Vietnam Airlines’ Joint Stock Company ran its first share trading session on the Hanoi Stock Exchange’s Unlisted Public Company Index earlier.

More than 1,227 million shares of Vietnam Airlines were officially listed and traded on the UPCoM with a starting (reference) price in the first trading day of 28,000 VND per share, accounting for about 11 per cent of UPCoM’s total market capitalisation.

This has helped raise the level of capitalisation of the airline industry on the stock market.

Trading on the UPCoM is an event of great significance for the development of Vietnam Airlines, fulfilling the company’s aspirations to acquire shareholders on Vietnam’s stock market.

Having given a direct injection into Vietnam’s stock market of more than 1.2 billion shares, HVN has become the second largest contributor to UPCoM in terms of the number and value of shares.

Shares of Vietnam Airlines surged 40 per cent on debut, valuing the firm at $2.1 billion.

Pham Ngoc Minh, Vietnam Airlines chairman, said: “Being the first and only airline to be listed on Vietnam’s stock market, Vietnam Airlines takes great pride in bringing to the stock market a business capable of maintaining a constant growth over the past 20 years.

Shortly after completing the process of equitisation and the selection of strategic investors in 2016, Vietnam Airlines worked hard to finalise registration procedures to officially open trading sessions of HVN at the beginning of 2017.

The share trading registration will help further enhance Vietnam Airlines’ standing and brand in the market, improve transparency and liquidity of HVN shares and open a new channel for raising capital for investment.

This also provides a solid premise for Vietnam Airlines to further speed up its restructuring process by issuing shares to raise capital in an effort to make the corporation become one of the leading, most efficient businesses in Vietnam as well as in the world.