Update on Vietnam’s trade in 11M2024
13-12-2024
: VDS
: Macroeconomics
: My Tran
Tags:
- Export growth slows down in Q4/2024.
- Review of growth trends of key export items 2024 and prospects for 2025
PVT – Expanding fleet capacity in positive industry outlook
12-12-2024
: PVT
: Oil & Gas
: Huong Le
Tags:
- PVT plans to expand its fleet for 2024-2025. For 11M2024, the company has added 7 new vessels, bringing its total fleet size to 56, including 47 owned ships and 9 bareboat chartered vessels. We estimate that PVT will dispose of older vessels to reinvest in younger ships, aiming to increase profits.
- The oil tanker market remains positive, with expectations that charter rates for 2024-2025 will stay higher over the 2022-2023 period. Although some segments are predicted to experience oversupply due to an increase in vessel availability, potentially leading to lower rental rates, we expect that PVT will maintain its operational efficiency. This is primarily due to its advantage of keeping management and operational costs 10-15% lower than foreign competitors and contributions from its newly added vessels.
Understanding AI Factories: Definitions, Roles, Benefits, and Challenges
11-12-2024
: FPT
: Technologies
: Tung Do
Tags:
- AI Factory is a concept referring to a comprehensive platform for large-scale data processing and training AI models, based on the hardware and software infrastructure developed by Nvidia.
- AI factories play a crucial intermediary role in the global AI value chain, connecting input elements (hardware, software, and data) with output applications built on AI models.
- AI factories, instead of producing physical products like industrial manufacturing plants, create AI models and services that can be applied across various industries and sectors.
- As the value creation hub of the AI industry, AI factories hold significant short-term and long-term potential in the context of the rapidly growing demand for large-scale data processing infrastructure and AI model training. This growth is expected to accelerate in line with the overall AI industry's expansion. According to Infinitive Data Expert, the AI market is projected to reach USD 1.6 trillion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 39% from now until 2030.
- Investing in AI factories faces barriers such as very high initial investment costs, scarcity of specialized human resources, U.S. government regulatory restrictions on the export of high-capacity AI equipment, Technological Obsolescence risks, and dependence on a limited number of suppliers. To mitigate financial pressure and limit these risks, technology service companies often establish strategic partnerships with major partners like Nvidia, AWS, or other tech giants and divide the AI factory development process into phases.
Fertilizer Industry – Vietnam's Fertilizer Import Demand
10-12-2024
: DCM, DPM, BFC
: Fertilizer
: Hien Le
Tags:
- Vietnam's total fertilizer demand is approximately 10-11 million tons, with the demand proportions for Urea/NPK/DAP/SA/Potash at 16%/35%/9%/9%, respectively. In 2023, while nitrogen fertilizer (Urea) and phosphate fertilizers (P) had demand of 1.9 million tons and 1.6 million tons, there was an oversupply of 900,000 tons and 350,000 tons, respectively. Meanwhile, potash fertilizers (K) and ammonium sulfate (SA) (demand of 840,000 tons and 780,000 tons) are entirely imported, and Diammonium Phosphate (DAP) imports reached 418,000 tons.
- Vietnam imports SA and DAP fertilizers mainly from China, while Potash is imported from Laos. Although Vietnam's total fertilizer imports have decreased over the past two years, the country remains in a trade deficit for fertilizers since Urea and NPK cannot fully replace SA and DAP.
- DAP-producing companies like DDV and DGC still have potential for production growth if they maintain competitive pricing, as domestic production capacity has not exceeded domestic demand.
- Companies with a high share of NPK and Urea fertilizers tend to have lower gross and net profit margins compared to global companies. As a result, the P/E ratios for firms like DPM, DCM, and BFC tend to be lower than the industry average.
