maker valued at more than Ford or GM
Mariko Oi - Business reporter
Tue, August 15, 2023
The Vinfast VF6 all-electric vehicle is on display at the 2022 Los Angeles Auto Show.
Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast's stock market valuation has soared above Ford and General Motors (GM) on its first day of trading.
Shares in the firm, which has yet to make a profit, closed above $37 (£29) each in their New York's debut.
That gave VinFast a stock market valuation of $85bn, much higher than Ford's $48bn and GM's $46bn.
It comes as motor industry giants and newer manufacturers fight for a slice of the booming EV market.
The listing added around $39bn to the wealth of VinFast's chairman and founder Pham Nhat Vuong, who was already Vietnam's richest man.
Regulatory filings show he controls 99% of the firm's outstanding shares, mostly through Vietnam's largest conglomerate, Vingroup JSC.
That limits the number of shares available for other investors to trade, which can lead to large price swings.
Trading in VinFast was relatively thin on Tuesday, with around $185m worth of its shares changing hands.
"Investors are continuing to believe that the future is in electric and that a low-cost East Asian country will emerge as a competitor in the US," said Bill Russo, Founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Automobility.
"The markets believe that given geopolitics that Vietnam, not China, will be that country."
Instead of a conventional share sale, VinFast went public using a shell company, or special purpose acquisition company (Spac).
Spacs are often used by start-ups to speed up the often slow and expensive process of taking a private company public. In simple terms, it means merging a company that is not on a stock exchange with one that is.
Several EV makers - including Lordstown Motors and Faraday Future - have gone public using Spacs in the last three years.
However, both firms have lost more than 90% of their stock market value since their mergers.
Mr Russo said VinFast could be different because "they are primarily backed by Vingroup, which gives them access to funding from a business that has a proven track record of growth".
"Most EV start-ups fail because they do not have profitable core and external funding eventually runs out as they burn capital far faster than they generate cash," he said.
But VinFast also faces tough competition as major players fight for market domination.
Market leaders - including Elon Musk's Tesla and BYD, which is backed by veteran investor Warren Buffett - have been cutting prices to boost sales.
In the first half of the year VinFast delivered 11,300 EVs, according to a company presentation. By comparison, Tesla delivered more than 889,000 vehicles in the same period.
"Tesla will continue to be the clear leader in EVs but there will be many winners," said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
"VinFast has built a strong foundation for EV success."
Mariko Oi - Business reporter
Tue, August 15, 2023
The Vinfast VF6 all-electric vehicle is on display at the 2022 Los Angeles Auto Show.
Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast's stock market valuation has soared above Ford and General Motors (GM) on its first day of trading.
Shares in the firm, which has yet to make a profit, closed above $37 (£29) each in their New York's debut.
That gave VinFast a stock market valuation of $85bn, much higher than Ford's $48bn and GM's $46bn.
It comes as motor industry giants and newer manufacturers fight for a slice of the booming EV market.
The listing added around $39bn to the wealth of VinFast's chairman and founder Pham Nhat Vuong, who was already Vietnam's richest man.
Regulatory filings show he controls 99% of the firm's outstanding shares, mostly through Vietnam's largest conglomerate, Vingroup JSC.
That limits the number of shares available for other investors to trade, which can lead to large price swings.
Trading in VinFast was relatively thin on Tuesday, with around $185m worth of its shares changing hands.
"Investors are continuing to believe that the future is in electric and that a low-cost East Asian country will emerge as a competitor in the US," said Bill Russo, Founder and CEO of Shanghai-based Automobility.
"The markets believe that given geopolitics that Vietnam, not China, will be that country."
Instead of a conventional share sale, VinFast went public using a shell company, or special purpose acquisition company (Spac).
Spacs are often used by start-ups to speed up the often slow and expensive process of taking a private company public. In simple terms, it means merging a company that is not on a stock exchange with one that is.
