Vietnam's national car brand hit a 23 billion dollar valuation on few sales
When VinFast began trading on Nasdaq in August 2023, its shares soared so high that the young Vietnamese carmaker briefly looked worth more than several established global automakers. Yet in all of 2022 it had sold only about 7,400 cars, every one of them at home in Vietnam.
The company was created in 2017 by Vingroup, a conglomerate built on property, retail and hotels and chaired by Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam's first dollar billionaire. National pride was part of the pitch. Ground was broken at the Hai Phong complex on Vietnam's National Day, 2 September 2017, and the name was presented as an acronym of Vietnamese words for Vietnam, style, safety, creativity and pioneer. The 828-acre factory on Cat Hai Island took 21 months to build.
Early design was crowdsourced. In July 2017 the company posted 20 sketches from four Italian studios, among them Pininfarina and Italdesign Giugiaro, and more than 60,000 people voted. The two winners, a sedan and an SUV built on BMW underpinnings, appeared at the 2018 Paris Motor Show. In 2022 VinFast said it would stop making petrol cars altogether, after delivering 100 electric crossovers in December 2021 as the first electric vehicles made and sold in Vietnam.
The Nasdaq listing came through a merger with a blank-cheque company run by Black Spade Capital, valued at 23 billion dollars, and the shares fell sharply after their first-day surge. The company aimed for 50,000 deliveries in 2023 but reached about 35,000. A planned 4 billion dollar plant in North Carolina, meant to employ 7,500, slipped from 2024 to 2028, and a UK launch was cancelled.
Losses have never stopped. In November 2024 Vingroup pledged loans of up to 1.38 billion dollars and Pham Nhat Vuong promised another 1.97 billion of his own money, aiming for break-even by the end of 2026, a target later pushed beyond 2027. By April 2025 all fifteen company-run California stores had closed.
Source: VinFast
