The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.

By Katrina Hamlin

HONG KONG, June 4 (Reuters Breakingviews) - VinFast Auto's VFS.O minuscule number of independent investors may feel they're experiencing déjà vu. They're not wrong. The $8 billion Vietnamese electric-car and -scooter maker has appointed its founder’s son as chair and plans to pivot to an asset-light model by selling off factories in its home market. That’s reminiscent of past manoeuvres which did little to turn around the money-losing manufacturer's fortunes.

The automaker's life as a public company has been controversial from the get-go. Soon after listing, via a merger with a blank-cheque firm, its market value rocketed to $200 billion. That was largely due to founder-CEO Pham Nhat Vuong keeping control of almost all the stock, while the free float was just 0.3%; it's now around 2%.

VinFast has also leaned heavily on Vuong, Vietnam's richest man, for financial support. His sprawling conglomerate Vingroup has ploughed in more than $17 billion through debt financing, grants and more since 2017. Related companies accounted for over a quarter of sales last year.

Vuong, who became CEO in 2024, has devised ever more creative interventions. In 2025, he bought some of VinFast's research-and-development assets for $1.6 billion. Yet problems persist: although revenue doubled to 90 trillion dong ($3.4 billion) for the full year, the company's net loss widened 29% to $3.8 billion.

Last month's restructuring continues the trend. Offloading plants in Vietnam reduces capital expenditure, operating expenses and such. The $530 million deal also shifts $7 billion in borrowings off the balance sheet, Reuters reported, and allows the group to repay some debt, reducing interest payments. However, VinFast will have to pay the factories’ new owners – who include Vuong - for contract manufacturing.

It also leaves big problems to fix outside its home base. While deliveries in Vietnam and Asia doubled and tripled respectively last year, its tiny sales in North America slumped more than 40%, while the contribution from Europe is de minimis. VinFast has abandoned work on its factory in North Carolina, prompting the U.S. state to start legal proceedings, Reuters reported.

Minority investors are stuck on a bumpy ride. Despite falling 96% from its peak, the stock trades at 1.5 times sales – more than double the level for Chinese peers like Nio 9866.HK. That premium is unwarranted, unless the company can bolster its overseas showing. It's more likely that VinFast's latest trip will bring back bad memories.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Electric-car and scooter maker VinFast Auto has appointed Pham Nhat Quan Anh, son of its founder and CEO Pham Nhat Vuong, as chair, according to a press release on May 25.

VinFast is planning to sell its Vietnam manufacturing facilities to a buyer group that includes Vuong, aiming to restructure its local operations into a more "asset-light" model, a company filing on May 12 showed. The deal will value the assets at about 13.3 ​trillion dong.