- VinFast stock plunged 44% Tuesday, reducing its market value by $83 billion.
- The EV maker's shares are thinly traded and it expects to sell just 50,000 cars this year.
VinFast's stunning stock-market debut hit a brick wall Tuesday after the EV maker's value plunged by $83 billion.
Shares in the little-known, Vietnamese company closed 44% lower, but it's still worth about $107 billion – more than double the market cap of Ford.
VinFast enjoyed a staggering fortnight since it listed via a SPAC merger on August 15. Despite being unprofitable and only expecting to produce 50,000 cars this year, it had notched up a six-day winning streak prior to Tuesday's plunge.
Founder Pham Nhat Vuong still controls 99% of the stock, having issued just 1% of its 2.32 billion shares to the public.
Low-float stocks are often susceptible to high volatility, both to the upside and downside, as it doesn't take much buying or selling pressure to fuel wild price swings.
Vuong also suffered a massive hit to his paper wealth Tuesday, with VinFast's losses eroding the value of his stake from $141 billion to $74 billion, according to Barron's.
The stock looked set to claw back some of those losses Wednesday after climbing 8% in premarket trading.