Nam A Bank plans to list 1 bln shares on HCMC exchange

Nam A Bank has approved a plan to list nearly 1.06 billion NAB shares on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HoSE).

Per Wednesday’s approval, the listing application will be submitted in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

Previously, at the 2023 annual general meeting of shareholders held March 17, the bank had approved the listing of all NAB outstanding shares on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) or HoSE, depending on market conditions.

Under the first plan, the bank was to list 846.4 million NAB shares in the second or third quarter of 2023. However, the bank later issued more than 211.6 million shares to pay dividends to shareholders at a 100:25 ratio. Thereby, the total number of shares registered for listing has increased to nearly 1.06 billion shares.

The plan to list shares had been approved by an AGM in 2022, but it was postponed to "ensure the interests of shareholders in the context of an unfavorable macro environment and unpredictable stock market movements".

NAB shares started to list on the unlisted public company market UPCoM from October 9, 2020 with a reference price of VND13,500 ($0.56) per share. Their closing price of VND12,500 ($0.52) per unit on Thursday marked an 84% increase from the beginning of the year.

Nam A Bank, which officially began operations in 1992, is one of the first joint stock commercial banks established after the Banking Ordinance was issued in 1990.

It reported pre-tax profits of nearly VND761 billion ($31.7 million) in Q2, up 45% year-on-year and a net interest income of VND1.54 trillion ($64 million), up 24%.

In the first six months of 2023, the bank posted a net interest income of VND3.09 trillion ($128.8 million) and a pre-tax profit of VND1.53 trillion ($63.5 million), up 32% and 30% respectively.

As of June 30, 2023, the bank's total assets value stood at VND200.21 trillion ($8.34 billion), up 12.7% compared to the end of last year, with loans to customers increasing 8.1% to VND129.22 trillion ($5.38 billion) and bad debt provision up nearly 7% at VND1.33 trillion ($55.4 million).

Notably, the bank's bad debt balance increased by 80.9% to VND3.51 trillion ($146.4 million) due to a sharp increase in group 3 and group 4 debts. In particular, group 3 debt increased from VND132 billion ($5.5 million) at the end of 2022 to VND1.38 trillion ($57.5 million), leading to an increase in bad debt ratio from 1.63% to 2.72%.