Vietnam’s VNG delays $150 mln US IPO on volatile market conditions – source

SYDNEY, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Vietnamese internet company VNG Ltd has delayed a $150 million U.S. initial public offering (IPO) until next year due to volatile market conditions, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not yet public. VNG declined to comment.

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Founded in 2004, Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered VNG was Vietnam’s first unicorn – a startup valued at $1 billion or more. The company’s businesses include online games, payments, cloud services and Vietnam’s most popular messaging app, Zalo.

Its regulatory filings for a Nasdaq listing became public in late August, and it had aimed for a debut in late September or early October, sources had previously told Reuters.

The decision to put the listing on hold came after the company and its advisors held early investor meetings, but ahead of a formal roadshow, the source said.

VNG still aims to carry out a New York listing, likely in the first half of 2024, they added. An IPO is likely to make it the first Vietnamese technology firm to list in the U.S.

Bloomberg News first reported the deal being put on hold earlier Friday.

Financial market conditions towards new share sales remains fragile as investors prepare for interest rates to remain higher-for-longer in most developed economies.

Arm Holdings – which soared 25% on its first trading last week after raising nearly $5 billion in the world’s largest IPO of 2023 – closed at $52.16 on Thursday, slightly above its issue price of $51.

New share sales around the world have slumped 34% for the first nine months to mid-September compared to the same time in 2022, according to data from the London Stock Exchange.

However, several Southeast Asian companies are considering listing in the U.S., banking on stronger investor appetite for emerging market exposure in the absence of Chinese stock offerings.

Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Yantoultra Ngui in Singapore; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Rashmi Aich and Nivedita Bhattacharjee

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Scott Murdoch has been a journalist for more than two decades working for Thomson Reuters and News Corp in Australia. He has specialised in financial journalism for most of his career and covers equity and debt capital markets across Asia and Australian M&A. He is based in Sydney.

Yantoultra Ngui is a Southeast Asia Deals Correspondent with Reuters in Singapore, covering M&A and capital market deals in a region that is fast emerging as a hot destination for startup investors, unicorns and IPOs. He previously was a reporter at Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. Notably, he was part of WSJ’s team that covered the financial scandal at Malaysian state fund 1MDB. Yantoultra graduated with an MBA in Finance from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2010.

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