Vietnam's laundry care market – The opportunity for domestic businesses to enter the market is low
09-12-2024
: MSN
: Food, Beverage & Tobacco
: Hung Nguyen
Tags:
- Similar to other FMCGs in Vietnam, the laundry care market has entered a saturation phase with single-digit growth mainly driven by fabric softeners and price factors (related to both inflation and the trend of product premiumization)
- In terms of competition, domestic businesses are "stifled" by the large positions of two multinational corporations, Unilever and P&G. These businesses are forced to look for competitive strategies to avoid collisions with these giants such as positioning low prices towards the countryside, outsourcing for Unilerver itself such as LIX, NET, taking advantage of their retail system to create priority on its display such as MSN with the NET brand, Chante'… but has not been able to expand its market share significantly over the years
- With great challenges from the industry context and room to expand a small market share (less than 5%), both LIX and NET are no longer attractive investments when the current P/E valuation (9.7x for LIX and 9.4x for NET) is higher than the 10-year industry average of both enterprises (7.1x for LIX and 7.0x for NET)
- The point of note lies in the dividend distribution strategy, the dividend rate of the Company (over 6.0%/year) is tending to be higher than the deposit interest rate (5.0%/year) in the last 8 years. Investors who follow the dividend investment school need to monitor the consistency of this ratio in the following years to consider investing and accumulating dividends every year
The global monetary policy shift: Shaping growth in 2025
06-12-2024
: VDS
: Macroeconomics
: Nguyen Vu Toan Vo
Tags:
- Strong movements in global monetary policy in 2024
- Drivers behind central banks continuing their rate-cutting cycles in 2025
- Interest rate outlook for several global central banks in 2025
Seaports – The Cai Mep Ha area is a promising ground for logistics companies
05-12-2024
: GMD
: Seaports
:
Tags: Seaports GMD
- The People's Committee of Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province has proposed the development of a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Cai Mep Ha for 2021–2023, with a vision to 2050.
- Vietnam is a destination for global manufacturers due to low labor costs and political stability. The FTZ’s development could help Cai Mep Ha become a global cargo transshipment hub.
- Listed companies owning deep water ports in Cai Mep - Thi Vai, such as GMD (Gemalink) and SGP (CMIT – SSIT), will benefit from this trend.
- China, Singapore, and Malaysia ports, which handle the highest cargo volumes in the world, serve as examples of the successful FTZ development.
Ammended Electricity Law – Accelerating investments in offshore wind and LNG projects from 2025
04-12-2024
: REE, PC1, PVS
: Power
: Thang
Tags:
- 2025 will be a year of positive policy changes for the electricity sector, with a focus on increasing privatization and accelerating approvals of key power projects to ensure electricity supply from 2026 onwards.
- Under the new Electricity Law, the companies to benefit from these changes are (1) the electricity construction sector, as the demand for investment in transmission lines of 220kV and below is expected to remain high, and (2) those generation companies with plan to develop renewable energy and offshore wind power projects. Accordingly, we believe the stocks under our coverage such as PC1 (Target price: VND 26,600/share; USD 1.1), REE (Target price: VND 76,600/share; USD 3.0), and PVS (Target price: VND 38,700/share; USD 1.5) to be the main beneficiaries of these policy changes.
The gold business is expected to remain under strict regulatory control
03-12-2024
: PNJ
: Retailing
: Quyen Nguyen
Tags:
- In mid-November 2024, responses from State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Governor Nguyen Thi Hong and Deputy Prime Minister Ho Duc Phoc at the Q&A session at the 8th National Assembly Meeting highlighted several regulatory directions for the near future. These include enhancing transparency in gold bar transactions, preventing goldization the economy, maintaining tight oversight of gold business activities, and notably, supporting jewelry manufacturing.
- The October 2024 PNJ’s business results indicate the continued impact of gold supply shortages on the company's gross margin. Meanwhile, the increase in the revenue share from the jewelry retail segment, which yields higher profit margins, and the normalization of the SG&A expenses/revenue ratio drove the net margin up to 7.0%. As a result, net profit for October reached VND 218 bn (USD 9mn), +11% YoY.
