Petrolimex sets offering price for 120 mln PG Bank shares

Petrolimex, Vietnam's biggest gasoline retailer, will publicly auction 120 million PG Bank shares through the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) with a starting price of VND21,300 ($0.89) per share, with proceeds estimated at VND2,556 billion ($107.7 million).

This price is higher than the market figure for PGB shares on the HoSE. The PGB share price hit VND19,000 ($0.8) per unit at Wednesday's closing morning session.

The minimum subscription number is 100 shares and investors participating in the auction must register in multiples of 100 shares.

Currently, Petrolimex has not finalized the auction time. However, Petrolimex's divestment in PGBank took longer than expected, so it is likely that the group will quickly conduct a PGB stock offering in the near future.

Petrolimex, a gasoline retail giant, is currently the largest shareholder in PG Bank, which is registered on the unlisted public company market (UPCoM) as PGB.

According to Petrolimex's financial report, by the end of 2022, the value of its investment in PG Bank was more than VND1,834 billion ($78.21 million), equivalent to VND15,285 ($0.65) per share.

In 2022, PG Bank's pre-tax profit reached VND506 billion ($21.58 million), up 54% year-on-year and exceeding its target by 24%.

As of December 31, 2022, PG Bank's total assets were nearly VND49,000 billion ($2.09 billion), up about 21% compared to the end of 2021. Credit increased by 5.6%, while capital mobilization rose by more than 11%.

Previously, Petrolimex announced it would complete divestment in PG Bank within 2021, but at its 2022 annual general meeting, the implementation period was delayed to the first half of Q4/2022.

Meanwhile, PG Bank had planned to merge with state-controled VietinBank in 2015 and HDBank in 2018, with both options later cancelled.