FPT hopes to grab opportunity from electric vehicle boom

Chairman Truong Gia Binh said at the company’s annual general meeting Thursday that U.S. company Tesla started a revolution in the auto industry with its electric vehicles and the world now needs companies that understand both auto mechanics and technology.

This offers a great opportunity for FPT, which has knowledge in both domains after beginning to write software for cars 20 years ago and working with many auto companies, he told over 900 shareholders who attended the meeting, including online.

FPT has sold three operating systems to auto companies, and is ranked fifth in the world in auto software development, he said.

"This is a fast-growing sector in which FPT has an advantage. The opportunity is great."

Other areas of focus in the coming years will be migrating companies’ systems from old programming language COBOL to Java.

Binh said this is a "huge task" that seems to be confusing for many companies, but FPT has the human and technical resources to handle it.

One of FPT’s biggest advantages is that it has staff all over the world working around the clock who speak not only English but also many other languages, and this has helped it secure million-dollar contracts, he said.

The company targets revenue growth of 18.8% this year and profit growth of 18.2%.

The global market is likely to account for a large portion of the growth. Last year revenues from foreign markets grew by 30%, with U.S. revenues increasing by 50%.

It also recorded US$1 billion in overseas revenues for the first time.