Masan’s meat unit to be traded on unlisted market

The Hanoi Stock Exchange has approved the listing of 324 million MML shares on UPCoM at a reference price of VND80,000 ($3.46), giving it a market cap of VND26 trillion ($1.12 billion).

Masan MeatLife was established in 2011 as Masan Nutri-Science with a charter capital of VND10 billion ($432,300), which has since increased to VND3.24 trillion ($140 million).

Masan Group, which owns a 79 percent stake in it, changed its name in July as part of a plan to introduce a new meat brand in the market.

Its products are sold through 410 retail outlets in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, including VinMart, a supermarket chain owned by Vingroup that will soon be merged into the Masan ecosystem.

Masan Meatlife saw revenues rise by 0.7 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of this year to VND10.1 trillion ($436.6 million) amidst rising pork prices after African swine fever broke out in Vietnam resulting in the culling of 5.9 million pigs.

Masan Group expects meat to be a main driver of growth in the next three to five years with revenues of $1 billion.

In Vietnam, UPCoM serves as a bourse for unlisted public firms.