Monthly Investor Report

RNS Number : 4073V

VietNam Holding Limited

13 December 2021

 

VietNam Holding Limited ("VNH" or the "Company")

Monthly Investor Report

A report detailing the activities of the Company for the month of November 2021 has been issued by Dynam Capital Limited, the investment manager of the Company. Electronic copies of the report have been made available to shareholders on the Company's website  and a summary of the report is included below.

Santa in Saigon

Vietnam's vaccination rollout has come a long way over the past month. By early December, 75% of the adult population had received the first jab and 56% the second, giving both businesses and Christmas shoppers a good reason for feeling festive. Vietnam caught up quickly with Western nations, having already started vaccinating children in early November and therefore helping to contain the superspreading in schools seen all over the world. Then, despite the emergence of Omicron, just as the country was reopening and dealing with the detriments of the Delta variant, LEGO, the iconic Danish toy manufacturer, gave the country another excuse for getting into the spirit by announcing that it intends to invest US$1bn in building a carbon neutral factory with the Vietnam-Singapore Industrial Park Joint Stock Company in the southern Binh Duong province. According to the Danish Ambassador to Vietnam, this is the largest investment ever in Vietnam by a Danish company and shows the confidence and optimism of Danish investors in the relationship between the two countries. In our view, it also underlines the attraction of future foreign investment in Vietnam, given the government's facilitation of trade and international integration, on top of the country's abundant workforce and geographical location.

The Fund's NAV was up +3.1% in November, underperforming the VNAS by 0.8%, reflecting a diverse range of performance among its positions as the equity market reached a new peak. Financial services outperformed and VNH benefited from its overweight in brokerage firms, including VND (+38.8%). The brokerage sector is expected to benefit from further development of equity and bond markets. VND is well-placed to reap the opportunities having raised its capital this year. The market was driven mostly by local retail investors throughout the month with a record number of new accounts opened (over 200,000) and with speculative money flowing into mid-cap stocks. We viewed this as an opportunity to rebalance the portfolio starting with taking profits on some positions, such as NLG, after a strong rally. We also reduced our holding in HPG to below 3%, taking a profit from its stellar performance in 2021 and minimising our commodity risk considering worldwide inflationary rises and the fact that its stock price is highly correlated to the global price of steel. With the new layer of uncertainty surrounding Omicron, we decreased our position in retail stock PNJ as well since, despite the seasonal uptick, spending has not fully recovered from the Q3 lockdowns. In terms of additions, we selectively increased some of our holdings in anticipation of a recovery in earnings growth in the new year.

The Fund has been and remains one of the top three investment trusts listed on the London Stock Exchange in terms of performance year to date, and this can be attributed to how both the Vietnamese markets have weathered the ongoing Covid-19 disruptions and how we exercised our high-conviction stock selection and nimbleness. Looking ahead, monetary and fiscal policy will be making an increasingly bigger impact as the world learns to live with Covid-19 variants and the digital and societal transitions that the pandemic has accelerated. Controlled inflation and a stable property market will continue to support easing polices in Vietnam, but we also believe public investment and policy will play an integral role in how its economy fares in 2022 and 2023. We will be engaging with our portfolio companies more in this context, ensuring they adopt new compliance and IFRS accounting standards as well as helping to promote more collective action on addressing environmental, social and governance issues in the country's future and its commitment to net-zero.

We thank you all for your support during this remarkable year for the Fund and wish you all a safe and happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

For more information please contact:

Dynam Capital Limited  

Craig Martin  Tel: [phone]

[e-mail] | www.dynamcapital.com

www.vietnamholding.com

finnCap

Corporate Broker and Financial Advisor     Tel: [phone] 

William Marle

 

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