Thai giant CP’s Q3 Vietnam revenue drops 20% as hog prices slump

Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL (CPF) reported a sharp downturn in its Vietnam business in Q3, making the country its only major market to contract.

Revenue from Vietnam, CPF’s second-largest market after Thailand, fell 20% year-on-year to THB22.8 billion ($703 million), the company said in its Q3 earnings report.

For the first nine months of 2025, revenue dropped 17% to THB76.6 billion ($2.36 billion).

The weaker performance in Vietnam pulled CPF’s consolidated revenue down 0.4% to THB430 billion ($13.26 billion). By contrast, sales rose 2% in Thailand, surged 36% in China, and increased 1% across other markets.

The livestock segment, CPF’s core business, generated THB51.1 billion ($1.58 billion) in Vietnam, down 18% from a year earlier, while revenue from the food division slipped 3% to THB6.1 billion ($188 million).

CPF attributed the downturn largely to a steep drop in hog prices. Live hog prices in Vietnam averaged VND58,812 ($2.23) per kilogram in Q3, compared with VND68,449 ($2.6) in Q2 and VND65,409 ($2.48) in Q1.

Despite the slowdown, CPF remains one of Vietnam’s largest agrifood players. Its subsidiary C.P. Vietnam currently operates 21 factories, including eight animal feed plants, four fisheries feed plants, two fisheries processing plants, and seven meat processing plants.

It supplies more than 6.8 million pigs, 750 million eggs, and over 66 million broiler chickens annually, and exports more than 20,000 tons of processed seafood to markets including Australia, Japan, China, and Europe.

In retail, C.P. Vietnam runs three chains, C.P Fresh Shop, C.P Fresh Mart, and Five Star. Fresh Shop and Fresh Mart operate around 100 outlets selling fresh meat and processed foods, while the Five Star fried-chicken brand has roughly 1,000 locations nationwide.

In June, C.P. Vietnam was embroiled in a food safety scandal after a social media account under the name Jonny Lieu (real name Lieu Quy Ngan), who claimed to be a former employee of the CP Fresh Shop in the southern province of Soc Trang province, accused the company leadership of ordering the sale of diseased pork and chicken.

C.P. Vietnam denied the allegations and asserted that its products complied with strict quality control procedures. While authoritarian inspections found no evidence of diseased meat in C.P. Vietnam stores, others uncovered violations, including expired safety certificates and a lack of proper documentation, at three outlets.

In early July, the Soc Trang Police's investigation agency announced that it had decided not to take legal proceedings against C.P. Vietnam following Lieu Quy Ngan's denunciation of the "crime".

The reason, according to the agency, was that "the behavior does not show signs of a crime of violating food safety regulations as prescribed in Clause 2, Article 157 of the Criminal Code."