Several EV makers - including Lordstown Motors and Faraday Future - have gone public using Spacs in the last three years.
However, both firms have lost more than 90% of their stock market value since their mergers.
Mr Russo said VinFast could be different because "they are primarily backed by Vingroup, which gives them access to funding from a business that has a proven track record of growth".
"Most EV start-ups fail because they do not have profitable core and external funding eventually runs out as they burn capital far faster than they generate cash," he said.
But VinFast also faces tough competition as major players fight for market domination.
Market leaders - including Elon Musk's Tesla and BYD, which is backed by veteran investor Warren Buffett - have been cutting prices to boost sales.
In the first half of the year VinFast delivered 11,300 EVs, according to a company presentation. By comparison, Tesla delivered more than 889,000 vehicles in the same period.
"Tesla will continue to be the clear leader in EVs but there will be many winners," said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
"VinFast has built a strong foundation for EV success."
Tycoon’s Fortune Soars $39 Billion on Eyebrow-Raising SPAC
Anders Melin
Tue, August 15, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Its electric cars have been dogged by poor reviews and it’s on pace to make fewer sales this year than General Motors Co. does in a week.
Yet that hasn’t stopped VinFast Auto Ltd. from becoming the latest beneficiary of speculative fervor around newly minted SPAC deals — many of which end up tumbling over the long-term.
The Vietnamese automaker’s shares surged 255% Tuesday when it debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pushing the company’s market capitalization above that of industry giants GM and Mercedes-Benz Group AG. It added $39 billion to the net worth of chairman Pham Nhat Vuong, whose fortune now stands at $44.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
At the current market capitalization, VinFast is about six times bigger than Chinese EV maker XPeng Inc., which went public in the US in 2020.
VinFast is the latest example of a thinly traded company soaring on its debut after completing a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Many have experienced eye-popping rallies that ended a few trading sessions after the merger closed, as traders look to make a quick profit on companies with limited shares — meaning the jump in Vuong’s wealth may be short-lived.
De-SPACs — the term for firms that go public via a SPAC merger — that have made their debut this year have seen a median slump of about 45%, with 18 of them wiping out more than 70% of their value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Regulatory filings show Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, directly and indirectly controls 99% of the company’s outstanding shares, mostly through his conglomerate, Vingroup JSC. That large stake limits the shares available for other investors to trade, meaning the stock is prone to large swings. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index hasn’t previously counted Vuong’s stake in the carmaker, which he founded in 2017.
“The stock will be very volatile until more shares are available for trading,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at University of Florida.
If VinFast can hold onto its gains, it will be in a somewhat unique position given the dismal performance of other electric automakers taken public via SPACs, including Lordstown Motors Corp., Nikola Corp. and Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc., all of which lost more than 90% of their market value since their mergers.
VinFast, though, has been weighed down by operational problems. In May, it recalled all the electric sport utility vehicles shipped to the US over a software malfunction and there have been some negative reviews. The company also cut some of its US workforce, sales have been modest and its net losses are widening.
“There have been some negative reviews,” VinFast Chief Executive Officer Le Thi Thu Thuy told Bloomberg Television Tuesday. “We take them very close to our heart, we reflect on the feedback from those reviews and we make our vehicles better.”
In the six years it has been operating, VinFast has taken in $9.3 billion of financing to cover its operating and capital expenditures, much of it coming from Vuong’s other businesses.
Still, the company, which began building a factory in North Carolina last month, forecasts sales will reach 45,000 to 50,000 this year and Vuong predicts it will break even by the end of 2024.
VinFast had been planning a normal initial public offering, but scrapped that and opted for a SPAC listing after investor appetite for money-losing startups waned over the past year. Instead, it agreed to merge with blank-check company Black Spade Acquisition Co., founded by casino mogul Lawrence Ho.
Vuong, who studied geo-economic engineering in Russia, made his fortune in the 1990s in Ukraine with a business making instant noodles. The Hanoi-born businessman sold it to Nestle SA in 2010, nine years after he had returned to Vietnam.
