Giant steel maker Hoa Phat Group(HPG) earned revenue of 19.5 trillion VND (835.9 million USD) in the quarter,up 28 percent year-on-year.
The company reported post-taxprofit of 2.3 trillion VND in Q1, up 27 percent against last year.
In addition to steelproduction, Hoa Phat also operates in other fields such as furniture,refrigeration, real estate and agriculture.
On the stock market, Hoa Phatshares (HPG) rose sharply after plummeting to the two-year bottom of 6,200 VND pershare at the end of March this year. Currently, HPG is being traded at around 23,600VND per share, approximately equal to the price recorded at the beginning ofthis year.
Hoa Phat’s market share ofconstruction steel increased to 31.9 percent in Q1 with an output of nearly733,000 tonnes after excluding steel billets. Of the estimate, the amount ofexported finished steel products reached 135,000 tonnes, up 74.8 percent overthe same period last year.
The provision of steel billetsreached about 350,000 tonnes, mainly for export. The main export markets forsteel billets are China and Southeast Asian countries. The company alsoprovided the market with nearly 145,000 tonnes of steel pipes.
In March, Hoa Phat supplied atotal of 486,000 tonnes of finished steel products and steel billets todomestic and foreign markets.
Another notable steel producer,Hoa Sen Group (HSG), also witnessed profit growth during the reviewed period.
The fiscal year of Hoa SenGroup differs from others, starting from July 1 and ending on June 30 of thefollowing year. Therefore, the first quarter of this year is considered thesecond quarter of the 2019-20 fiscal year of the Hoa Sen Group.
In the quarter, Hoa Sen’srevenue reached 5.8 trillion VND, down by 16.3 percent year-on-year. Financeexpense dropped by 44 percent to 223 billion VND, selling expense decreased by48 percent to nearly 504 billion VND and corporate management costs slumped by 104billion VND to 142 billion VND.
Post-tax profit reported in thequarter was 201 billion VND, nearly four times higher than the profit achievedin the same period last year.
In the first six months of thefiscal year 2019-2020, the group reached 382 billion VND in post-tax profit,3.2 times higher than the same period last year and completed more than 95 percentof the profit target assigned for the whole year.
According to SSI Securities Co,these results were attributed to the improvement in gross profit margin.Inventories were kept at a safer level, which allowed the company to focus onprofits instead of sales as in previous years.
These were the results achievedafter one year of restructuring the distribution system, SSI said.
Other steel enterprises thatreported profit growth in the first three months of this year was VietnamGermany Steel Pipe JSC.
The company recorded profit of 10.6billion VND, up 3.8 percent year-on-year. But this profit was less than onethird of that reported in the previous quarter.
Notably, Nam Kim Steel JSC(NKG) suffered a loss of more than 100 billion VND in Q1 last year but enjoyedpost-tax profit of 41.5 billion VND in the period this year.
Revenue in Q1 reached 2.45trillion VND, down by 16.7 percent year-on-year, in which export revenue was 1.13trillion VND, contributing about 46 percent of total revenue.
As for business activities, NamKim Steel has continuously strengthened its cooperation with SMC, an industrypartner. The continuous increase of SMC's ownership ratio in Nam Kim as well asthe use of SMC’s personnel in Nam Kim shows the close co-operation betweenthese two units.
Recently, the two funds,Vietnam Enterprise Investments Limited and Amersham Industries Limited, sold atotal of more than nine million shares of Nam Kim (NKG), reducing theirownership to less than nine million shares and no longer the major shareholdersof the group.
Nam Kim plans to reach 12trillion VND in revenue this year, down slightly from the revenue achieved in2019.
It also aims to collect 200billion VND in post-tax profit, a sharp increase compared to the profitachieved in 2019.
Consumption is expected toreach 700,000 tonnes, up 7.4 percent compared to that of 670,000 tonnesachieved in 2019.
Thong Nhat Flat Steel JointStock Company (TNS) also enjoyed after-tax profit of 1.6 billion VND in Q1 thisyear while suffering a loss of 7.6 billion VND in the same period last year./.