FPT Plans Overseas Deals to Reduce Vietnam Reliance

(Bloomberg) -- FPT Corp., Vietnam’s biggest telecommunications and technology company by market value, is stepping up overseas deals to cut its reliance on the local market following a plan to spend $50 million a year on acquisitions.

The company is looking at Europe, Japan and the U.S. as regions of particular interest, without identifying possible targets, Chairman Truong Gia Binh said at the Bloomberg Asean Business Summit in Hanoi Thursday. The company in April said it planned to acquire a company in Japan and the U.S. in deals valued at $50 million each.

FPT is among domestic companies including Vietnam Dairy Products Joint-Stock Co. that are expanding overseas to accelerate revenue growth through more developed markets. FPT, which has said it’s looking to buy technology companies in media content or financial services, aims to close the two deals in Japan and the U.S. this year.

“We look for M&A opportunities around the world,” Binh said. “We want to have deeper” expertise, he said.

The company bought RWE IT Slovakia in 2014, its first international acquisition.

The purchases are aimed at helping boost overseas revenue to $1 billion a year by 2020 from $203.3 million in the first 10 months of 2016, Binh said. FPT generated about 40 trillion dong ($1.8 billion) in total revenue last year.

FPT shares rose 0.4 percent to 42,250 dong as of 2:15 p.m. in Ho Chi Minh City. The stock is headed for a fourth straight year of gains.

Vietnam Dairy Products, known as Vinamilk, plans to expand globally to almost double sales to $3 billion by 2017 from 2015. The company, Vietnam’s largest dairy producer, is in talks to acquire a second U.S. company and expects the deal to close as early as next year.

To contact the reporters on this story: K. Oanh Ha in Hanoi at oha3@bloomberg.net, Nguyen Kieu Giang in Hanoi at giang1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Boudreau at jboudreau3@bloomberg.net, Lena Lee, Sam Nagarajan