Domestic sugar producer Thanh Thanh Cong-Bien Hoa Joint Stock Company has announced it will buy back more than 83.5 million shares as treasury stocks.

The company will buy the shares through order-matching transactions between April 18 and May 17.

It will buy those shares based on the firm’s share price levels but the price levels will not exceed VND30,000 (US$1.33) per share.

The company is not holding any treasury shares, the HCM Stock Exchange said in a statement. The targeted buyback shares are equal to 15 per cent of the company’s total outstanding shares on the stock market.

Thanh Thanh Cong-Bien Hoa JSC is trading more than 557 million shares on the HCM Stock Exchange with code SBT.

Its shares closed flat on Monday at VND18,050 per share, up a total of 5.5 per cent from its three-month low of VND17,100 per share hit on March 29.

SBT shares have fallen sharply by 56.6 per cent from their record high of VND41,650 per share on August 2, 2017 and by nearly 26 per cent from the six-month high of VND24,350 per share made on January 11, 2018.

SBT and other sugar producers have underperformed on the stock market since the beginning of the year as they have suffered from trade agreement threats and the sharp decline of sugar prices.

The price of sugar was down nearly 0.1 per cent on Monday to trade at 12.33 US cents a pound ($27.2 cents a kilogramme), data on Bloomberg showed.

The sugar price has almost lost a fifth of its one-year high price of 15.33 cents a pound hit on January 2. Due to a surplus on the global market, last month was volatile as it peaked at 12.93 cents a pound on March 12.

Domestic producers will have to compete with sugar imports from other producers in the ASEAN region, especially after the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) took effect on January 1, 2018, allowing sugar imports in Viet Nam to be taxed only 5 per cent.

Other sugar stocks that have also witnessed a downtrend included Lam Son Sugar JSC (LSS), Son La Sugar JSC (SLS) and Kon Tum Sugar JSC (KTS). – VNS