The IPO came after Prime Minister ordered ACV, the largest enterprise in the country's transport sector, to equitise in Decision No 1710/QD-TTg.
ACV, a state owned company of the Ministry of Transport (MoT), was established in 2012 after merging Viet Nam's north, south and central aviation corporations. It currently reports VND22.43 trillion ($996.89 million) in charter capital and manages 22 of the country's international and domestic airports.
According to yesterday's press release on the IPO results, 306 bidders asked to buy a cumulative 114 million shares, far outstripping the IPO package size. The highest bid for shares was VND38,300 ($1.7), and the lowest was VND11,800 (52 cents) per share. After the auction, ACV recorded gains of VND1.116 trillion ($49.57 million).
Apart from yesterday's IPO, five per cent of company shares, amounting to 9.2 million, were sold to company employees. The State retains a capital ratio of 75 per cent of the company's equity and announced that a 20 per cent stake would be available to strategic investors after the IPO.
Vu Anh Minh, MoT director of the business management department, said yesterday that French Aeroport de Paris (ADP) and the Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BIDV) contacted them with investment offers. He said ADP wanted the whole 20 per cent and BIDV asked for 5 per cent.
Minh told the press that due to the large scale of ACV, its strategic partner must be capable of supporting its development, and said that partner with experience in an aviation terminal management would have an advantage.
Transport Minister Dinh La Thang, who attended the IPO events yesterday, spoke previously about the importance of obtaining an investor who could assist the company during its period of equitisation.
He spoke of ACV's massive capital project to build the Long Thanh Terminal, part of the $16 billion Long Thanh International Airport in HCM City.
The new airport will ease congestion at the city's current airport, Tan Son Nhat International Airport, which is expected to reach its full capacity of 25 million passengers within the next two years.
The Government put ACV in charge of developing the new airport with a projected capacity of 100 million passengers, making it the largest airport in Viet Nam when it starts operating in 2020.
The International Air Transport Association predicted that passenger traffic in Viet Nam would grow about 7.3 per cent between 2014 and 2034 – higher than the global average of 4.6 per cent and Asia-Pacific's 5.7 per cent.
In the past nine months, the industry served 46.6 million passengers, an increase of 22.3 per cent over the same period last year. In the first half of this year, ACV recorded VND4.053 trillion ($179.7 million) in revenue and a profit of VND533 billion ($23.63 million), a 153 per cent increase in profit compared to same term last year. Currently, ACV shares are only traded in the over-the-counter market.
