VN stocks up on blue-chip basket shake-up

Photo shows a Techcombank’s trading office. The bank shares gained 2.4 per cent on Monday after the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange officially announced it would add Techcombank stock in the large-cap VN30 Index. — VNA/VNS Photo Tran Viet

Vietnamese shares gained on Monday led by the banking sector following the shake-up of the large-cap VN30 Index.

The benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) rose 0.97 per cent to close at 911.05 per cent. It closed last week down slightly by 0.05 per cent.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange rose by 1.78 per cent to end at 103.37 points. The northern market index fell 0.3 per cent last week.

Bank stocks led the market upturn with the banking sector index jumping 3.5 per cent, data on vietstock.vn showed.

HoSE on Monday announced four stocks would be added to its large-cap VN30 basket.

They included HDBank (HDB), Techcombank (TCB) and Eximbank (EIB), which rose between 1.9 per cent and 2.4 per cent.

The other stock to enter the VN30 basket is realty firm Vinhomes (VHM), which ended flat on Monday.

The southern market regulator also announced it would remove Binh Minh Plastics (BMP), steel maker Hoa Sen (HSG), consumer staple firm Kido (KDC) and petrol company Petrolimex (PLX) from the VN30 Index.

While BMP and KDC lost 1.8 per cent and 0.7 per cent, the news seemed to have no impacts on HSG and PLX, which gained 0.3 per cent and 1.7 per cent.

Official changes in the VN30 basket will be made on February 4, 2019. The VN30 Index tracks the performance of the 30 largest stocks by market capitalisation.

In addition, listed banks have released their earnings reports for 2018 which all beat previous year’s numbers.

HDBank has reported its full-year pre-tax profit grew 65.7 per cent to hit a record high of VND4 trillion (US$172 million).

VPBank (VPB) shares leapt 3.9 per cent after the bank announced pre-tax profit of VND9.2 trillion, up 13 per cent year-on-year.

Military Bank (MBB) reported pre-tax profit gains of 68 per cent to VND7.77 trillion in 2018.

Military Bank also announced it would spend VND2 trillion buying back 108 million shares between January 29 and February 27. The bank’s shares soared 6.3 per cent on the news.

The best-performing bank stock – Vietinbank (CTG) – surged 6.9 per cent on expectations of its earnings report.

Market liquidity remained modest ahead of the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, with 202.8 million shares traded, worth VND3.76 trillion. — VNS