MAIN CONTENT
On April 7, 2023, Petrolimex will divest all 120 million PGB shares in the form of a public auction via HoSE. The starting price for the disinvestment will take the highest price of the following two prices: the price determined by the organization with the valuation function according to the asset method (VND21,300 or US$0.91 per share) or the average reference price of 30 consecutive trading sessions of PGB shares before the approval date of the divestment plan.
We believe that the divestment of Petrolimex will affect PGBank in two aspects: (i) Business activities with Petrolimex’s ecosystem including deposits, loans, and payment services may be negatively impacted over the long term. (ii) New shareholders could bring a new breeze to the bank. In addition, with a foreign ownership rate of approximately 0% at the moment, PGB is one of the rare banks that still have “foreign room” left and is a name worth observing for foreign investors interesting in the Vietnam’s banking sector.
RECOMMENDATION
We recommend “Neutral” to PGB stock as (1) the bank’s business activities have not yet had an outstanding advantage compared to the peers and (2) the new major shareholder has not been disclosed and the business expectations are still gloomy.