Recently, Vietnam, a country, has frequently appeared in front of people's eyes, brushing up on the sense of existence.
The value-added space behind it began to be known to the public except Li Ka-shing.
Under the slowing epidemic situation, benefiting from the loose monetary policy, with the demographic dividend and location advantages, Vietnam's economy has developed rapidly than expected, which is considered to be an excellent student.
Looking at some data, in the first quarter of this year, Vietnam's GDP increased by 5.03% year-on-year, and it is expected that the economic growth rate this year will reach 6.5%; the total trade volume in 2021 will exceed 600 billion US dollars, reaching a record high.
With this momentum, the Vietnamese stock market has also continued to go bullish, and the Ho Chi Minh Index has frequently hit record highs.
Image source: Ying Wei Cai
However, it is worth noting that recently a local electric vehicle leader has begun to impact the US stock market.
According to public information, VinFast, a leading vietnamese electric vehicle company, has secretly submitted a listing application to the US SEC, and it is expected that the initial public offering will be carried out after the SEC completes the review process. The market expects it to be valued at US$60 billion (now about 390 billion yuan).
VinFast is not small, after all, the company that dares to call Tesla is still very eye-catching, and there is also the support of Vietnam's richest man, Pan Riwang.
1
Rely on real estate to get rich to build cars
Founded in 2017, VinFast is part of the parent company, the Vingroup Group, whose founder is Pham Nhat Vuong.
Talking about Pan Riwang, his entrepreneurial history is also worth exploring, he is a person who is good at seizing opportunities, sensitive to business opportunities, once opened a restaurant in Ukraine, the first bucket of gold came from the fast food brand Divina he founded, and later Pan Riwang stared at the real estate business, although the Vietnamese real estate market fluctuated greatly, but there are gold mines to mine (in 2021, Vietnam's house prices rose by an average of 5% to 10%, and the house prices in the capital Hanoi hit a 5-year high), he cut a good time point, starting with the Vinpearl Resort in Nha Trang, Slowly develop high-end villa areas, commercial centers, high-end apartments, etc., and even expand to the development and operation of theme parks, catering and entertainment, education and health services, IT, etc.
Image source: Network
Vingroup Group's listing on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange in 2007 created a highlight moment in which Pan Ri-Wan became Vietnam's richest man and the first Vietnamese billionaire to appear on the Forbes Rich List, with public data showing that the 53-year-old Pan Ri-Wan was worth $7.6 billion and the industry jokingly called him "Vietnamese Li Ka Shing".
Image source: Network
This year, cross-border car manufacturing is a hot word, especially the big guys of housing enterprises, and they are looking at this blue ocean.
Pan Riwang is no exception. In fact, Vietnam's automobile industry base is very weak, most of the auto parts rely on imports, the localization rate is low, but this can not stop the Vietnamese people want to own a Vietnamese car determination!
Carrying some expectations, Pan Riwang established VinFast, and at the beginning he wanted to take the road of globalization, not only to build factories and set up company branches in many places around the world, but also to reach a lot of cooperation with BMW, Siemens and other car companies, increasing their own brand penetration.
VinFast's first sedan models (LUX A2.0 and LUX SA2.0) were powered by major European and American automakers, and the core of its powertrain was the BMW N20 turbocharged engine, which was discontinued in 2017, which was the first batch of self-brand cars in Vietnam.
Image source: Network
At the same time, VinFast also sells two-wheelers, and in 2018 released the Klara electric car, which sold well in Vietnam.
Image source: Network
Due to Vietnam's strong support for the development of the electric vehicle industry and the subsidy for consumers to buy a car, VinFast sales are not bad. According to public data, VinFast became the fifth most popular car sales in Vietnam in 2020, behind Hyundai, Toyota, Kia and Honda.
As the manufacturing base slowly lays, VinFast began to accelerate its development, shifting from stopping the development of fuel models to the development of VF series electric models.
In December 2021, VinFast's first electric vehicle, the VF e34, rolled off the production line, which was the first domestic new energy vehicle in Vietnam, and then extended the VF 5, VF 6, VF 7, VF 8 and VF 9 series of models. In February this year, the delivery ceremony of the model was held in Vietnam, and the first batch of 2,000 new cars were delivered to users.
