Vietnam’s Viettel comes closer to $10 billion revenue mark
Vietnam’s Viettel comes closer to $10 billion revenue mark
Vietnam’s military-run Viettel Group last year jumped closer to the US$10 billion revenue mark, with investment in nine overseas markets raking in billion-dollar earnings, the company revealed over the weekend.
Viettel’s 2014 revenue topped VND197 trillion (US$9.18 billion), accounting for 12 percent of the total earnings of all state-run enterprises, general director Nguyen Manh Hung told a conference that recapped last year’s operations of the company in Hanoi on Saturday.
The group posted revenue growth of 20 percent, while the average rate of other players in the telecom sector is only five percent, according to Hung.
Its pretax profit swelled to VND42 trillion ($1.96 billion), a 15 percent year on year increase.
Viettel also posted $1.2 billion in revenue, and $278 million in profit, from nine outbound markets, according to the company’s leader.
It has invested in Laos, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Mozambique, Cameroon, Tanzania, Burundi, Haiti, and Peru, according to Viettel Global, the group’s international investment arm.
Hung added that Viettel was also the largest contributor to the state budget in 2014, paying more than VND15 trillion ($699.04 million) in taxes, and generated nearly 80,000 jobs in Vietnam and other markets.
The number of Viettel 3G subscribers topped 14 million in late 2014, occupying nearly 51 percent of the market share.
In 2015 Viettel will withdraw from most of its non-core business operations, such as real estate, according to Hung.
The military-run firm is expected to maintain its 20 percent growth pace and earn VND230 trillion ($10.72 billion) in revenue this year.
“By 2020, Viettel must become a global corporation and a research and production complex for both civil and military purposes,” Hung said.
