VinFast revenues jump on EV sales to Vietnam affiliate

investing.com:

By Phuong Nguyen and Chavi Mehta

(Reuters) -Vietnamese electric car maker VinFast (NASDAQ:VFS) said on Thursday its third-quarter revenue more than doubled with the largest share of its sales going to an affiliate company owned by its founder.

About 60% of VinFast’s deliveries, or more than 6,000 vehicles, went to Green SM (GSM), a Vietnam-based taxi operator and leasing provider 95% owned by VinFast's founder, Pham Nhat Vuong, executives said on a call with analysts.

VinFast had not provided that breakdown in its published earnings.

For the past two quarters GSM has accounted for about two-thirds of VinFast's sales.

VinFast recorded $343 million in revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30, up 159% on the year. Its net loss widened 33.7% to $623 million.

The company has a target of hitting break even within two years and running its factory in Vietnam at full capacity by then. The factory in Haiphong has the capacity to produce 250,000 electric vehicles (EVs) per year but has been running far short of that.

GSM launched Vietnam's first pure EV taxi service earlier this year with a target of starting with 600 VinFast EVs. It also operates a ride service with VinFast electric scooters, executives said.

It was not immediately clear how many of the 13,000 vehicles GSM has bought from VinFast over the past two quarters would go into its fleet or how many it would hold to lease to customers.

VinFast Chief Executive Le Thi Thu Thuy said VinFast planned to expand its partnership with GSM to include Indonesia and India, where it is setting up smaller-scale factories that will assemble vehicles shipped in parts from Vietnam.

«For VinFast, GSM is a very good partner,» she told analysts. «There have been an overwhelming number