The logo of Asia Commercial Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ACB). — Photo cafef.vn

HÀ NỘI — Two investment funds have cut their stakes at Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) after the lender saw its market value soar in the last three months.

The two shareholders are First Burns Investments Limited and Asia Reach Investments Limited.

The funds are related to Dominic Timothy Charles Scriven, a member of the board of managers at ACB, also the founder and executive chairman of Viet Nam-focus investment firm Dragon Capital.

First Burns Investments Limited has sold 32.9 million ACB shares to cut its ownership to 53.5 million shares or 2.48 per cent of the capital from 86.4 million shares (4 per cent stake).

Asia Reach Investments Limited has also offloaded 13.7 million ACB shares to cut its stake to 54.3 million shares (2.51 per cent of the capital) from 68 million shares (3.15 per cent of the capital).

The two funds registered their transactions on October 9. The two deals were finalised on October 12.

Three days earlier, nearly 40 million ACB shares were transferred in put-through transactions at VNĐ24,000 (US$1.03) per share. On October 12, nearly 5.9 million ACB shares were also traded at VNĐ24,000 apiece.

ACB shares, listed on the Hà Nội Stock Exchange with code ACB, moved between VNĐ23,000 and VNĐ23,800 per share on October 9-12.

The northern lender has recently filed for moving its shares to the Hồ Chí Minh Stock Exchange from the Hà Nội Stock Exchange.

Accordingly, the bank plans to cancel listing on HNX and switch to list entirely its 2.16 billion shares on HoSE.

The bourse-switching plan is expected to complete in the coming weeks.

The Hà Nội-based lender has seen its shares rocket in the last three months. ACB shares have soared a total of nearly 51 per cent since July 27.

ACB shares gained 2.4 per cent to VNĐ25,300 apiece on Monday.

In the first six months of 2020, ACB reported net revenue of total VNĐ6.53 trillion, up 13.4 per cent on-year.

The result was driven by the bank’s impressive earnings from trading securities, which jumped from a loss of VNĐ8 billion in the six-month period of 2019 to a profit of VNĐ662 billion in January-June this year.

In addition, income from foreign currency trading surged 98 per cent on-year to VNĐ295 billion in the first half.

However, as income from other business activities slumped 83 per cent on-year to VNĐ102 billion and expenses for salary and bonus, operation, and risk provision rose sharply, ACB posted only a 5.4 per cent on-year increase in pre-tax profit, which reached VNĐ3.82 trillion in the first half of the year. — VNS