By that time, he’d already established publicly-traded Vingroup JSC, focused on real estate, resorts, schools, shopping malls and more. The firm booked revenue of $4.4 billion last year, and remains a major shareholder in VinFast.
--With assistance from Bailey Lipschultz, Filipe Pacheco and Nguyen Kieu Giang.
(Updates with stock comparison in paragraph four and comment in paragraph eight.)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Anders Melin
Tue, August 15, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Its electric cars have been dogged by poor reviews and it’s on pace to make fewer sales this year than General Motors Co. does in a week.
Yet that hasn’t stopped VinFast Auto Ltd. from becoming the latest beneficiary of speculative fervor around newly minted SPAC deals — many of which end up tumbling over the long-term.
The Vietnamese automaker’s shares surged 255% Tuesday when it debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pushing the company’s market capitalization above that of industry giants GM and Mercedes-Benz Group AG. It added $39 billion to the net worth of chairman Pham Nhat Vuong, whose fortune now stands at $44.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
At the current market capitalization, VinFast is about six times bigger than Chinese EV maker XPeng Inc., which went public in the US in 2020.
VinFast is the latest example of a thinly traded company soaring on its debut after completing a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company. Many have experienced eye-popping rallies that ended a few trading sessions after the merger closed, as traders look to make a quick profit on companies with limited shares — meaning the jump in Vuong’s wealth may be short-lived.
De-SPACs — the term for firms that go public via a SPAC merger — that have made their debut this year have seen a median slump of about 45%, with 18 of them wiping out more than 70% of their value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Regulatory filings show Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, directly and indirectly controls 99% of the company’s outstanding shares, mostly through his conglomerate, Vingroup JSC. That large stake limits the shares available for other investors to trade, meaning the stock is prone to large swings. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index hasn’t previously counted Vuong’s stake in the carmaker, which he founded in 2017.
“The stock will be very volatile until more shares are available for trading,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at University of Florida.
If VinFast can hold onto its gains, it will be in a somewhat unique position given the dismal performance of other electric automakers taken public via SPACs, including Lordstown Motors Corp., Nikola Corp. and Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc., all of which lost more than 90% of their market value since their mergers.
VinFast, though, has been weighed down by operational problems. In May, it recalled all the electric sport utility vehicles shipped to the US over a software malfunction and there have been some negative reviews. The company also cut some of its US workforce, sales have been modest and its net losses are widening.
“There have been some negative reviews,” VinFast Chief Executive Officer Le Thi Thu Thuy told Bloomberg Television Tuesday. “We take them very close to our heart, we reflect on the feedback from those reviews and we make our vehicles better.”
In the six years it has been operating, VinFast has taken in $9.3 billion of financing to cover its operating and capital expenditures, much of it coming from Vuong’s other businesses.
Still, the company, which began building a factory in North Carolina last month, forecasts sales will reach 45,000 to 50,000 this year and Vuong predicts it will break even by the end of 2024.
VinFast had been planning a normal initial public offering, but scrapped that and opted for a SPAC listing after investor appetite for money-losing startups waned over the past year. Instead, it agreed to merge with blank-check company Black Spade Acquisition Co., founded by casino mogul Lawrence Ho.
Vuong, who studied geo-economic engineering in Russia, made his fortune in the 1990s in Ukraine with a business making instant noodles. The Hanoi-born businessman sold it to Nestle SA in 2010, nine years after he had returned to Vietnam.
By that time, he’d already established publicly-traded Vingroup JSC, focused on real estate, resorts, schools, shopping malls and more. The firm booked revenue of $4.4 billion last year, and remains a major shareholder in VinFast.
--With assistance from Bailey Lipschultz, Filipe Pacheco and Nguyen Kieu Giang.
(Updates with stock comparison in paragraph four and comment in paragraph eight.)
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
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