The HCMC Stock Exchange reported that Kallang Ltd (Cayman Islands), the second biggest shareholder of An Phat Plastics and Green Environment (AAA), has sold 2.25 million AAA shares, thus reducing its ownership ratio in the company to 6.16 percent.

An Phat Holdings remains the biggest shareholder of AAA, while PYN Elite Fund is the third biggest with 4.98 percent of chartered capital.

Kallang’s move was taken in the context of the steady AAA share price increase over the last three months. The company has set the target of obtaining revenue of VND10 trillion in 2019 and post-tax profit of VND510 billion, the highest levels.

Kallang also sold a large number of Nam Bay Bay (NBB) shares last March. About 6 million NBB shares were sold by the company, thus reducing its ownership ratio in Nam Bay Bay to 4.81 percent. With the small proportion of shares, the foreign investor is no longer a big shareholder at Nam Bay Bay.

Meanwhile, Hoa Binh Construction (HBC) owned by Le Viet Hai, a well known businessman, has announced that Pyn Elite Fund (Non-Uctis) from the Netherlands sold 8 million HBC shares in total in the two weeks of March. With the sale, it is now only holding 15.08 million shares, or 7.69 percent.

Prior to that, Pyn Elite Fund also divested shares of many other enterprises. It sold 500,000 VND shares of VNDirect Securities Company which reduced its ownership ratio to 9.8 percent.

The sale of big foreign shareholders in recent days has put pressure on share prices. Nam Bay Bay JSC registered to purchase 9.75 million shares on April 1-26.

The pressure caused by foreign investors’ divestment explains why the prices of HBC, a leading company in the construction industry, have fallen to the lowest level in the last 1.5 years. The price level is just equal to 50 percent of the peak price of VND42,000 per share seen in late 2017.

A foreign investment fund in Vietnam recently began withdrawing capital from Hoa Phat Group owned by Tran Dinh Long, the ‘Steel King’. In early March, the funds managed by Dragon Capital sold 500,000 HPG shares. They are no longer a big shareholder of Hoa Phat.

Pham Nhat Vuong, the richest dollar billionaire of Vietnam, also sees foreign capital leaving. Bloomberg reported that Warburg Pincus has sold 50 million VRE shares of Vincom Retail, or 2/3 of the total shares it was holding in VRE.

VnDirect Securities’ CEO Huynh Minh Tuan commented that the sale by foreign investment funds aims to restructure their investment portfolios. After a period of hot development, the growth of some companies may become critical.

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Chi Lan