Vietnam's new car goes public in the United States, market value is second to "Wei Xiaoli"
In the past two days, the story of Xu Jiayin's car in trouble has ushered in a turning point, and the so-called local tycoons in the Middle East have come to the rescue with 500 million US dollars. At the same time, the story of the real estate tycoon Pham Riwang, known as "Vietnam Xu Jiayin", also ushered in a climax.
Regarding the story of Van Riwang's car building, last year I wrote an article "Vietnam's "Xu Jiayin", can create "Asian Tesla"? , and talked in detail about the past and present of this new Vietnamese car.
Although Vinfast, a new Vietnamese car, was not optimistic at first, it has now not only been sold to the European and American markets, but has even been successfully listed on the US stock market.
On August 15, Vinfast successfully landed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol VFS through a backdoor listing, opening at $22 per share, and soon soared to $37.06 per share, jumping its market value to $85 billion.
This market value not only killed the Chinese newly-built car Sanjie "Wei Xiaoli" in the US stock market, but even surpassed the local giants General Motors ($46 billion) and Ford ($48 billion), almost the sum of the market capitalization of the latter two.
David Mansfield, Vinfast's chief financial officer, also arrogantly said that there are still many strategic and institutional investors lining up, and new financing plans will be made in the next 18 months.
Vinfast's soaring share price also sent Fan Riwang's personal assets soaring by $39 billion, making him the fifth-richest person in Asia.
Vietnamese rich car building
Fan Riwang, a mathematical genius, studied in Russia in his early years, and later started a business in Ukraine, borrowed 10,000 US dollars to open a restaurant, and then started an instant noodle business, becoming a giant in the Ukrainian convenience food industry.
After making a lot of money in Eastern Europe, Pham Il Wang, who returned to his hometown, began to build resorts in Nha Trang and entered the tourism real estate industry, and his business grew bigger and bigger, creating Vietnam's largest private company, Vingroup, with a market value of about 21 billion US dollars, involving real estate, industrial manufacturing, tourism, telecommunications, retail and other industries.
In the face of Vietnam's weak auto industry, Pham Il Vong announced the manufacture of cars in 2017. At the beginning, it was a gasoline car, the way was simple and crude, the design was handed over to Pininfarina Design Studio, the powertrain and frame were directly bought from BMW from the production line of the previous generation X5, and the manufacturing was handed over to Magna.
After building two high-end cars, Van Riwang bought the Chevrolet Spark platform from General Motors, and produced a cheaper model that immediately became popular throughout Vietnam. Five years after entering the auto industry, Vinfast has a 10% share of the Vietnamese car market.
However, Fan Riwang does not want to revitalize the national automobile industry by selling eliminated foreign OEM gasoline cars, he is very clear that the future belongs to the era of electric vehicles, and Vinfast's ultimate goal is also to build electric vehicles and create the Tesla of Asia.
In the past two years, Vinfast has launched five pure electric vehicles, VF5, VF6, VF7, VF8 and VF9, which have become very popular in Vietnam and have begun to enter the European and American markets.
The road ahead is bumpy
Although the stock price and market value have skyrocketed, Vinfast's road to building cars outside Vietnam has not been too smooth.
In November, Vinfast shipped 3,000 vehicles to North America, but sales have been slow, with S&P Global Mobility showing that as of June, only 137 Vinfast electric vehicles had been registered in the U.S., and Vinfast had to recall them all due to software issues.
At the same time, Vinfast is also building a $4 billion plant in North Carolina, with a $2 billion investment in the first phase, with an annual production capacity of 150,000 vehicles, which is expected to start production in 2025.
In 2022, Vinfast accumulated a loss of $2.1 billion. In the first quarter of this year, Vinfast's net loss reached $598 million.
So in April this year, Fan Riwang urgently decided to transfuse another $2.5 billion to Vinfast, of which $1 billion was his personal property.
When Vinfast entered the European and American markets in a big way, Tesla and Chinese brands were washing the electric vehicle market with price wars. For example, Vinfast's VF8 sells for $46,000 in California, while the Tesla Model Y starts at $47,000.
Vinfast, which only sold more than a hundred cars in half a year, is not optimistic about how long the current stock price rally can be maintained. After all, Ford, which sells 15,000 electric vehicles in a quarter, still has a net loss of $1.08 billion, and it is even more unknown when Vinfast will be profitable.
And many new American cars that were previously listed through backdoor borrowing, although they had a brief period of glory, have now been beaten back to their original shape. The market capitalization of Lordstown, Nikola and Faraday Future has lost more than 90% from its peak.
Even Rivian, which had a market capitalization of more than $150 billion in the week after its IPO in November 2021, is now only $20 billion.
So when Vinfast's bubble in the U.S. stock market will burst is only a matter of time.