Trillion-dong losses for years despite strong revenue growth

VNG Corporation (UPCoM: VNZ), founded by Le Hong Minh, is one of Vietnam’s largest technology companies. Its revenue reached VND10.9 trillion in 2025, with an ecosystem spanning gaming, Zalo, payments (fintech), and cloud services. It is widely seen as Vietnam’s first tech unicorn, owning the Zalo platform with tens of millions of users and an international presence.

Despite being regarded as a leading tech unicorn with strong revenue growth and expanding assets, nearly VND11 trillion in revenue in 2025, VNG has suffered prolonged losses, with several years posting losses of up to trillions of dong. Most recently, it was included in a list of companies with trillion-dong revenue but thin profits or prolonged losses published by the Tax Department (official dispatch dated March 3, 2026).

According to financial statements, by the end of 2025, VNG’s total assets had reached nearly VND11.4 trillion, up from more than VND9.4 trillion at the end of 2024. Revenue in 2025 reached nearly VND10.9 trillion, compared to about VND9.3 trillion in 2024. However, the company still posted a loss of nearly VND326 billion in 2025.

In 2024, VNG recorded a loss of more than VND1.18 trillion. Losses in 2023 and 2022 were over VND2.317 trillion and nearly VND1.534 trillion, respectively, while revenue ranged from VND7.6–7.8 trillion.

Financial statements show that VNG’s gross profit from sales and services remains large - over VND4 trillion in 2025 and more than VND3.426 trillion in 2024. However, selling expenses and administrative costs are very high. In 2025, selling expenses reached nearly VND2.558 trillion (compared to nearly VND1.971 trillion in 2024), while administrative expenses were VND1.318 trillion (vs. nearly VND1.33 trillion in 2024).

Other expenses and losses also ranged from VND400–900 billion per year.

The decline of VNG shares (VNZ) is also notable. The stock debuted on UPCoM on January 5, 2023, with a reference price of VND240,000 per share. After 11 consecutive sessions, it surged to over VND1.56 million per share on February 16, 2023.

However, it later dropped sharply to below VND740,000 per share in July 2023, rebounded to VND1.24 million about a month later, and has now fallen to around VND323,000 per share.

The downward trend over the past three years may be linked to continuous losses (four consecutive years), reportedly driven by high spending on marketing for new and strategic products.

Recent reports show VNG ramping up investment in game development. Several investments in subsidiaries and associates are loss-making, including the total loss of VND510 billion in investment capital into Tiki Global.

VNG also has many long-term projects. According to separate financial reports, in the first half of 2024, VNG invested an additional VND1,777 billion into Zion JSC (the owner of ZaloPay), raising the total investment in this enterprise to nearly VND5,142 billion, thereby increasing the ownership ratio from more than 72.6 percent to 99.999 percent. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, the investment level in Zion was VND3,550 billion.

Currently, VNG's market capitalization reaches VND9,600 billion (about $355 million), much lower than the $2.3 billion level at its peak.

Nevertheless, many investors still expect VNG to make a breakthrough in the long term. Expectations are placed on VNG's large projects, from its number 1 position in the field of games and online advertising, the ZaloPay project, the VNG Data Center to the plan to list shares on the US exchange.

According to Agriseco Securities, the information technology industry in Vietnam is expected to maintain high growth momentum thanks to the demand for digital transformation spending by enterprises and ministries which continues to rise. Besides that is the trend of developing AI, big data, cloud services, and the high growth rate of 4G and 5G networks.

With VNG, the strategic AI business segment has begun to record actual revenue from foreign markets. VNG will also concentrate its forces on this field.

Overall, VNG has a large domestic scale, wide influence, and is a prominent enterprise in B2C digital products and the local ecosystem. However, its global position is still in the expansion stage.

Manh Ha