Major shareholder to sell entire stake in steel giant Hoa Sen

The stake sale will take place between December 4 this year and January 4, 2021, via both order-matching and put-through methods.

A total of 43.14 million shares of Hoa Sen under the ticker HSG will be sold to meet "financial needs," the Hoa Sen Holdings Group said in its latest filing with the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.

The group is a private company owned by Le Phuoc Vu, chairman and founder of steelmaker Hoa Sen. Vu personally holds a 16.72 percent stake in Hoa Sen.

This is the fourth time this year the Hoa Sen Holdings Group has pulled capital out of Hoa Sen company. Its latest stake sale was in November, when it sold 30 million HSG shares to bring its ownership down to 9.7 percent from 16.45 percent. It held 24.32 percent of the steelmaker at the beginning of the year.

HSG shares are currently trading at its highest levels in the past two years, but plunged 2.18 percent Wednesday, to VND17,950 ($0.78) per share, after news of the stake sale was released. Based on the current trading price, the deal would be worth around VND770 billion ($33.35 million).

Hoa Sen posted post-tax profits of over VND700 billion ($30.3 million) in the first nine months of the 2019-2020 financial year, up 153 percent year-on-year.