Today's a big day for VNG! Why? VNG is Vietnam's first tech unicorn and been called "Vietnam's answer to Tencent." And today, they'll be listing on UPCoM, an exchange in Vietnam. But that's not the most interesting thing about this!

• They'll be listing 35.8M shares at a reference price of 240,000 VND ($10.15) under the ticker symbol VNZ.

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🤔 Who's VNG, anyway?

The company's products and services include top messaging app Zalo (it beat FB Messenger in Vietnam), AI, music streaming, financial services, cloud services, gaming and more.

They've also invested in several Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese startups and companies like Telio, Funding Societies, OpenCommerce and Haegin.

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👇🏼 A major drop

First off, they've dropped their valuation to just $364M (based on the reference price for the listing) — a fraction of their previous valuation.

• We hear they were valued at $2.2B–$2.5B in 2021.
• Last year, there were also reports that VNG had considered a SPAC listing in the US at a valuation of $2B–$3B and a $500M IPO where they could list 12.5% of their equity.

An American dream that may stay a dream. Those US listing plans? They've been talking about them for a long time.

• They signed an MOU with Nasdaq in 2017 to explore a US listing.

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💁🏻‍♀️ Not like the others

Oh, and UPCOM (the exchange VNG is listing on) isn't your typical exchange. UPCoM means Unlisted Public Company Market, which is actually for unlisted companies (yes, even though they are technically listing on UPCoM) that plan to go public soon and want to test investor appetite.

UPCoM is seen as a transitionary exchange before a potential listing on one of the two Vietnamese exchanges (HoSE and HNX) or a foreign exchange like the Nasdaq.

For nerds like us. HoSE is the largest and for listed companies with large caps, and HNX is for those with small-mid caps.

• Among the three exchanges, UPCOM allows for the largest daily price swings (+/- 15%). It's +/- 7% for HoSE and +/- 10% for HNX.
• HoSE has the strictest criteria, only allowing companies that have posted profits for the past two years to list — making listing on HoSE out of the question for VNG for now.

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🔜 What's next?

People will watch out for VNG's stock price, especially today. Will it be a massive rise in price (aka, a win) or a huge drop?

Why the first day's a big day. For companies newly listed on UPCoM, the maximum daily price swing on the first day of trading is up to +/-40%.