Business DataSpeaks Property Markets Companies Economy Exchange rate Money

Vietnamese brewer Habeco to list at $1.3 billion valuation

By Reuters January 12, 2017 | 08:48 pm PT

The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange is about to see one of the blockbuster listings of the year.

Hanoi Beer Alcohol and Beverage Corp, one of Vietnam's biggest brewers, will list on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange on January 19, according to a Thursday filing on the bourse.

Habeco, as the firm is commonly known, has set a starting price of VND127,600 ($5.65) per share for the listing on the country's biggest stock exchange, valuing the firm at $1.3 billion.

Habeco was delisted from Vietnam's Unlisted Public Company Market on Wednesday after more than two months of trading in order to shift to the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, as part of the government's privatisation plan for Habeco.

The state said it wanted to sell all of its 82 percent stake in Habeco in 2016 and 90 percent in bigger brewer Sabeco by 2017, worth a combined $6.4 billion, but a specific sale has not yet been decided.

Vietnam is among Asia's biggest beer drinkers, putting it on the radar of Asian and European brewers keen to exploit changing lifestyles and one of the region's fastest rates of middle-class growth.

> Thirsty for Tet: Saigon expected to drink 40 million liters of beer during holiday