Interestingly, Furniweb Manufacturing ( Vietnam) Co Ltd (FMV) which is a subsidiary of Malaysian public listed company, Furniweb Industrial Products Bhd was reported in The Star (22/1/07) to explore listing in Vietnam vide the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Trading Centre. Also, this might be the first time that a Malaysian corporate is looking into listing a subsidiary in the Vietnamese stock market. 

• The Vietnamese stock market has chalked up an unbelievable 36% increase in just three weeks this month, after surging 144% last year as measured by the Vietnam Ho Chi Minh Stock Index or VNIndex;
• The stock exchange has evolved from nowhere to a small base of companies listed in its stock exchanges;
• Vietnam market has attracted a lot of foreign portfolio funds as they interpreted it to be the lesser China or Thailand;
• FMV’s business is in upholstery webbing. FMV’s revenue increased from 46.8bil dong or RM11.8mil in 1997 to RM27.4mil at the end of 2005 ( higher than its Malaysian counterpart Furniweb Manufacturing Sdn.Bhd.);
• Generally, the listed Vietnamese companies have relatively high price/earnings ratios (PEs) of 20 to 30 times where the companies have a higher market value than elsewhere. (Compared with about 10 times or less on Bursa’s second board.);

So if the parent company in Malaysia is trading at #  5.2 times annualised on its earnings per share of 2.8 sen in its third quarter ended Sept 30, 2006 (Furniweb’s market value was RM52.2mil.)
If the proposed listing of FMV were successful, and at a PE of 20 times or more, it would substantially raise Furniweb’s net asset value like the listing of Parkson Retail Group Ltd in Hong Kong which enhanced the value of parent company Lion Diversified Holdings Bhd.  

Presently, we have other Malaysian companies which have relatively sizeable operations in Vietnam which include Latitude Tree Holdings Bhd, Scientex Packaging Bhd, Perusahaan Sadur Timah Malaysia Bhd (Perstima) and Poh Huat Resources Bhd.  

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