With the stock market warming up, listed companies are selling treasury stocks and issuing additional shares, while equitised companies are hurrying to list shares on the bourse.

In July and the first three weeks of August, the Hanoi bourse witnessed 13 companies listing shares on the bourse. A lot of listed companies registered to list more shares, including the Saigon-Hanoi Securities Company (SHS), Kim Long Securities Company (KLS) and Cotec Construction and Investment (CIC). Many other companies have applied for listing on the bourse, such as Lilama 5 and the Song Da Infrastructure Construction Corporation.

Of these companies, the Saigon-Hanoi Bank (SHB) has put the biggest volume of shares, 150 million shares, into transaction on the bourse.

In HCM City, after Vietcombank (VCB) and Vietinbank (CTG) made their debuts in late June and early July, the market welcomed some ten other big names. Three other big banks, Military Bank, Eximbank and Saigon Commercial Bank, are also fulfilling necessary procedures to list shares on the HCM City bourse.

New listings and additional shares have provided a big volume of ‘commodities’ for the market. According to Bao Viet Securities Company, the volume of stocks listed for the first time in June 2009 was 867.9 million shares, the biggest figure so far this year, while 163 million additional shares of listed companies appeared on the market in July.

As stock prices keep rising, those companies who had to purchase treasury stocks in 2008 in order to help curb price decreases when the market was gloomy now believe it is the ‘golden time’ to sell the treasury stocks. In July 2009, Sacombank announced the sale of 18.2 million treasury stocks.

Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group is also planning to sell nearly 2.8 million HAG treasury stocks which its subsidiaries are holding. When Hoang Anh Gia Lai purchased the stocks, HAG was priced at below 70,000 dong per share. Meanwhile, the price has risen to over 90,000 dong.

The Saigon Securities Incorporated (SSI) has registered to sell three million shares, while Ben Tre Seafood Import-Export Company has announced the sale of all 800,000 treasury shares in its plan to restructure capital.

Elsewhere, Veil Holdings Limited has wrapped up the sale of 1.9 million REE shares (Refrigeration Engineering Enterprise), lowering its ownership ratio to 4.85 percent from 7.28 percent. Meanwhile, Grinling International Limited belonging to Dragon Capital and Indochina Capital Vietnam Holding Limited also sold 1.2 million CII (HCM City Technical Infrastructure Investment Corporation) and 261,000 PNC (Phuong Nam Cultural Products Company).

In principle, the massive sale of shares creates a big supply in the market, thus putting pressure on stock prices. However, the HCM City Securities Company said that the market will remain stable as investors are optimistic.

Pham Thanh Thai Linh, Deputy Head of Bao Viet Securities Company, believes that the supply may get even larger in the time to come, since many companies are going to enter the bourses or list additional shares when they see favourable conditions. The high volume of ‘commodities’ will attract a big volume of money to the stock market.

However, Linh thinks that demand will not increase too sharply as investors are still behaving cautiously.