yup, huge jump, worth more than F or VW, insanity

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/investing/vietnam-vinfast-stock-nasdaq-listing-intl-hnk/index.html


Hong KongCNN —
One of Vietnam’s biggest automakers has made a big splash on its entry to Wall Street, pushing its market capitalization above that of industry giants such as Volkswagen and Ford.
VinFast, an electric vehicle maker, enjoyed a red-hot debut in New York on Tuesday after merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Black Spade Acquisition Co.
Shares of the newly combined company skyrocketed 270% on the Nasdaq on their first day of trade. They opened at $22, more than double the initial price of $10, and closed at $37 apiece.
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The surge propelled VinFast’s market cap above $85 billion. That’s more than Volkswagen (VLKAF) or Ford (F), which are valued at 63.9 billion euros ($69.7 billion) and $48 billion, respectively, according to Refinitiv.
The eye-popping rally, however, was based on thin trade. VinFast is still 99% owned by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong, through shares held by his other company Vingroup and other business entities, according to a regulatory filing.

VinFast began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday.
VinFast/Handout
Vuong, the chairman of both Vingroup and VinFast, saw his own wealth soar by approximately $39 billion on Tuesday as shares of the carmaker shot up, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index. He is now estimated to be worth about $44.3 billion.
VinFast was founded in 2017 as a subsidiary of Vingroup, one of Vietnam’s largest conglomerates. The firm makes electric SUVs, scooters and buses, which are sold in Vietnam and North America.
Its performance Tuesday makes VinFast the largest US-listed Vietnamese company by market cap, it said.
In a statement, CEO Thuy Le said: “It is our hope that VinFast’s listing will inspire and unleash greater opportunities for Vietnamese brands to participate in the global market.”
Chilly US reception
So far, the company has released four electric vehicle models and delivered roughly 19,000 vehicles, according to its prospectus. For comparison, Volkswagen sold 4.4 million vehicles just in the first six months of 2023, more than 321,000 of which were electric.
VinFast is a household name in Vietnam, where its cars have become bestsellers and have access to an extensive charging network across more than 60 cities and provinces.
But the Vietnamese newcomer has had less success in the United States, where it started delivering to customers earlier this year.
In recent months, VinFast has been hit by poor reviews about its electric SUV, the VF 8, after letting US reporters test drive the vehicle.
Several headlines have been particularly blunt, with one by industry outlet Road & Track calling the vehicle “simply unacceptable.” Another by MotorTrend read: “Return to sender.”
Other reviews were more forgiving. One reminded readers that it was the company’s first effort at a car for the US market. Another praised the power delivery from the SUV’s electric motors.
In a blog post earlier this week, VinFast said it has made software improvements based on feedback “from vehicle owners and the automotive reviewer community.”
VinFast has made no secret of its global ambitions. In July, it broke ground on a new factory in North Carolina, which it hopes to use as a base for US sales. The company says the facility may eventually reach capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year.
The company has also teased a Europe launch, telling shareholders it will enter the region “soon.”
In her statement Tuesday, Le suggested the company will use the new proceeds raised to fuel its expansion, saying its listing “unlocks access to the capital markets and important avenues for future development.”
VinFast is not profitable yet. It reported a loss of $1.4 billion for the nine months through last September. It also carried about $2.5 billion in debt as of the end of September, according to a regulatory filing.

Everyone wants in on the next Tesla. Looks like a great stock to short.

No sooner do I write that and I checked the exchange and it's already down 18%. I'm guessing it will drop more than 50% in the next days.

Many of the EV Stocks that did a surge at IPO via SPAC or otherwise have struggled....Arrival, Canoo, Rivian etc. At least Rivian got a production line up and running, and is delivering to Amazon and some consumers, Vinfast is available elsewhere in the world, so they know how to ramp a production line, which we can't really say Arrival did (or at least they failed to raise enough capital at SPAC time to build enough runway to get to early market supply capabilities. I really do hope that Vinfast can pull it off (I have a vested interest for the entire sector to be successful in my professional life, beyond IM having a solid title sponsor). But having a market higher than VW seems to be insane. The ID4 and ID3 are doing reasonably well in Europe (even though we can't get ID3 in North America and ID4 is a year backlog in places and ID-GTI seems to be three years away)

I think this VF5 looks like an interesting vehicle (spoke with a guy about smaller EV's in the Canadian market and they said it may be comeing), but mainly an urban commuter with a sub 40kWh battery from what I read.

