Billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong’s VinFast To Raise $1 Billion Selling Shares To Hedge Fund Yorkville

VinFast Auto—the electric vehicle maker controlled by Vietnam’s richest person, Pham Nhat Vuong—has signed a standby equity subscription agreement to sell as much as $1 billion of the company’s shares to Yorkville Advisors, a hedge fund based in New Jersey.

The share sale, which can be executed anytime within the next 36 months, will help broaden the shareholder base of VinFast and support the company’s global expansion plans, which includes the construction of factories in the U.S., Indonesia and India.

“It provides financial flexibility to fund our growth,” David Mansfield, chief financial officer of VinFast, said in a statement late Friday. “We will continue to evaluate other capital markets transactions and sources of fundraising as VinFast continues to grow.”

With a net worth of $4.5 billion, Pham has been bankrolling VinFast’s expansion plans as it accelerates EV shipments across North America, Europe and Asia. In April, Vuong and his flagship company Vingroup, which has interests in education, healthcare, hospitality, retail and real estate, agreed to invest a further $2.5 billion to support VinFast’s global expansion.

Established in 2017, VinFast initially produced conventional internal combustion engine vehicles from its automated factory in the northern Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong. Last year, it pivoted completely to producing EVs and started challenging Tesla in its U.S. home market this year.

VinFast started trading on Nasdaq on August 15 after merging with Hong Kong casino tycoon Lawrence Ho’s Black Spade Acquisition Co., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a deal that valued the EV maker at $23 billion.

While an initial market rally lifted VinFast’s market value to almost $200 billion in late August, the stock has tumbled more than 90% from its peak amid concerns the company will miss sales targets this year following an embarrassing recall and negative reviews of its mid-sized sports utility vehicle, VF8, in the U.S. As of Friday, VinFast’s market cap stood at about $13 billion.

VinFast aims to sell as many as 50,000 EVs this year but has only sold 21,000 units in the first nine months of the year, and more than half of those where delivered to Green and Smart Mobility, an affiliated electric taxi company controlled by Pham.