A Chinese Taiwanese-backed electric wire and cable producer, the first foreign-invested enterprise in Vietnam licensed to list in Vietnam's stock market, plans to start listing shares late this month or early next month.

"The State Securities Commission of Vietnam granted us the listing license on Dec. 2. We have proposed Dec. 20 as the listing date," Linh Thin Pau, head of the Securities Department under the Taya Vietnam Joint Stock Company, told Xinhua Thursday.

The company's management board is considering the proposed date, he said, noting that the approved date is likely to fall in late this month or early next month.

"We are licensed to list over 3.65 million common shares with a share's face value of 10,000 Vietnamese dong (VND) (0.63 US dollars) in the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Center. The shares, which were sold to the public in May, account for 20 percent of Taya Vietnam's total shares," Pau said.

Taya Vietnam with registered capital of nearly 182.7 billion VND (roughly 11.5 million dollars) went public in May, becoming the first equitized foreign-invested enterprise in Vietnam, he said. Taya Vietnam in southern Dong Nai province is one of six foreign-invested enterprises approved by the Vietnamese government for conversion into joint stock companies this year.

"Our company posted after-tax profits of 55 billion VND (3.46 million dollars) in 2004, up from 26 billion VND (nearly 1.64 million dollars) in 2003," he said, noting it has targeted total revenues of 757 billion VND (47.61 million dollars) and after-tax profits of 36 billion VND (2.26 million dollars) this year.

"This year's after-tax profits are getting smaller because we put a new factory in northern Hai Duong province into operation in January," he said.

Up to 90 percent of electric wires and cables produced by Taya Vietnam are sold in the Vietnamese market, and 10 percent in foreign ones. "Our products mainly go to China's Taiwan and Cambodia," Pau said.

Now, Vietnam has 30 kinds of listed shares, 303 kinds of listed bonds, mostly government bonds, and one listed investment fund, with combined face value of nearly 38,445 billion VND (nearly 2.42 billion dollars), according to the State Securities Commission of Vietnam on Thursday.

Source: Xinhua