Mobile World set to give 7.3m shares to employees

Hanoi (VNA) - Employees of Mobile World Investment Corporation may hold a fortune worth 2.6 trillion VND (116.7 million USD) this month, according to a report on the news website CafeF.

The electronic device retailer, known as Mobile World, has asked the State Securities Commission to allow it to issue 7.3 million bonus shares for employees this year.

If the proposal is approved, the value of the bonus shares will be 1.5 trillion VND, making total value of bonus shares that Mobile World has issued to employees since December 2014 2.62 trillion VND. The company’s stock closed at 155,000 VND per share on December 11.

During the previous two years, the company has issued 12.3 million bonus shares to employees, including 5.3 million in 2014 and seven million in 2015.

According to CafeF, the share issuance would make Mobile World the “most generous company to employees in the stock market” compared to other large-cap firms such as dairy producer Vinamilk, private equity firm Masan Group and construction company Coteccons.

What make Mobile World’s bonus shares so valuable are the terms that receivers must follow and the growth of the company share prices.

According to the company’s regulations, the bonus shares can’t be traded for a year after being issued. After one year, employees can sell half of the shares, with all of the bonus shares tradable after two years.

The restriction has made Mobile World’s bonus shares a hot commodity. By December 2016, half of the bonus shares issued in 2014 and all of those issued last year remained unavailable for trading.

The company’s share prices have jumped since Mobile World began trading on the HCM Stock Exchange in July 2014 as the company has recorded significant gains in post-tax profits.

Before being listed on the stock market, Mobile World recorded its best post-tax profit of 258 billion VND in 2013.

The company earned 674 billion VND in total post-tax profit for 2014. The figure increased by nearly 1.6 times one year later and hit 1.33 trillion VND in the first 10 months of this year.

Significant increases in the company’s earnings have helped its share price jump four times to 155,000 VND on December 11 since it was listed on the HCM Stock Exchange in July 2014, making it one of the 30 biggest listed firms by market capitalisation./.