Of the 10 enterprises the State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) plans to divest in the time to come, Vinamilk is the company with the highest profile.

The state now holds a 45.1 percent of stake in Vinamilk, or 541.5 million shares, worth VND55.233 trillion, or $2.47 billion per the closing price on October 13, 2015.

The news has excited investors. SCIC was silent for many years amid the economists’ urgency to withdraw capital from Vinamilk as dairy production is not a business field in which the state needs to invest.

Analysts said that SCIC did not let Vinamilk go because it was a goose that laid golden eggs.

Vinamilk has always made high profits, especially since the day it was equitized, thus bringing big money to the state as the big shareholder. 

The dairy producer had paid VND19 trillion in tax to the state budget by 2014.

A Ministry of Finance official said that the state’s capital value in Vinamilk has been increasing steadily since January 2006 when it began listing shares on the bourse. 

At that moment, the state held 50.01 percent of Vinamilk’s shares, worth VND3.9 trillion.

The amount of money has increased by 14 times, and if counting the dividends the state has received so far, worth VND9 trillion, the figure would be 16.5 times more. 

An analyst commented that he cannot see any investment deal of any institution in Vietnam that could bring such a high profit.

A report showed that SCIC has VND21 trillion worth of dividends from the enterprises it contributed capital to, of which the dividends from Vinamilk accounted for 43 percent. Of the total VND73 trillion worth of capitalization value of the enterprises SCIC manages, 75 percent belongs to Vinamilk.

The analyst said that 10 years is long enough for the state to take profit at Vinamilk and that the State can take pride as the most profitable investor in the Vietnamese stock market’s history.

The state’s sale of Vinamilk’s stake will surely attract investors, including foreign institutional investors, because of the company’s performance.

At the November 2005 IPO, Vinamilk shares sold at VND49,000 per share on average, which was then twice as much the price of the shares on OTC market.

The analyst noted that the state will be able to sell Vinamilk’s shares at prices higher than the current market prices and get $3 billion or more.

US$1 = VND21,600

TBKTSG