Vinfast, the Vietnamese manufacturer of electric vehicles, is making waves in the automotive world. Its shares were up 30% in premarket trading on Monday, extending a rally that had already quadrupled its market value to a staggering $160 billion.
This re-rating comes after a spectacular debut on Wall Street earlier this month. To the surprise of some, the company has quickly risen to become the third-most valuable automaker in the world by market capitalization, behind only industry giants Tesla and Toyota.
The company is part of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate, Vingroup. The activity started in 2018 with electric scooters, and in the following years, electric cars and buses were manufactured. In December 2021, the company built its first all-electric SUV in the country, and in November 2022, it shipped the first batch of its VF 8 SUV to North America.
Thanks to its electric vehicle platform, the company wants to lead “the future of intelligent mobility” and is therefore expanding in some of the largest markets for this type of transport, such as the United States and Europe. According to BMI Research, it will already dominate Vietnam in 2022 with a market share of 50%.
In July, the company broke ground on its first overseas electric vehicle factory in North Carolina and expects to start production in the US in 2025 with an estimated annual capacity of 150,000 units. In addition, the company has several branches in Europe and its global network included 245 showrooms, dealers and workshops for e-scooters and 122 showrooms for electric cars as of June 30.
Those numbers suggest it’s not a run-of-the-mill company as some believe. Production is ongoing and the company had sales of $634 million in 2022. However, the company has yet to turn a profit: as of March 31, 2023, the company reported a cumulative net loss of nearly $6 billion.
The company went to the NASDAQ exchange earlier this month with an exceptional debut that has seen its value soar to become the third-most valuable automaker behind only Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Toyota (NYSE:TM), but its production lags far behind one its competitors. However, the company is almost entirely controlled by Vietnam’s richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong, who owns 99.7% of the shares. The small number of public shares has left the stock vulnerable to recent volatility, with jumps or declines of more than 14% in 11 of the past 12 sessions.
