Vietnam Internet huge files to be very first tech company from that nation go public in U.S. as the marketplace for brand-new listings defrosts
Internet start-up VNG declared a going public in the United States, making it the very first Vietnamese innovation business to look for a listing in New York and contributing to a diversifying lineup of business preparing listings as equity markets thaw.
VNG, which prepares to use practically 22 million shares in the IPO, will set a proposed rate variety in a later filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. It stated in its filing Wednesday that VNG will continue to be managed by its creators, Le Hong Minh and Vuong Quang Khai. VNG will own 49% of VNG Corp., the Vietnamese running business.
Formerly called Vinagame, VNG Corp. had its start as a video game publisher in 2004. It establishes and releases its own titles in addition to regional variations of worldwide hits, and has actually slowly broadened to a vast array of services, such as music sharing, video streaming, messaging, a news website and mobile payments. It has actually been checking out going public in the United States given that a minimum of 2017.
Its messaging app, Zalo, has actually won over Meta Platform Inc.’s Facebook Messenger to end up being the most-used talking platform in Vietnam given that 2020. Zalo has 75 million regular monthly active users, according to a declaration.
“We were born after the war, in a nation that had found peace and unity, but was still struggling with underdevelopment and isolation,” VNG’s creators stated in a letter to financiers consisted of in the prospectus. “Little did we know how lucky we were when the Internet arrived in Vietnam in the middle of the 1990s. The world magically and suddenly opened the door for us.”
VNG Ltd.’s IPO would follow this month’s United States launching of Vietnamese electric-vehicle maker Vinfast Auto Ltd. after it finished a merger with blank-check business Black Spade Acquisition Co. in an offer valuing it at $23 billion.
A listing by VNG would include momentum to an IPO market that has actually been warming in fits and starts. Chip designer Arm Holdings Ltd., bulk owned by SoftBank Group Corp., is preparing to go public in September in what would be the year’s greatest IPO. San Francisco-based grocery shipment company Instacart Inc. and marketing, information automation company Klaviyo and shoes maker Birkenstock are likewise preparing to declare IPOs, Bloomberg News has actually reported.
VNG sees video games as the spearhead of its international growth strategies while likewise looking for to include earnings from expert system and cloud computing items, Minh, the business’s president, stated in an interview in 2015. The video gaming arm VNGGames has at least 9 studio video games abroad consisting of Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Taipei and China.
The offering is being led by Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, UBS Group AG and Bank of America Corp. The business prepares for its shares to trade on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the sign VNG.
