Vingroup plans taxi IPO, scraps LNG power plant project
Pham Nhat Vuong, the Chairman of Vingroup and CEO of VinFast, attends Vingroup’s annual meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, April 25, 2024. REUTERS/Phuong Nguyen
HANOI, April 22 : Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup is ditching plans to build the country's largest LNG-fired power plant and will turn to renewables for the project, its chairman told shareholders on Wednesday as he also flagged an IPO for the group's taxi unit in 2028.
In a signal of how the Middle East war is affecting business, Group Chairman Pham Nhat Vuong said Vingroup had scrapped plans to build a 4.8-gigawatt liquefied natural gas power plant in Haiphong, which would have been the largest in the country, confirming an exclusive report from Reuters in March.
Instead, the group now wanted to use renewable energy to fuel the power plant.
"We have already submitted a proposal to the government for wind, solar energy and a battery energy storage system," he said.
The group's Green SM taxi unit will be floated on the stock market in the second half of 2028, Vuong said, with preparations for the initial public offering to start in the next two to three months.
"The IPO is expected to bring enormous value for Vingroup," he told shareholders.
Vuong said electric vehicle unit VinFast will break even next year, confirming a delay in achieving the target that was reported by Reuters earlier this month, and it would not return to producing internal combustion engine cars.
VinFast is expected to deliver 300,000 EVs this year, two-thirds of which would be for the domestic market, according to a Vingroup document.
Vingroup is targeting net profit of 35 trillion dong ($1.33 billion) this year, up from 11.1 trillion dong last year.
($1 = 26,286 dong)
