Vietnam's leading property developer Novaland sets sights on strong recovery in 2025

Novaland, Vietnam's leading property developer, is setting its sights on a strong recovery in 2025, with plans to issue nearly 7,000 land-use right certificates and accelerate handovers in the fourth quarter.

Speaking at Novaland’s 2025 AGM late last week at NovaWorld Phan Thiet in Binh Thuan province, chairman Bui Thanh Nhon said that while 2024 and 2025 remain turbulent, these years also present significant opportunities for businesses with strong products and clear strategies.

“For Novaland, 2025 will be a pivotal year, marking our comeback with a strategic shift toward serving the middle-income housing market," Nhon stated.

He emphasized that although this segment may not deliver high margins, it offers long-term sustainability and stable cash flow while also aligning with the government's development goal of balancing benefits for businesses, customers, and the nation.

As part of this shift, Novaland has submitted proposals to convert 50 hectares at Phu Dinh Port in District 8 and nearly 10 hectares in the Quan Tre area in District 12, HCMC into social and affordable housing.

For 2025, Novaland has outlined two cautious business scenarios, heavily dependent on the legal progress of ongoing projects.

Projected revenue could range from VND10.45 trillion ($401.7 million) to VND13.41 trillion ($515.38 million), representing growth of 15-48%, while losses are projected at either VND688 billion ($26.43 million) or VND12 billion ($461,157 million), depending on the scenario.

The company will not distribute dividends for 2024. Instead, it plans to allocate its VND13.28 trillion ($510.38 million) in undistributed post-tax profits to business recovery initiatives.

Novaland plans to hand over 1,546 real estate products in 2025, with the majority of completions expected in the fourth quarter. This timing reflects the group's focus on accelerating construction and resolving legal hurdles in the first half of the year - steps that will enable it to meet financial obligations and issue thousands of land-use right certificates (commonly referred to as “pink books”) to customers.

Looking ahead to 2030, Novaland has laid out a three-phase development roadmap.

In addition, Novaland's leaders said that the development roadmap to 2030 includes three phases.

The period 2024-2025 is an important period to remove legal obstacles, clear capital sources, and promote construction and handover activities at key projects; standardize governance and operations; and focus on digital transformation, gradually deploying ESG standards.

From 2026 to 2027, Novaland aims to increase selling prices by at least 20% for existing products and complete restructuring. This is also the period when the company moves towards a decentralized financial model.

In the period of 2028-2030, the company will focus on implementing the Real Estate Investment Management Fund (REIM) model, investing in land funds and aiming for sustainable, transparent, international-standard growth, creating sustainable value for shareholders and the community.

Regarding capital mobilization, the company canceled the plan to issue up to 1.17 billion additional shares to existing shareholders and replaced it with a plan to issue up to 200 million individual shares with. That is, to issue up to 350 million individual shares to up to 20 professional investors, at the price of VND10,000 ($0.38) per share.

The AGM also approved the resignation of Ng Teck Yow as a member of the board of directors and the resignation of Nguyen My Hanh as an independent board member. It elected two new board members, Duong Van Bac and Doan Minh Truong.

At the same time, with the aim of recognizing the efforts and contributions of the staff while increasing competitive advantages via recruitment and talent attraction, Novaland plans to issue shares under the Employee Stock Option Program (ESOP) in 2025 to replace the issuances that have not been implemented in the past three years due to unfavorable market conditions.

Accordingly, the two approved ESOP issuance plans for 2025 have a total issuance rate of 5%; the total number of shares expected to be issued is 97.5 million units.