VietNamNet Bridge – Not only Quoc Cuong Gia Lai Group which has been associated with the nickname “Cuong dollar,” but many other conglomerates have also astonished the public when reporting profits after many quarters of taking loss.

The news that Quoc Cuong Gia Lai Group, the business of Nguyen Thi Nhu Loan, one of the most influential businesswomen in Vietnam, and his son Nguyen Quoc Cuong (nickname Cuong dollar), made profit in the fourth quarter of 2012, has appeared on all local newspapers.

Quoc Cuong Gia Lai is a big name, which explains why any pieces of news relating to the group of the group owners would catch the special attention from the public. Especially, the news has been described as “thunderstruck” because no one could imagine before that the real estate group could make profit after it suffered so many serious problems.

The problems were exposed to the public in mid 2012, when local newspapers all discovered that the group met a lot of big difficulties with real estate projects in the context of the frozen property market with very few successful transactions.

A series of scandals relating to Quoc Cuong Gia Lai occurred in 2012, including the disputes with the clients who buy products at the Quoc Cuong Gia Lai 1 apartment bloc in HCM City, at the Trung Nghia residential quarter in Da Nang City. The public was also stirred up by the information that Quoc Cuong Gia Lai’s clients were told to remit money into two accounts – the company’s account and the director’s account – for making payment for the apartments they bought.

Quoc Cuong Gia Lai has just released the fourth quarter’s finance report showing the post tax profit of VND11.32 billion, a very encouraging result, if noting that it incurred the loss of VND27.8 billion in the same period of 2011.

As such, the company got the post tax profit of VND13.4 billion in 2012 after incurring the loss of VND37 billion in 2011.

The sharp increase in the profit of Quoc Cuong Gia Lai has been explained by the hand over of the apartments in a series of projects, including Giai Viet, Mansion, Trung Nghia.

The Kim Long Securities Company has also surprised investors when reporting the profit of VND63 billion dong for the fourth quarter of 2012, an increase of 40 percent in comparison with the same period of the last year.

The good business result in the fourth quarter has helped Kim Long escape from the loss and make a profit of VND21.57 billion in the whole year 2012. However, the profit is modest, just equal to 12 percent of that of the same period of the previous year at VND185.5 billion.

VOS, a big guy in the shipping industry, now can also sigh with relief when unexpectedly making profit after three unprofitable consecutive quarters.

The shipping firm has reported the gross profit of VND159.44 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, which is much higher than the VND20.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011.

However, it still took a profit of VND36.07 billion dong in the whole year 2012.

More astonishingly, SBS, the securities companies listed among the most unprofitable securities companies, has expectedly reported the profit of VND2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2012.

However, the big guy still has not escaped from the crisis, with the pretax profit in 2012 at minus VND38.52 billion and post tax profit of minus VND127.58 billion. As such, by the end of 2012, the accumulative loss had reached VND1,761 billion, which means the minus of VND245 billion to the stockholder equity.

US$1=VND21,000

Tien Phong