The Vietnam Electrical Equipment JSC (Gelex) plans to acquire a 21 per cent stake in the industrial group Viglacera.

Gelex will purchase 95 million Viglacera shares to raise its ownership to 46.15 per cent or 260.93 million shares.

Gelex and related shareholders are holding 112 million shares or 2.94 per cent of Viglacera’s capital.

The bidding price will not be lower than the average 60-day price of Viglacera shares prior to the official offer.

Gelex targets to acquire the controlling stake in Viglacera in 2020 and other smaller firms to increase its market share in the industrial real estate sector.

In 2019, Gelex posted an 11.8 per cent increase in total revenue and a 23.6 per cent growth in pre-tax profit, which reached VND15.3 trillion and VND1.1 trillion, respectively.

However, the figures were 8 per cent and 20 per cent lower than the firm’s full-year targets, respectively.

According to the board of directors, the failure to secure the controlling stake at Viglacera was blamed for Gelex’s lower earnings in 2019.

If the acquisition had not been planned in 2019, Gelex could have seen its revenue and pre-tax profit beat the full-year targets by 10.6 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively.

In 2020, Gelex expects two scenarios which include and exclude the acquisition of Viglacera.

If the deal is completed early in the fourth quarter of the year, Gelex will record VND19.6 trillion worth of total revenue and VND975 billion worth of pre-tax profit.

On the other hand, total revenue this year will be VND19.5 trillion and pre-tax profit will be VND735 billion.

At Viglacera’s annual shareholder meeting on June 19, the Ministry of Construction said the ministry was planning to sell all its shares in Viglacera by the end of 2020.

A plan was being prepared and it would be submitted to the Prime Minister to make sure the deal would be transparent, public and profitable for the State budget, the ministry said.

Viglacera was once a State-owned enterprise. The company was equitised in 2019 and the Government, through the Ministry of Construction, cut its ownership to 38.85 per cent from the previous 100 per cent.

At the annual shareholders’ meeting, Viglacera reported total revenue in 2019 rose 9 per cent on-year to VND10.14 trillion and total pre-tax profit inched up 2 per cent to VND970 billion.

The company forecast total revenue would fall to VND8.3 trillion in 2020 and pre-tax profit would contract to VND750 billion as the COVID-19 pandemic had been affecting the firm’s business activities.

Viglacera also reported pre-tax profit in the first five months of the year was estimated at VND343 billion.

Gelex shares (HoSE: GEX) gained as much as 1.46 per cent and Viglacera shares (HoSE: VGC) jumped as much as 3.83 per cent on Friday. — VNS