- For 10M2024, PNJ’s revenue reached VND 32,371 bn (USD 1,285mn), +23% YoY. Net profit reached VND 1,600 bn (USD 63mn), +4% YoY due to a higher revenue share from the 24K gold segment in 1H2024.
BMP – Positive outlook expectations
02-12-2024
: BMP
: Materials
: Thach Lam Do, CFA
Tags: BMP
- With Q3/2024 business results, BMP recorded revenue of VND 1,423 billion, completing 98% of the plan and growing by 52% YoY. With the advantage of low-cost raw materials (PVC resin), the gross profit margin remained at a high level and reached 53%, thereby achieving VND 362 bn (+34.7%YoY) and VND 290 billion (+38.7%YoY), respectively, completing 104% of the business plan.. The company’s net profit margin remained high and reached 20.4% in Q3. The company shared that its market share has improved in Q3, and expects to continue to maintain its share in Q4.
- The company is preparing for its 2025 business plan, and some positive prospects may come from the expectation that the real estate market and public investment disbursement in the southern market will continue to recover in 2025. It also assumes that PVC resin prices will remain the same as in 2024, however, there are a number of factors that can affect raw material prices from: 1/ Demand from the Chinese market and 2/ Factors related to geopolitical tensions and trade wars.
- For 2025, we estimate that sales volume will improve compared to 2024 and reach 90 thousand tons (up 5.3% YoY), BMP's profit after tax in 2025 can reach VND 1,082 billion (a slight increase of 4% YoY), 2025 EPS is VND 12,000 and we expect the dividend for 2025 to continue to be VND 11,500/share (equivalent to the dividend yield of 9%).
VIB – 2025 Outlook Pre-tax profit is projected to grow by 18%, driven by a clear recovery in retail credit and easing credit cost
29-11-2024
: VIB
: Banking
: Trang To
Tags:
- Pre-tax profit for 9M-2024 decreased by 21% YoY due to (1) a significant 90 bps YoY drop in NIM (TTM) to 4.0%, leading to a 10% YoY decline in Net interest income, and (2) a 10% YoY decline in Non fee income, mainly due to weakened bancassurance sales.
- Credit growth was 11.6% YTD, showing significant improvement compared to the previous quarter (4.6%), driven by the corporate banking segment (+43.3% YTD). Retail growth was slower at +5.5% YTD, with secured loans leading at +37.9% YTD.
- We have revised the 2024F pre-tax profit forecast downward by 17% from the previous projection to VND 9.6 trillion, representing an 11% YoY decline. The 2025F pre-tax profit is expected to grow by 18% to VND 11.3 trillion, supported by 17.2% credit growth driven by the recovery in retail lending and non-interest income growth of +25%, aiming to strengthen the collection of resolved non-performing loans.
- The target price is adjusted to VND 22,300 per share, corresponding to an expected return of 23% relative to the closing price on Nov 29th.
DPR – Rubber segment is the key driver for 2025
28-11-2024
: DPR
: Industrial Land RE
: Giao Nguyen
Tags:
- In October 2024, DPR recorded a total rubber exploitation output of 1,600 tons, the selling price reached VND 50 million per ton. Accumulated in the first 10 months of 2024, total rubber production was set at 8,854 tons (-2.57% YoY) with purchasing volume decreasing over the same period, only reaching 624 tons (-30.8%), the main reason may come from the shortage of rubber supply from smallholders.
- In the base scenario, we estimate DPR's revenue and profit after profit in 2024 to reach VND 1,075 billion (+3.2% YoY) and VND 272 billion (38.1% YoY), respectively, of which revenue from the rubber segment is estimated at VND 867 billion (+12% YoY, gross profit margin from the rubber segment reaches 23%). Equivalent to in Q4/2024, profit is expected to reach VND 103 billion.
- In 2025, we expect the rubber segment to continue to be the key driver contributing to the DPR's business results, while the industrial park segment is expected to slow down due to the slower than expected approval of investment policies for industrial park projects.
13-12-2024
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