The time is right to head to the market

Vietnam’s economy is expected to recover in 2010 from global turbulence, with CMC Corporation to become the country’s second largest IT corporation listing on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in January. CMC Corporation chairman Ha The Minh tells VIR about the company’s listing expectations.

It is hard to predict where the stock market is heading, do you think it is a wise decision to list in January?

We received agreement in principle from the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange authorities in the last two weeks for listing more than 63.5 million shares and we plan to officially be on the bourse by mid January with the code CMG. We have prepared for that in the last two years and this is good time for us to enter a new stage of faster development as we have made lot of progress for faster development. We targeted to earn $500 million in revenue in 2012 with our focus on IT, telecom and e-business.

What makes you believe the target of $500 million revenue can be reached in 2012?

The first two segments are the most lucrative and will be our strategic businesses in long-term. We are gaining successes from system integrated (SI), software and telecom segment. We have invested strongly in SI and gained great successes from dedicated sectors such as banking and finance, insurance, education and training and government. The software has also opened a new market for our packaged products, IT, outsourcing and business resource outsourcing and software integrated services. The growth rate of SI and software segments will be around 35-40 per cent on average in the next three years. The telecom business segment is expected to start making a profit in 2011 - nearly three years after operation, once our telecom infrastructure services will be comercialised in 2010. We plan to cover all corners of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City with fibre optic cable in early 2010 and expand to other cities and provinces then.

Being a neutral operator, we have strategies to cooperate with all service providers and execute an one- stop-shop and all-in-one ICT partner business model to offer new telecom services such as one connection and one demand, which enables customers to enjoy all advanced ICT services such as broadband, voice, storage, data management and customer care over the single telecom line.

We still expect a high growth rate of revenue with 35 to 40 per cent in the next three years as we believe the portions of SI, software and telecom-internet in the corporation’s profit will rise in 2010. Our ICT distribution and PC and hardware assembling will also have remarkable contributions to the corporation’s revenue and profit.

We will also get involved in mergers and acquisitions to increase our scale in creating momentum in telecom and e-business segment, expanding IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing on international market. Thus, we believe the target of $500 million of revenue by 2012 is reachable.

What makes CMC different in attracting investors from other listed technology firms?

CMC is focusing its strategy on ICT without diversifying its business lines. Technology lies at the heart of the company’s strategy to offer customers with professional ICT services. We have continued building up our resources for sustainable development such as human resources, standards like CMMi and ISO, applying world advanced business model and technologies in our services to improve the performance of our services and products in Vietnam. That makes us different and sustainable and further develop in the long-run.

Investors often have high expectations for technology stocks, what do you think about these expectations?

It is clear that investors have high expectations on technology stocks as the potential of Vietnam’s ITC sector is huge. Demand on ITC applications is pivotal to an emerging market like Vietnam. Vietnam is also one of the top 10 software outsourcing destinations in the world while its telecom growth rate has been among the world’s highest rates. The Vietnamese government also sets ambitious plans to develop IT, telecom and internet in an attempt to turn the country into one of top 70 IT nations in the world by 2015.

The growth rate of Vietnam’s IT is high with average level of over 20 per cent and CMC Corporation is a leading IT company with impressive figures. We posted a high and sustainable growth rate during the last 16 years in Vietnam, especially the year-on-year growth of revenue was around 70 per cent in the last two years. CMC reached its targeted revenue of VND3.6 trillion ($220.1 million) in 2009, posting a year-on-year growth rate of 58 per cent.

The pre-tax profit of the corporation posted a growth rate of 39 per cent, valued at VND145 billion ($6.6 million). Earning per share (EPS) in 2009 was VND1,973 and dividend was 18 per cent. With the development of our telecom businesses, we expect the EPS in 2012 is VND 4,000 and divident at 36 per cent. Revenue and pre-tax profit of CMC are targeted to double and triple in 2012 against the figures in 2009.

“Không dây" khó đe dọa "có dây"
09/03/2010 08:09' AM
Ít nhất 10- 20 năm nữa, dù Công nghệ truyền thông thế hệ thứ Ba (3G) tại Việt Nam có phát triển thì cũng khó đe doạ sự tăng trưởng của Kết nối băng thông rộng có dây tới Internet (ADSL, FTTx) – đó là nhận định của CMC Telecom - một trong những nhà cung cấp Dịch vụ Internet tại Việt Nam.

CMC tiến công vào lĩnh vực viễn thông
27/01/2010 01:44' PM
Luật Viễn thông ra đời đang mở ra một lĩnh vực kinh doanh mới cho các tập đoàn kinh tế tư nhân, đó chính là lĩnh vực viễn thông. Và “chàng lính mới” CMC đang tích cực lên kế hoạch tổng thể để xâm nhập mạnh mẽ vào thị trường vốn được nhận định là “mảnh đất mầu mỡ” này.