10 top firms earn $4.7 billion in Jan-Sept pretax profits

By Minh Son November 6, 2019 | 02:06 am PT

Vinhomes Golden River apartment complex in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by Shutterstock/Evan_Unit01.

Vietnam’s top 10 most profitable listed companies, half of them banks, earned Jan-Sept pretax profits of VND110 trillion ($4.7 billion).

Vinhomes, real estate unit of private conglomerate Vingroup, topped the chart with VND21 trillion ($903 million), up 41 percent year-on-year.

The company delivered 14,600 housing units in the first three quarters, and its revenue accounted for half of Vingroup’s January-September revenues.

It was followed by Vietcombank with a pre-tax profit of over VND17.6 trillion ($757 million), up 51 percent year-on-year, thanks to credit growing 12 percent.

The bank was the most profitable lender in the period, with pre-tax profit almost twice that of the second-placed Techcombank.

Other banks in the top 10, VietinBank, Military Bank and VPBank, saw their pretax profits rise 11-18 percent.

Together, these five banks contributed 46 percent of the top 10 listed firms’ pretax profits.

PetroVietnam Gas ranked third among the top 10 with a pretax profit of VND11.3 trillion ($486 million), the same as last year.

As a monopoly in the gas industry, the company’s output is used for 35 percent of Vietnam’s electricity production and 70 percent of its nitrogen fertilizer production.

It was followed by dairy giant Vinamilk, which saw its pretax profit growing by 8 percent year-on-year to VND10.1 trillion ($434.5 million), and Vingroup, which increased it 12 percent to VND9.4 trillion ($404.4 million).

A major change in the top 10 this year was that of steelmaker Hoa Phat dropping out and being replaced by state-owned VietinBank, which is now in the seventh place with pre-tax profit rising 11 percent to VND8.4 trillion ($361.4 million).