State-owned shipping firm Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines) will trade 5.4 million shares on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) on October 8, announced by the Hanoi Stock Exchange.

Vinalines will trade 5.4 million shares on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCoM) on October 8. 

The shares, under code MVN, will start the first trading day at 10,000 VND (43 US cents) per share.

At this price level, the company’s market capitalisation will reach 54 billion VND.

On September 5, Vinalines put up 488.8 million shares, or a 34.8 percent stake, on sale but only 5.43 million shares were taken at an average price of 10,002 VND.

According to the equitisation plan, Vinalines will have chartered capital of nearly 14.05 trillion VND, thus trading volume on UPCoM accounts for less than 0.4 percent of Vinalines’ capital.

Vinalines, founded in 1995, is a 100 percent State-owned enterprise. It was transformed into a holding company in 2006 and a State-owned one member limited company in 2010.

In 2017, its consolidated financial statement recorded total sales of 13.57 trillion VND, down 7.4 percent year-on-year, and a loss of 537 billion VND from business activities. However, other profits of 1.5 trillion VND lifted the company’s after-tax profit to 748 billion VND, double the previous year.

Ending 2017, Vinalines had total assets of over 28 trillion VND but its liabilities were up to 20.2 trillion VND. The company still incurred cumulative losses of 3.25 trillion VND.

In the first half of this year, Vinalines recorded revenue of 6.3 trillion VND and net profit of 23.9 billion VND.-VNS