- Vietnamese electric carmaker VinFast has seen its shares skyrocket since it went public on August 15.
- Its market capitalization now stands at over $190 billion – but some investors cannot hide their disbelief.
Vietnamese carmaker VinFast's shares have staged a sizzling rally since the company's US stock-market debut two weeks ago.
Monday's close saw the market capitalization of the lossmaking EV firm hit an eye-watering $190 billion – more than Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler Stellantis combined.
VinFast shares closed at $82.35, meaning the stock has soared over 680% since it went public on August 15 via a special-purchase acquisition company, or Spac.
And its remarkable rally has caught the eye of individual investors, according to Vanda Research figures seen by Bloomberg.
For veteran short-seller Jim Chanos, however, the stock is being driven by a retail investor craze and little else.
"The $200B meme-stock $VFS," he wrote in a post on X Monday, responding to Drew Dickson, founder of Albert Bridge Capital, who had expressed his shock on VinFast's delivery metrics.
"If $VFS (Vinfast) is lucky, they will do 40K units this year. Toyota will do 40K units in the next 40 hours," Dickson had written.
"Market cap, $200B. When things act like this, one has to wonder. About everything."
Chanos's skepticism is not unfounded.
VinFast delivered just 11,300 vehicles in the first half of this year, according to its company presentation. That's a fraction of its much larger competitors such as Tesla and BYD, which delivered 889,000 and 1.26 million vehicles respectively across the same period.
Indeed, VinFast's market capitalization is astronomically high for a company who is yet to turn a profit and whose first deliveries to the US were met with criticism by consumers.
"There have been some negative reviews," CEO Le Thi Thu Thuy told Bloomberg TV. "We take them very close to our heart, we reflect on the feedback from those reviews and we make our vehicles better."