Ha Noi Education Development and Investment JSC, code EID, gained an after-tax profit of VND23 billion ($1.08 million), up 38 per cent year on year. The company's profit was the highest among listed companies in the publishing industry.— Photo danviet

HA NOI (Biz Hub)— Many listed publishing companies have reported positive profit results in H1 but the trading in this stock group was quite soft.

Total after-tax profit in H1of 24 listed publishing firms was 98.6 billion (US$4.66 million), up 40 per cent year on year – a good business performance in the wake of declining earnings in other sectors.

Ha Noi Education Development and Investment JSC, code EID, gained an after-tax profit of VND23 billion ($1.08 million), up 38 per cent year on year. The company's profit was the highest among listed companies in the publishing industry.

About 11 other publishing companies announced profits of under VND10 billion ($476,000).

However, inside industries said that Viet Nam's publishing industry was too seasonable and did not contain stable factors.

For example, a big part of their products were only for the beginning of each academic year.

"Even stock prices in this group are rather low, about VND10,000 each, but I'm not interested in publishing companies' shares anymore," said Pham Thi Dung, a retail investor who used to hold these kinds of shares last year.

"Publishing prices depend too much on input material prices, particularly imports. They keep going frustratingly up and down.

And education policy-makers keep changing direction and contents frequently which make a huge number of compulsory books and lab devices far from consumption," she said.

The expanding market for unauthorised copies was also blamed for the low earnings of publishing companies. — VNS