Vietnam’s second largest petroleum distributor PetroVietnam Oil (PV Oil) has adjusted its cap on foreign ownership from 49% to 6.62%, according to Vietnam Securities Depository (VDS).The effective date of the decision is on December 6, 2018, Vietnam Finance reported. The firm did not explain the capping.
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On November 13, South Korea’s leading oil company SK Energy purchased an additional 3.55 million shares or 0.34% stake in PV Oil, thus becoming the latter’ second largest shareholder with a 5.23% stake.
According to the divestment plan approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, state-run energy giant Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PVN) will own 35.1% of PV Oil’s charter capital, 20% of charter capital will be placed in public auction and 44.72% will be sold to strategic investors.
PV Oil sold a 20% stake as prescribed in the initial public offering (IPO) in January for VND4.1 trillion (US$184 million) in proceeds, exceeding the government target of raising at least US$122 million. However, the company has yet to sell 45% of stake to strategic shareholders.
Through this deregulation process, PV Oil is expected to raise a total of US$400 million.
A number of investors are interested in becoming strategic shareholders of the company, such as Vietjet, HD Bank, SK Energy (South Korea) and Idemitsu (Japan).
Nevertheless, due to a lack of time for the divestment procedures, PV Oil has failed to fulfill the state’s requirement of completing within four months. In the meantime, PV Oil has submitted a proposal to the government to extend time for divestment, but the proposal was not approved.
Thus, the company has yet to succeed in selling stake to strategic investors. PV Oil’s representatives stated that the company has drawn up the plan and reported large-scale divestment instead to PVN.
On the UpCOM, PV Oil’s stock closed down 0.7% at VND15,100 VND (US$0.65) per share on December 11.