This sure doesn't look like the new Tesla, have you guys seen the reviews?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF7kaLTsNHQ&ab_channel=Donut


I think the very first Tesla Roadster 15 years ago was a higher quality and more capable car, that's a lot of ground to make up while everyone else in the market charges ahead.

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Professional Athlete: http://jordancheyne.wordpress.com/ http://www.strava.com/athletes/145340

Coaching Services:http://www.peakformcoaching.com/

The whole SPAC craze is wild. Hopefully that stuff ends, the SPAC bubble in sports was pretty incomprehensible.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Oh it's garbage compared to Tesla. I'm just saying there's a lot of investors that want in on the next overvalued stock.

Marques reviews the VF8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJUqu8ilqO8

Not good it seems....

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Regards, Richard

Yes, advantage is that you can put bs that'd never fly in an S-1.

Advantage for who though? Hmm...

SPACs are a backdoor for companies with inflated valuations that would not fare well in the traditional IPO process. It's no coincidence that as a group, these companies underperform once public.

Comparing these returns to benchmark indices, the average post-merger SPAC underperformed against the Nasdaq by 44% and underperformed against the Russell 2000 by 51%. The average post-merger SPAC during this period underperformed the average traditional IPO by 26%.Feb 14, 2023 - Yale Journal on Regulation.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

The people who make off like bandits are the SPAC holdco shareholders. The opco that merges into the SPAC gets all blurry eyed, but its management and sharholders always take a haircut in the hope of early liquidity, but then they are stuck with a roadmap that they have to deliver on in 4-8 quarters which is almost impossible. All the recent EV SPACs just did not raise enough capital at the merger event to get to the other end of 6-8 quarters without having to raise. Arrival was probably the worst where even after the merger event, the original founder had over 85% of the company, but built up insuffcient cash reserve to actually build electric vans. It looks like Canoo (GEOV) is buying up a bunch of their manufacturing assets originally planned for their "innvative" microfactory. Proterra is dead (Electric buses) and Chargepoint is quarters from running out of cash.

In terms of building brand awareness, for Vinfast, Ironman sees like a good global property to ride with for relatively cheap to get awareness up. They could try and replace Abbot with the world marathon majors to get their name our globally, or do like Emirates and Qatar airways and sponsor a British Football club to get the name our globally. Ironman seems like a cheap way to get the name out there keeping in mind that Ironman has presence whre Vinfast is already strong.

Vinfast sold 35,000 cars last year and only 1,000 in the US. 4th qtr loss was $650 billion. Market cap is less than $12 billion - not long before the vultures start circling.

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Andrew Inkpen

Ya, I don't get the people bashing the IM association. Like you say, probably the best marketing money they've spent is association their brand with Ironman. Not saying their actual marketing is good... but at least IM gives them some sustained brand recognition.

The real issue is they've got a mediocre product in a product category that doesn't really make a sense for most consumers.

And from the sales numbers quoted here it sounds like they didn't even bother to hire a sales team?

Yeah just, too many new electric car companies to pick from. Heck if I know just seems a bit saturated.

Another Vinfast article came across my radar today:
https://hntrbrk.com/...ing-on-with-vinfast/

"Most VinFast cars sold to taxi and real estate companies owned by its parent company Vingroup or CEO"

"In the first quarter of 2024, the company reported a total of 9,689 EV deliveries — a decrease of 28% from the previous quarter. More than half those deliveries were to other Vingroup companies."

“Whereas I don’t know of anybody that would even remotely consider a VinFast.”
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Heh, with that last quote, I guess they didn't interview any Ironman athletes :)

You missed my favorite line from that article!

Out of the 3,118 EVs the company shipped to the U.S. last year, only 265 VinFast vehicle registrations — a common proxy for estimating car sales — were recorded across the U.S. in 2023, according to an S&P report.

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Janyne

I hope the mortal hydration implosion happens at a faster rate

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IG - @ryanppax
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