Pandemic demand a boost for business

As schools resumed in September with most students staying home due to social distancing, electronics retailers like Digiworld (DGW), FPT Shop (FRT) and Petrosetco (PET) have been reporting surging sales with some items out of stock.

Their tickers have been surging in prices.

DGW went up for the seventh session in a row Tuesday to a new peak. The ticker has gone up 274 percent since the beginning of the year.

"We believe revenue of DGW in the second half of the year would be supported by surging demand for laptops due to Covid-19," VietCapital Securities analysts said at the end of last month.

FRT and PET have also been performing better than the benchmark VN-Index this year.

Brokerages have also been posting strong figures as people turn to stock as a new and promising investment channel.

The number of securities accounts opened in the first eight months of this year was 842,405, higher than the combined figure of the last three years.

Le Anh Tuan, director of strategic investment at Dragon Capital Vietnam, said stock given an average annual profit ratio of around 16 percent a year since the Vietnam stock market became active in 2000.

The same ratio for real estate is 11.9 percent, gold 9 percent and bank deposits 8 percent.

Many brokerages have achieved this year’s target early: SSI did so in August and VNDirect in July. Other brokerages saw profits surging several times year-on-year.

Companies in the logistics and port sector also enjoyed growth as the shortage of containers and rising demand for goods transport as economies began to recover helped push revenues up.

In the first six months, Vietnam National Shipping Lines (VIMC) posted 20 percent growth year-on-year in revenue to VND6.2 trillion.

Dong Nai Port saw revenue surging 38 percent in the period.

Technology is another sector to benefit from the pandemic. IT giant FPT Corporation saw the value of new contracts in the second quarter surging 44 percent year-on-year to VND5.85 trillion.

CMC saw pre-tax profit surging 45 percent year-on-year in the April-June period.