At the bank’s annual general meeting of shareholders on March 3, Chairman Ho Hung Anh said that the shares must be sold at a minimum of VND23,445 (US$1.04) apiece, the price that the bank bought back the shares from HSBC last year.
Techcombank will list its shares on Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange this year
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Techcombank will also sell 14 million preferred shares from the treasury stock, equal to 1.5 per cent of the bank’s charter capital, to its employees in the second quarter of the year.
The proceeds from the treasury share sale will be used to increase the bank’s assets, expand its network and credit operations, and for investments in government bonds.
Anh said that Techcombank would also list its shares on Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) this year, adding that the bank had planned to list its shares on HoSE last year but it felt the timing was not right.
Explaining about the sale of its TechcomFinance early this year, Anh said that Techcombank hasn’t selected the high risk business model so that it decided to sell the consumer finance firm.
In January, the State Bank of Vietnam allowed South Korean conglomerate Lotte Group’s credit card arm to take over TechcomFinance. The deal was approved by Techcombank’s board of directors on May 22, 2017. At that time, the financial term of the deal was estimated at dozens of millions of US dollars.
TechcomFinance, which has a charter capital of VND600 billion, was set up in 2015 after Techcombank acquired 100 per cent stake in Vietnam Chemical Finance JSC, a subsidiary of the Vietnam National Chemical Group, during the group’s restructuring process. With the deal, the South Korean conglomerate sought to expand its presence in consumer credit and card services in Vietnam.
Previously, in its announcement to shareholders a month later after HSBC’s departure in July last year, Techcombank expressed its intention to raise the level of foreign ownership later, but not higher than 30 percent of its charter capital.
Back in mid August, HSBC sold all 172 million shares to Techcombank, to be used as treasury stocks at VND23,445 ($1.04) per share, according to the bank’s board of directors.
The shares previously amounted to 19.4 per cent of Techcombank’s charter capital, and are currently priced at a total of some VND4 trillion ($178.1 million).
Techcombank plans a profit of VND10 trillion this year, a tough target as Vietcombank was the only bank in the country’s entire banking system to meet the threshold last year.
To meet the target, Techcombank sets a 17 percent total asset rise to VND315 trillion, a 40 per cent capital mobilization rise and a 18 per cent credit growth this year while controlling bad debts of below 2 per cent.
Techcombank reported a pre-tax profit of more than VND8 trillion ($352 million) last year. It took the fifth position in terms of highest profit in the banking sector.
This has been the third consecutive year in which Techcombank’s pre-tax profit doubled year-on-year in the 2015-2017 period.
