Bamboo Airways is planning to raise its charter capital to VND30 trillion (nearly US$1.3 billion) to restructure its debts and increase capital for its core and support business activities.

The carrier held an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting to vote on the authorisation of its Board of Directors to carry out necessary procedures for the private stock offering.

Earlier, Le Thai Sam – a big shareholder in Bamboo Airways – sent a document proposing to issue more stocks to convert debts into shares. Sam currently owns 231.74 million shares of Bamboo Airways, equivalent to 12.5 per cent of the company's charter capital. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of FLC Group and Bamboo Airways.

The document said that as of April 10, he personally lent Bamboo Airways a total amount of VND7.7 trillion. However, Bamboo Airways has not had a specific plan to repay the debt. Therefore, he proposed Bamboo Airways offer 1.15 billion shares at VND10,000 each in the private placement in order to increase the charter capital to VND30 trillion.

Currently, the main shareholder structure of Bamboo Airways includes Trinh Van Quyet – former Chairman of the Board of Directors of FLC Group with over 10 per cent of the shares, Le Thai Sam with 12.5 per cent, Doan Huu Doan, Bamboo Airways’ Standing Vice Chairman with 23 per cent, FLC Group with more than 21 per cent and National Citizen Commercial Joint Stock Bank (NCB) with 11 per cent.

On May 8, a Resolution of FLC’s Board of Directors announced the agreement to transfer all of its shares at Bamboo Airways to Le Thai Sam. It also irrevocably authorised all FLC’s shareholder rights at Bamboo Airways’ extraordinary shareholders’ meeting for Sam. This means that Sam will hold more than 631.74 million shares of Bamboo Airways and be the airline’s largest shareholder. After the plan to issue more shares to creditors was approved by the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders, he would personally continue to increase the number of shares at Bamboo Airways to more than 1.4 billion or 46.8 per cent.

Nguyen Ngoc Trong, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: “Bamboo Airways is strongly promoting restructuring and mobilising resources to reach major long-term targets. The new source of capital will help it reduce outstanding debts, increase its fleet, open more international routes, and provide more quality services for passengers.”

The airline is operating more than 40 domestic routes connecting with all the 22 airports in Viet Nam, as well as 14 international direct air routes to many large destinations in Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

It looks to increase its fleet to 65 planes by 2025 and 100 by 2030.

In addition, Bamboo Airways is also working to develop an aviation ecosystem by expanding operations in ground service and meal supply, technical infrastructure, and cargo transportation. — VNS