Finance firms dominate Forbes' Vietnam top 50 list

The front entrance of the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange - Photo by Shutterstock

Of these, half are commercial banks: MBBank, ACB, Techcombank, Vietcombank and VPBank.

Three were securities companies, namely Viet Capital Securities, Saigon Securities Incorporation, Ho Chi Minh City Securities Corporation; and two were in insurance, Bao Viet Group and Petro Vietnam Insurance...

The list was derived using a methodology from Forbes, an American business magazine, which involves evaluating several metrics including sales, profits, assets, and market value. The assessment uses financial statements audited over five consecutive years from 2014 to 2018 and firms’ mid-May market capitalization figures.

Forbes Vietnam did not rank the firms in a specific order of business performance, merely listing them with revenue and market cap figures.

According to Forbes Vietnam, the after-tax profit of the 50 best listed companies in 2019 on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HoSE) and the Hanoi Exchange (HNX) was over VND127 trillion ($5.46 billion), up 19.2 percent from last year.

Their market capitalization was $94 billion, or 63 percent of the total market caps of both exchanges as of mid-May.

Forbes noted the impressive growth of the private sector, in particular Vinhomes, the property arm of Vietnam’s biggest private conglomerate Vingroup.

Vinhomes, listed in mid-2018, ranks second in terms of profit after tax and is one of four firms in the list with a market cap of above $10 billion.

Major steelmaker Hoa Phat made it to the top five list in terms of profit after tax for the first time.

In the list of 50, HSX had 45 representatives as the exchange represents around 90 percent of Vietnam’s total market cap. This year’s list saw 13 changes, with 11 new entrants and two returning after being absent last year.

Forbes has been publishing the list for the last seven years.