Bibica Joint Stock Company has just informed that it will hold an extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders at the end of September 2025 with the notable content of submitting to shareholders for approval the cancellation of public company status and cancellation of securities registration. If this plan is approved, Bibica will officially leave HoSE after nearly 24 years of listing.
This comes from the fact that PAN Group currently holds 98.3% of Bibica's capital, equivalent to more than 18.4 million shares. This almost absolute ownership ratio means that Bibica no longer meets the minimum standards to maintain public company status, specifically that 10% of voting shares must be held by at least 100 small investors, according to the 2024 amended Securities Law.
Due to the very low ratio of free transfer stocks, the liquidity of BBC Bibica shares has been very low over the years, averaging the last 10 sessions to only over 2,200 shares/session. However, BBC market price has increased by more than 50% since the end of June, closing on September 9 at VND87,500/share.
In addition to withdrawing from the exchange, Bibica will also submit to shareholders other contents such as removing business registration of some industries, amending - supplementing the Charter, and adjusting the profit distribution plan for 2024.
Bibica is one of the oldest confectionery brands in Vietnam, established in 1999 with an initial charter capital of 25 billion VND, currently maintaining more than 187 billion VND. The enterprise has three factories in Hanoi, Dong Nai, Tay Ninh. In 2001, Bibica became one of the first domestic enterprises to be listed on HoSE.
Regarding business activities, in the first half of 2025, Bibica achieved net revenue of VND 621 billion, up slightly over the same period, but after-tax profit decreased to VND 26.3 billion due to increased tax costs. The company plans for the year with VND 2,000 billion in revenue and VND 134 billion in pre-tax profit, currently only completing about 26% of the profit target.
In history, the company has gone through a remarkable share- ownership battle. Bibica has gone through an unsuccessful takeover battle between Lotte Candy Company (under Lotte Group of Korea) and the internal shareholder group Saigon Securities Company (SSI).
In 2008, Lotte bought more than 30% of Bibica shares and continued to gradually increase ownership with the intention of taking over this enterprise. However, Lotte's ambition was thwarted when PAN Group joined in 2015 and raised its ownership ratio to 50.07% in 2017, thereby becoming a controlling shareholder of Bibica.
The conflict also began when Lotte expressed that ambition by seeking to become more involved in confectionery production, demanding that Bibica produce a new product under its own brand. Disputes within Bibica caused Bibica's operations in 2012-13 to stagnate.
By 2015, when PAN Food officially replaced SSI to become the second largest shareholder at Bibica, the company's business activities began to stabilize again. And in early 2021, Lotte sold all of its stake in Bibica and officially withdrew from this confectionery company after 13 years of investment.
After more than 10 years of investment, the civil war story at Bibica has taken many documents when this Korean investor wanted more strategic shareholder roles and at one point wanted to change the company's name to Lotte-Bibica. Of course, during this period, it is not possible to ignore the contribution of this foreign investor to the development of Bibica at present in terms of finances in investing in brand building, production lines and export work.
