State company shares remain unappealing to some investors Except Sabeco and Vinamilk shares, the other divestments by the state have not succeeded as expected.   SCIC plans to disinvest from many enterprises The divestments of Vinamilk and Sabeco shares in the last two months of 2017 brought satisfactory results.  SCIC (State Capital Investment Corporation) sold 3.33 percent of Vinamilk shares, collecting VND9 trillion, or VND2 trillion higher than initially expected. Meanwhile, MOIT (Ministry of Industry and Trade) auctioned 53.59 percent of Sabeco shares, collecting $5 billion. The auction of Idico shares organized was also ‘hot’ with 40 foreign institutional investors registering to attend. 55 million shares were sold, bringing VND1.324 trillion, of which 74.8 percent was acquired by foreign investors. 64 more enterprises will be put into equitization in 2018, including large ones such as Vietnam Paper Corporation, MobiFone and companies in real estate and electricity generation sectors. However, other share auctions were not as successful because of the indifference of investors. A number of SOEs queued up for their IPOs in the last days of 2017 and early 2018, though investors did not show interest in the events. On December 25, Song Da auctioned 216 million shares, but only 790,900 shares, or 0.35 percent of the amount of shares offered, were sold, worth VND8.8 billion. A report shows that more than 200 individual investors attended the auction, but there was no institutional investor. According to Nikkei news, this was one of several disappointing share auctions that took place in the second half of 2017. Prior to that, Becamex IDC, put 311.2 million shares into auction on December 1. Only 158 investors registered to buy 18.95 million shares at the average price of VND31.008 per share, or 6.1 percent of the volume of shares offered. In other cases, only 6 percent of Becamex shares and 5.5 percent of Vinaconex shares were sold. In 2017, SCIC divested from 40 enterprises and collected VND21.639 trillion. A big proportion of money was from the divestment of Vinamilk shares (VND20.276 trillion in 2016 and 2017).  Meanwhile, the other 39 SOEs only brought VND1.363 trillion. The Vietnam Post Corporation (VN Post) has recently announced divestment from P&T Tour, one of its subsidiaries. Nearly 8.8 million stake will be put on sale at the starting price of VND24,600 per share. If successful, VN Post would collect VND216 billion. This is the second time that VN Post organized an auction of P&T Tour stake after failure in the first trial. The first took place in September 2017, where 10 investors registered to attend.  One institutional investor won the bid to buy a 90.22 percent stake at VND41,500 per share. However, the investor refused to pay the amount of money, about VND365 billion.  Phap Luat quoted Tran Anh Dung, chair of SSC (State Securities Commission), as reporting that 64 more enterprises will be put into equitization in the time to come, including large ones such as Vietnam Paper Corporation, MobiFone and companies in real estate and electricity generation sectors. Kim Chi, VNN