Vietnam’s first unicorn startup VNG files to go public in US

Tech major VNG Corp., Vietnam’s first unicorn startup, has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. while it is expanding business.

The Ho Chi Minh City-based leading technology corporation plans to offer almost 22 million shares in the IPO, It said in its filing Wednesday, U.S. time, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

VNG Limited, a shareholder of VNG, intends to list its Class A ordinary shares on the technology-focused Nasdaq under the symbol "VNG". The corporation said in the filing that it will continue to be controlled by its founders Le Hong Minh and Vuong Quang Khai.

Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co., UBS Securities LLC and BofA Securities, Inc. will act as underwriters of the IPO. The size and price range for the potential offering have yet to be determined. VNG will set a proposed price range in a later filing with the SEC.

“We were born after the war, in a nation that had found peace and unity, but was still struggling with underdevelopment and isolation,” VNG’s founders wrote in a letter to investors included in the prospectus. “Little did we know how lucky we were when the Internet arrived in Vietnam in the middle of the 1990s. The world magically and suddenly opened the door for us.”

Founded in 2004, VNG has evolved from a five-person start-up into the largest homegrown digital ecosystem in Vietnam with products and services ingrained in users' daily lives.

VNG develops and publishes its own titles as well as local versions of international hits, and has gradually expanded to a wide range of services, such as music sharing, video streaming, messaging, a news portal, and mobile payments. It has been exploring going public in the U.S. since at least 2017.

VNG is also one of the leading mobile game publishers in Vietnam. It is looking to expand globally and now operates the number one messaging application, Zalo, in Vietnam, with 75 million monthly active users, the company says.

Its other flagship products include Zing MP3, the number one music streaming platform in Vietnam, with more than 28 million monthly active users, and mobile payment application ZaloPay.

The major’s IPO would follow the August 15 U.S. debut of Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast. The EV startup completed a merger with blank-check company Black Spade Acquisition Co., a SPAC, on August 14 in a deal valuing it at $23 billion.

SPACs are shell companies that raise capital in an IPO and use the cash to merge with a private company in order to take it public, usually within two years.

VNG reported after-tax profit of VND50.2 billion ($2.1 million) in the second quarter of this year, its first profit since the fourth quarter of 2021. VNG's net revenue reached nearly VND2.25 trillion ($94.6 million) in the period, up 12.4% year-on-year, according to the company's consolidated Q2 financial statement.