Hoa Phat Group, one of the country’s major industrial production companies, manufactured around 505,000 tonnes of steel in the first quarter of 2017, up 27.9 per cent year on year.

The group’s market share has also expanded to 24.2 per cent during this period.

The company attributed the growth to the thriving property market.

It exported around 52,000 tonnes of steel, mostly to the US, Canada, Australia and ASEAN countries in Q1, equivalent to its entire export volume in 2016.

In March alone, the group sold around 183,000 tonnes of steel, a 2 per cent rise compared to the same period last year, but a drop from the 242,000 tonnes in February.

Hoa Phat’s steel market share went up by 2 percentage points from the end of 2016. In 2016, it held 22.2 per cent market share, with the sale of 1.8 million tonnes of steel. The group also made up around 25 per cent of the total steel pipe sales in Viet Nam, retaining the top spot in the domestic steel pipe market.

The company earned VND33.88 trillion (US$1.49 billion) in revenue and VND6.6 trillion ($291.3 million) in post-tax profit last year, both soaring by 34 per cent and 89 per cent, respectively, compared to 2015.

The group’s shares, trading on the HCM Stock Exchange, have gained around 11 per cent in 2017 and are at VND31,000 per share. — VNS