The VF e34 is equipped with a 42 kWh battery with a maximum power of 110 kW and a maximum torque of 242 Nm, with a range of up to 300 km. This model is equipped with a voice-activated virtual assistant developed by Vingroup's VinBigdata, which allows users to make reservations, reservations, etc. through the software set up on the car, and the number of reservations has exceeded 25,000.
Image source: Network
According to public information, VinFast is expected to deliver two new large-scale electric SUVs, VF8 and VF9 this year, and want to benchmark Tesla's Model X, but the price is much cheaper, VF 8 is priced at $41,000 (about 270,000 yuan), VF 9 is priced at $56,000 (about 370,000 yuan), and there are already more than 45,000 pre-orders.
While VinFast is targeting pure electric vehicles, the company has also welcomed a new CEO, Le Thi Thu Thuy, further accelerating the process of globalization.
VinFast plans to build its first U.S. plant in North Carolina to accelerate the output of capacity, which is planned to have an annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles, expected to be completed by July 2024, and will also build a new electric vehicle plant in Germany, with an annual production capacity expected to reach 950,000 units by 2026.
Image source: Network
2
Loss under leap forward
Today, looking back at the development of VinFast, it has to be said that Pan Riwang's initiative is more radical, but it is also effective.
In just four or five years, it has not only become the light of Vietnam's national car brand, but also stepped onto the world stage and wants to compete with strong opponents such as Tesla.
However, under the leap-forward development of VinFast, we still can't ignore the performance of performance.
After all, companies that paint a pie without actual performance can't really land safely.
As fuel vehicle sales did not meet expectations, VinFast's automotive business is still mired in losses, which in turn has dragged down the Group's performance.
According to the financial report of VinFast's parent company Vingroup Group, its after-tax loss exceeded VND7.5 trillion (about $326 million) in 2021.
Obviously, this is the inevitable pain point of the company entering the new energy track, no matter how legendary the big man behind VinFast has a legendary real estate myth, it still has to be in line with international standards and expand overseas, in the end, if you want to fight this tram battle, the Vietnamese capital market is still relatively limited, and VinFast needs to come out and further get the halo comparable to Tesla and sufficient funds to achieve the dream of building a car.
However, at present, the timing of its choice to sprint to the US stock market is also more delicate, after all, under the uncertainty of the macro environment, compared with last year's boom, the atmosphere of foreign new stock listings is also relatively cold. The CEO of the NASDAQ OMX exchange said there were 70 IPOs in the first quarter of this year, a significant slowdown from 2021.
Society Pass, a Vietnamese technology company that landed on the NASDAQ last November, is the first, and its stock price is currently declining, reaching a high of $77.34 and now falling to $2.09, with a total market capitalization of only $49 million.
Image Source: Futu
Market sentiment is one thing, and if investors are not given certain expectations, even if the valuation is high, it will fall. For example, Rivian, which went public last November, set a record for the largest IPO in the U.S. stock since 2014. The electric car upstart's stock price soared on the first day of listing, and the market value once crossed the 100 billion US dollar mark and earned all the eyeballs, but then the stock price also went all the way down, and the latest total market value was 30.549 billion US dollars.
Image source: Futu
In the first quarter of this year, Rivian produced 2553 cars and delivered 1227 vehicles, but due to the uncertainty of the macro environment, the epidemic, geopolitical conflicts and other environments disrupted the supply chain, the chip shortage problem was prominent, the cost pressure was high, and it had to lower the production target (25,000 electric vehicles in 2022), overall, these uncontrolled factors are challenges for all electric vehicle companies.
3
epilogue
A country with strong vitality has also brought greater imagination space for the development of enterprises.
Under the promotion of the market-oriented reform process, the current macro environment in Vietnam is relatively relaxed, the stock market performance is also good, many companies have come out, and the rise of VinFast is inseparable from the accumulation in Vietnam in the early stage. However, at present, it wants to appear on the broader world stage, and it is not easy to reproduce the highlights through car building, after all, the battle around new energy vehicles has always been cruel.