Some 28 of 34 auctions conducted by the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) in 2017 sold out shares offered by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), raising over 2.63 trillion VND (115.72 million USD) for the State.

Investors watch stock movements in the Vietcombank Securities Company.

According the HNX, the volume earned the State about 933 billion VND (41.05 million USD) in share premium and more than 30 percent of the sold-out auctions had the bid prices 1.5 – 2.5 times higher than the starting prices.

The total volume of SOE shares offloaded in HNX was estimated at about 321 million in 2017.

It was the third year SOE stocks have been offloaded in the HNX. While 2015 saw the boom in initial public offerings (IPOs) of SOEs with 64 SOEs offering shares to the public for the first time, representing 71 percent of the total auctions in HNX, public auctions for SOE share offloading accounted for 71 percent last year.

The most attractive auctions were sales of shares in the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PVN), the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), the Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines), and Song Da Corporation.

The HNX also conducted three IPOs for Viglacera Corporation – JSC, Cam Ranh International Airport Services JSC and Apax Holdings which sold a total of more than 138 million stakes for over 2.28 trillion VND (100.36 million USD).

The exchange plans to organise 15 auctions to offload 559 million SOE shares in January.-VNA