Vietnam refinery operator to move up, list on nation’s main bourse

Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical JSC (BSR), operator of Vietnam’s first oil refinery, is taking regulatory steps to move up its listing to the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE), the nation’s main bourse.

BSR, currently traded on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UPCom) operated by the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX), is finalizing the list of shareholders to be submitted to the Vietnam Securities Depository, the company said in a Monday announcement.

The company said it hoped to list on the HoSE this year.

The HoSE is home to the country’s largest companies and has much higher liquidity that the HNX, which has lower listing requirements.

BSR could not realize its plan to list shares on the HNX in 2020 due to a lawsuit related to an overdue debt. The path to its listing on the HoSE was cleared after the Quang Ngai provincial court decided in May to allow its unit, Vietnam Central Biofuels JSC or BSR-BF, to file for bankruptcy.

With that decision, BSR does not have debt that’s due by more than one year.

BSR was established in 2008 to construct and operate the Dung Quat oil refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai, as part of the government’s strategy to ensure national energy security. The company conducted its IPO and floated shares on the UPCoM in 2018.

The oil refinery has an annual capacity of 6.5 million tons of crude oil per year, or 148,000 bpd (barrels/day), meeting around one third of Vietnam’s fuel demand. It is currently in the process of increasing this to 171,000 bpd.

Shares of BSR closed Tuesday up 0.43% at VND23,500 ($0.94) apiece, giving it a market cap of VND72,862 billion ($2.9 billion).

BSR has a charter capital of VND31,005 billion ($1.23 billion), with state-owned Petrovietnam owning 92.13%.

In the first half of this year, BSR earned consolidated net profits of VND1,925 billion ($76.63 million), down 35% year-on-year. Its revenue dropped 19% to VND55,118 billion.

The underperformance was attributed to a comprehensive maintenance exercise in March and April; and lower crude oil prices.

Despite the year-on-year fall in H1/2024 profit, the figure had already exceeded the annual target, lowered to accommodate the maintenance activity, by 64%.