Monthly Investor Report

RNS Number : 8539E

VietNam Holding Limited

15 April 2014

 



VietNam Holding Limited (the "Company")

Investor Report

A report detailing the activities of the Company for the month of March 2014 has been issued by VietNam Holding Asset Management Limited, the investment manager of the Company. Electronic copies of the report have been made available to shareholders on the Company's website at http://www.vietnamholding.com/latest-publications.aspx and a summary of the report is included below.

Investor Report Summary

Vietnam News

In Vietnam several key macro-economic indicators ended the first quarter of 2014 at a 3-year high: 1) the Q1-2014 GDP growth of 4.96% was mainly driven by the accelerating service sector, 2) the trade balance marked a surplus of USD 1bn (USD 33.3bn exports versus USD 32.3bn imports), 3) the retail sales growth of 5.1% indicates that domestic consumer confidence is strengthening, and 4) by the 4.96% industrial production growth, led by the manufacturing sector which is increasingly strongly dominated by foreign direct investment.

These encouraging numbers provide evidence of a gradual improvement of Vietnam's economic growth rate.  At the same time inflation decreased further, as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) declined by 0.44% between February and March. As a result, the YoY CPI was at 4.39% versus 4.65% in the previous month. On the back of these positive developments, the State Bank of Vietnam cut a number of key interest rates in March, including the refinance rate from 7.0% to 6.5% and the discount rate from 5.0% to 4.5%.

In the equity markets, the HoSE's Vietnam Index (VNI) ended March with a slight gain of 0.87%, as many investors chose to take some of their profit towards the end of the month, after the VNI had gained 20% YTD by March 24th. There were also some concerns of margin loans reaching their limits at some securities brokerage firms. Despite this, the Hanoi HNI-Index managed to advance 7.6% in March. Average trading liquidity improved on both exchanges, with a new record trading volume on March 26th, boosted by end-of-quarter rebalancing by the two Vietnam ETFs. The YTD average daily trading volume on HOSE was USD 111.1mn.

As at the end of March the VNI was up 17% YTD and the Vietnam stock market stays ahead of its regional peers in this comparison.

VNH Insights

In our VNH interim report of December 31st, 2013, we took an in-depth look at the investment opportunities relating to Vietnam's challenges as well as opportunities relating to its urbanization trend. Our comprehensive examination of this mega trend has resulted in several very attractive new investments.

During the past quarter, Vietnam saw USD 40.0mn in net foreign investments into the Vietnam equity market. During all of last year, the net inflow was USD 126.6mn. Most of these investment inflows were channelled through the two Vietnam ETFs, the Deutsche Bank X-Trackers FTSE Vietnam ETF and the Market Vectors Vietnam ETF. 

The better performing of the two ETFs has barely kept track of the main market index VNI, while the DB X-Tracker has underperformed the VNI by almost 40% since August 2009, the date when the second of these ETFs was launched.

During the same period, VNH outperformed the index by a substantial margin and has produced very high positive returns for its investors. The same holds true when benchmarked against each of our actively-managed peer funds, as our traditional peer comparison table on page 2 shows.

VietNam Holding Asset Management Limited
Gyentsen Zatul	Telephone: [phone]
- Investor Relations
Oriel Securities Limited (Nominated Adviser and Broker)
Stewart Wallace / Neil Winward	Telephone: [phone]

 

END

 

 

MSCQKPDNFBKKDQD