HANOI, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Vietnam’s electric vehicle maker VinFast said Tuesday it has applied for an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “VFS” to complete its expansion with a plan finance plant in North Carolina.
VinFast, which began operations in 2019, is preparing to expand in the U.S. market, where it hopes to compete with older automakers and startups with its two all-electric SUVs, the VF8 and VF9, including battery leasing to reduce the purchase price be able.
For the IPO, the company announced it would be incorporated into a Singapore public company and known as VinFast Auto Ltd, while the number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined.
Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and JP Morgan are leading a consortium of nine banks behind the transaction, company filings show. If successful, VinFast will be Vietnam’s first company to be listed in the United States.
Tuesday’s filing follows VinFast’s confidential filing with the SEC in April, a month after the company announced plans to build a manufacturing facility in North Carolina with an initial projected capacity of 150,000 electric vehicles per year.
VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s largest conglomerate Vingroup (VIC.HM), first announced its US IPO in April last year, aiming to raise $2 billion with a valuation of about $60 billion.
The market valuation for EV startups has cooled drastically over the past year after some companies with sky-high valuations came under scrutiny along with the gloomy global economy.
“The valuation or size of our IPO will depend in part on market conditions,” VinFast chief executive Le Thi Thu Thuy said in a statement released on Wednesday.
“VinFast will continue to monitor opportunities for future fundraisers as the market becomes more familiar with the VinFast brand and history,” she said.
The S&P US & China Electric Vehicle Index, which measures the performance of companies involved in the EV business, is down 33.51% year-to-date to trade at 1,933.47 on Tuesday.
The company had said the IPO was just a way to raise funds. In July, it agreed with the banks to raise at least $4 billion to fuel its aggressive expansion.
No timeframe was given for Tuesday’s offering, although the company said it would target an IPO in the fourth quarter of this year.
But in May, parent company Vingroup warned that the IPO could be pushed back to 2023 due to market uncertainty.
“VinFast intends to conduct an IPO after the SEC declares the registration statement effective, subject to market conditions permitting,” Thuy said, noting that the company’s primary goal was to successfully list VinFast on a U.S. exchange.
The EV maker delivered its first batch of 999 vehicles to the United States in late November, completing a five-year bid to develop an auto manufacturing center in Vietnam for markets in North America and Europe.
VinFast says it has nearly 65,000 orders worldwide and expects to sell 750,000 electric vehicles annually by 2026.
Shares of VinFast’s listed parent company, Vingroup, which also operates real estate and resort development businesses, rose 5.11% early Wednesday following the announcement of the IPO.
Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Phuong Nguyen in Hanoi; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta and Lisa Shumaker
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