FiinGroup has successfully supported a large Korean investor investing in Vietnamese companies by Data Analytics Service

Korean economy has been slowing down and like many other Korean companies, expanding to South East Asia countries is on its top agenda as their growth story. Vietnam has been selected as one of the top 3 destinations to increase their oversea exposure and to capture the high growing sectors.

Pain Points:

The Investor has paid various business visits to Vietnam, meeting many people and officials and gaining some background; and coming up with some general ideas and few names as potential partners in Vietnam.

However, the Investor couldn’t answer to their management with on-the-ground analysis and evidence-based evidence with the below basic questions:

1. What are the main industries to explore the investment opportunities in Vietnam? and why?;
2. Who are the main potential partners with a clearly defined criteria that they should be a top 5 players in the industry or “the next champions”?; and
3. A shortlist of partner candidates with basic profiles, key financials and key operational indicators.

The questions became more hectic when their chairman planned to have a visit to Vietnam including a courtesy visit to a Vietnamese government’s leader.

The Strategic and Planning Department’s personnel of the Investor reached to us via their Google search and explained the situation and requirement to FiinGroup via a Video Teleconferencing Meeting.

The Solution:

Our Data Analytics Team at Business Information Unit discussed and agreed with a Data Analytics Service to the Investor by looking at the following

- Sector Reviewing and Screening: Re-defining the investment criteria that set out previously by the Investor by using our data analytics about the companies and about their defined industries. Key criteria are:

• Market size: must be at least US$2bn and supported with 10-year historical and 5-year forecasting
• Industry growth: it must be double-digit growth
• Industry catalyst: tapping on the consumerism and young population of Vietnam or fall within the regional/global value chain that Vietnam has an advantage.

Revenue of Top 50 Private companies by industry

- Company Screening: Longlist of top 50 largest private companies in Vietnam with insightful information about its business, financials and its market share in the industry. The companies meeting the criteria set out and agreed with the Investor.

Aggregated revenue contribution of top 50 private companies to GDP (thsnd bil VND)

- Shortlist of Investment Opportunities: with specific companies supported by data visualized analysis about corporate structure, ownership details, insightful business analysis, market share and competitive advantages, assessing corporate governance and quality of management, financial position and performance; current and pending litigations and so on. 

Key Values to the Client:

- Speed up the investment decision process: the data-driven research works by our Data Analytics Team at FiinGroup helped the Investor in every investment meeting in Korea at department levels and at the Boardroom level. As such, it tools only less than 6 months for the Investor to make a decision for their largest oversea investment so far in an emerging country in SEA.

- Investments conclusion: the Investor concluded two investments in Vietnam within 6 months from the completion of our Data Analytics service. The first is 6.5% equity stake in the largest private Vietnamese company; and a the second is the 9.5% equity stake the largest player in Food Producer business.

- Saved time and travelling cost: having service from FiinGroup, the Client cut down the time to pay visits and travel costs to Vietnam. Partner information are all ready in advance and decision can be made without necessarily meetings with the Vietnamese counterparts. The research work by FiinGroup is also made as a pre-due diligence and that in turn saved costs for other professional services that they normally paid in the past to management consulting firms, accounting firms, and sometime legal firms which are very costly.