VNG Corp, a Vietnamese internet company, has filed for an IPO in the United States through VNG Ltd. This has been confirmed through a filing by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filling makes VNG Ltd. the first Vietnamese company to be listed in the United States. In its filing, VNG noted that it planned to offer about 21.7 million shares. The company has yet to propose the price at which it will sell each share.
Some of the companies VNG counts as its shareholders include Tencent (0700.HK), a Chinese social media and gaming giant, and Singapore state investor Temasek (TEM.UL) as shareholders. VNG was founded in 2004 and went on to become the first Vietnam startup to be valued at more than $1 billion. The company’s growth saw it ink an agreement with Nasdaq Inc. to explore an IPO in the US in 2017. VNG is popular for online games, cloud services, and payments and owns Zalo, which is Vietnam’s most popular messaging app.
The filing also revealed that Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, and UBS are all underwriters to the IPO by VNG. This latest IPO by VNG follows a recent US listing by VinFast, and this is likely to accelerate the number of Southeast Asian companies seeking an Initial Public Offering in the United States. Another company that has expressed interest in being registered in the US IS the Philippine real estate company Double Dragon Corp (DD.PS). The company noted that it was willing to register its Singapore-registered unit Hotel101 Global on Nasdaq. The company added that the listing would be done through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
Carsome Group, a Southeast Asia used car marketplace, is also weighing a listing in the United States. According to Seth Farbman, the chairman and co-founder of New York-based transfer agency VStock, “While the future outcomes of these startups' IPO plans cannot be guaranteed, the growing interest in international listings and the presence of notable players in the region indicate a promising landscape for Southeast Asian startups seeking to expand their reach and access global capital markets.”
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