Vietnamese electric car maker VinFast announced on its website on Thursday that it had filed an application form for registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The company has not yet determined the size of the stock offering, depending on the market and other conditions, and IPO is expected to take place after SEC completes the review process, the announcement said.
VinFast, the electric car business of Vingroup Group, Vietnam's richest man, is Vietnam's largest carmaker. VinFast said in a December statement that the company has been working with consultants to prepare for a U. S. listing in the second half of 2022.
It is reported that VinFast's IPO is likely to raise about $2 billion, which will be the largest IPO in the history of a Vietnamese company. If successful, the carmaker will also become one of the few Vietnamese companies to list in the United States.
The largest listing in Vietnam is Vinhomes JSC's IPO case in 2018, when Vietnam's largest commercial property developer raised $1.4 billion in the domestic market. It is worth mentioning that Vinhomes JSC is also a subsidiary of Vingroup.
There are also reports that VinFast is exploring a round of financing to raise $500m to $1 billion ahead of its US listing.
North American factories will also be built at the same time.
The listing comes as VinFast plans to open an electric car factory in North Carolina, which is expected to be operational in 2024.
On March 29th, US President Joe Biden tweeted and the White House issued a message to celebrate the establishment of VinFast in the United States. VinFast will invest $4 billion in the North American plant to create more than 7000 jobs, the statement said, while Biden boasted that it was "the latest case in which economic strategy works."
VinFast aims to start delivering cars in the United States, Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands by the end of 2022, and its VF8 and VF9 electric SUV will cost between $41000 and $61000.
The VF E34, the first domestic all-electric car produced by VinFast, began to be delivered to customers in December. The all-electric SUV model is priced at 690 million Vietnamese dong (about 194000 yuan) and has a maximum range of about 300km.
Earlier this month, Peter Kremsky, chairman of the Economic Committee of the Slovak Parliament, suggested that VinFast could consider Slovakia as its next investment location.
