Low-cost carrier Vietjet, the only privately owned commercial airline in Vietnam, went public on February 28 in the country’s largest IPO to date.
According to a company release, the offering attracted investments from 24 international fund houses including high-end names such as Wellington and Morgan Stanley, as well as the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, prompting the share price to soar by the legal limit of 20 percent on its first day of trading.
The airline, which had been trading over the counter on Hanoi’s UPCoM market since 2014, according to Bloomberg, now boasts a valuation of $1.4 bn and a market capitalization of $167 mn as part of Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange’s VN30 Index.
Under Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, a prominent businesswoman and the country’s first female billionaire, the company had postponed previous plans for an international IPO as Vietnamese regulation requires companies to list locally before heading for foreign exchanges.
The firm, which launched its first domestic flights in 2011, posting a profit two years later, has benefited from the addition of international routes and a 30 percent increase in demand for air travel in the country over the past five years.
The listing, arranged by global banking groups, reportedly followed ‘international standards and practices’ in compliance with US Regulation S. The airline is better known, however, for its unconventional advertising campaign featuring bikini-clad flight attendants on the inaugural flights to beach destinations.
Vietnam’s $97 bn bourse ‒ South East Asia’s third-best performer in 2016 after Thailand and Indonesia ‒ has been part of the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative since 2015.
