VinaCapital sells small stake, no longer major shareholder in Quang Ngai Sugar

VinaCapital, a leading investment management firm company in Vietnam, has sold 200,000 QNS shares of Quang Ngai Sugar JSC to reduce its ownership from 5% to nearly 4.95%.

The sell order was executed Tuesday by member fund Foremost Worldwide Limited. With this transaction, VinaCapital is no longer a major shareholder in Quang Ngai Sugar, owner of famous soy milk brand Fami in Vietnam.

VinaCapital sold QNS shares in the context of the stock’s price increasing in a single circuit from the beginning of the year to the historic peak of VND54,000 ($2.27) per unit at the end of July.

The QNS share closed Friday at VND48,000 per unit ($2.02), down 11% from the peak, but still up 43% since the beginning of 2023.

The total number of QNS shares owned by the VinaCapital group as of July 6 was nearly 21.4 million, equivalent to 5.985%.

Since then, the group has sold nearly 4 million QNS shares, collecting hundreds of billions of dong (VND1 billion = $42,000).

Quang Ngai Sugar is the parent company of Vietnam Soy Milk Company (Vinasoy), the largest soy milk producer in Vietnam. Quang Ngai Sugar also many subsidiaries, factories and enterprises operating in different fields, including the Dung Quat brewery, Biscafun confectionery factory, Thach Bich mineral water factory, Sugarcane seed center, and factories related to sugar products like An Khe Sugar and Pho Phong Sugar.

The company, listed on the unlisted public company market UPCoM as QNS, reported after-tax profits of nearly VND712 billion ($30 million) in the second quarter of this year, up 95% year-on-year; and net revenues of VND3.15 trillion ($133.14 million), up 43%.

Quang Ngai Sugar has noted with the economy facing difficulties, purchasing power has not fully recovered. Consumption of dairy products, mineral water, beer and confectionery decreased over the same period last year.

"The above results come from stable production and high growth in consumption of some products. Specifically, revenues from the sugar, electricity and malt segments increased by 151%, 39% and 14%, respectively," the company report said.

It said Quang Ngai Sugar has focused on investing in developing raw material areas in the direction of industrial production, helping to increase productivity and quality of sugarcane. The state's trade remedies for sugar products and control of smuggled sugar have helped boost the efficiency of sugar production.

In the first six months of this year, Quang Ngai Sugar posted net revenues of VND5.28 trillion ($223 million) and after-tax profits of VND1.03 trillion ($43.4 million), up 31% and 90% year-on-year, respectively.

In its revenue structure, sugar products reached nearly VND2.22 trillion ($93.77 million), accounting for 43% of the total revenue, followed by the soy milk segment with VND1.98 trillion ($83.55 million) at 38%.

For 2023, Quang Ngai Sugar has set a revenue target of VND8.4 trillion ($354.8 million) and an after-tax profit target of over VND1 trillion ($42.6 million).