VinFast losses mount, as NC-bound automaker’s good delivery news comes with a caveat
READ MORE
VinFast in NC
Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced in March 2022 that it would open an electric vehicle assembly plant in North Carolina. The battery manufacturing plant will be built in Chatham County and is expected to eventually create 7,500 jobs. It’s the largest economic development announcement in the state’s history. Here is coverage from The News & Observer about the plans.
Expand All
VinFast, the now-public electric vehicle maker building a multibillion-dollar plant in Chatham County, released an earnings report Thursday morning that showed another quarter of sizable losses.
Between April and June, VinFast lost $526.7 million, bringing its net losses to more than $4.5 billion since the company started delivering electric vehicles in 2021.
Earlier in the week, the Vietnamese company announced a five-fold increase in electric vehicle deliveries during the second quarter of 2023 compared to the first.
Yet, this positive news comes with a caveat: Of the roughly 11,300 EVs VinFast delivered over the first six months of this year, more than half (around 7,100) were bought by Green and Smart Mobility, a Vietnamese taxi service controlled by VinFast’s parent company Vingroup, filings to U.S. financial regulators show.
Founded in 2017, VinFast initially produced gas-powered cars with a focus on its domestic market. In 2021, the company shifted its mission and committed to exclusively manufacture electric SUVs with an emphasis on selling both within Vietnam and to international customers.
Today, VinFast has more than 120 showrooms across the world. But its entrance into the global EV market has come at a steep cost.
In 2021, VinFast recorded net losses of $1.3 billion, and the following year, its total losses rose to $2.1 billion. In the first quarter of 2023, the company lost another $598 million.
The company noted its losses for the second quarter of 2023 were around 8% lower compared to the first quarter. Yet deliveries to Green and Smart Mobility have bolstered its revenue.
Vingroup is owned by Vietnamese billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong, his nation’s wealthiest person. In 2020, Vuong predicted VinFast would record losses for the next three to five years as the company transitioned to EVs and international customers.
VinFast’s planned factory in Chatham County will be the company’s first foreign manufacturing facility.
In late July, VinFast officially broke ground on the plant, which sits on a megasite near the town of Moncure, about 30 miles southwest of Raleigh. The company has pledged to employ at least 7,500 workers at the site by 2027.
In March, the company officially postponed the scheduled opening of its Chatham facility from 2024 to 2025.
The latest quarterly earnings are the first VinFast has released since the automaker went public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in August. Its share price entered Thursday trading at around $17. At its peak last month, VinFast stock briefly reached $93.
This story was originally published September 21, 2023 at 9:00 AM.
