At the end of April 2026, Pyn Elite Fund’s NAV report revealed that its HPG weighting had climbed from 12.2% to 13.7%. The fund had added roughly 46 million shares in a single month, bringing total holdings to more than 123 million HPG shares valued at approximately VND 3,300 billion at market price. That makes HPG the second-largest position in the portfolio of this Finnish fund, which manages nearly VND 28,000 billion in assets under management.CafeF
A bet of that size still wasn’t enough. On the morning of May 8, 2026, Petri Deryng, Founder and Fund Manager of Pyn Elite Fund, led a delegation straight to Hoa Phat’s Dung Quat integrated steel complex. The group walked through blast furnace No. 6 in the pig iron workshop, the HRC2 hot-rolling line, and the general cargo port, then sat down with Hoa Phat’s management to discuss production performance, sales trends, strategy, and the headwinds the steel sector is navigating.Hoa Phat
When Financial Reports Are Not Enough
Hoa Phat’s Q1/2026 numbers are impressive: revenue of VND 53,300 billion and net profit of VND 9,025 billion, up approximately 170% year-on-year.Vietstock The figures look persuasive on paper. But for a fund carrying a position worth over VND 3,000 billion, financial statements only describe what has already happened. They cannot tell you what is happening right now.
The questions Pyn needs answered are entirely different: what utilization rate is the HRC2 line actually running at? Has the general cargo port accepted large-tonnage vessels yet, or is infrastructure still being commissioned? With cheap Chinese hot-rolled coil flooding Southeast Asia, how is management adapting? These questions don’t appear in any investor presentation. Getting real answers requires standing at the head of the rolling line, watching the speed, and asking the shift supervisor directly about actual defect rates.
Pyn is not an index fund. The team selects a few dozen names and holds them for years, which means every percentage point of allocation must be built on direct observation, not just periodic disclosures. That is why the delegation came to ask questions, not to take photographs.
The 13.7% Figure: What Sits Behind the Buy Decision
Looking at the portfolio data, the move from 12.2% to 13.7% is not a minor tweak. Pyn Elite Fund added roughly 46 million HPG shares in April alone, equivalent to more than VND 1,200 billion at that month’s price. After the transaction, HPG sat just below the largest single position in the portfolio, meaning HPG’s performance now has a direct and material impact on the fund’s overall NAV.
A commitment of this size signals that Pyn has built sufficient conviction in its long-term thesis for HPG. But that conviction does not rest on reading financial statements alone. It needs to be validated by on-the-ground observation. That is why the May 8 site visit took place less than two weeks after the April NAV report was published.
Dung Quat 2: The Field That Decides the 2026–2027 Story
Blast furnace No. 6 that the delegation walked through belongs to the Dung Quat 2 integrated complex, which carries a total investment of approximately VND 85,000 billion.Tap chi Cong Thuong The complex’s second blast furnace tapped its first heat of iron in September 2025, lifting the total capacity of Hoa Phat’s entire integrated system to 12 million tonnes of steel per year, of which 9 million tonnes are HRC. Few steel producers in Southeast Asia can match that scale.
The construction story is not over. A 500,000-tonne-per-year high-quality casting and rolling line, under a contract signed with Primetals in April, is scheduled to produce its first output in Q3/2026 and enter commercial operation in Q4/2026. Next in line is a 700,000-tonne-per-year railway rail and wheel-axle mill targeting supply to Vietnam’s North–South high-speed rail project and urban metro systems from 2027 onward.Tap chi Cong Thuong
For a fund with a 5–10 year horizon, this is the most valuable part. Q1/2026 profits reflect investment decisions made three or four years ago. What Pyn needs to verify today is which future quarters the current construction site is laying the foundation for.
Short-Term Pressures Remain on the Table
The harder part of the visit was the questions about near-term challenges. Chinese HRC imports remain a meaningful drag despite Vietnam introducing provisional anti-dumping tariffs on wide-format HRC in mid-April 2026.CafeF Weak real-estate demand in China continues to push its export steel toward Southeast Asian markets. Meanwhile, input costs — iron ore, coking coal, and scrap — have not fallen proportionally relative to finished steel selling prices over the past twelve months, compressing margins for domestic producers.
Pyn did not sidestep these questions. The fund still increased its position because the long-term calculus holds: Dung Quat 2’s capacity is coming online exactly as Vietnam’s public-investment spending accelerates, particularly in transport and rail infrastructure. But that calculus only holds if on-site execution genuinely matches the published timeline. That is something you have to see for yourself.
The Pyn Method, Scaled Down for Individual Investors
Not every investor can fly to Dung Quat and sit across the table from management. But the underlying principle — cross-referencing reports against reality, asking specific questions instead of accepting broad-brush answers — can be scaled down to individual size.
An investor holding shares in a retail chain can visit a handful of stores on the weekend: count customers, ask staff about inventory levels, compare with the same period a year ago. Someone holding an industrial park stock can drive past the estate and observe container truck density, or ask a logistics contact about actual occupancy rates. Observations that simple help surface the gap between what management is saying and what is actually happening on the ground. That gap typically shows up in the next quarterly report. The person who visited already knows a quarter ahead.
Direct observation does not replace financial analysis; it complements it. Financial statements describe what has already happened. The field tells you what is happening now and surfaces the questions that the next set of numbers will answer. The space between those two sources is often where opportunity hides, or where risk quietly accumulates before it becomes visible.
Signals Worth Watching
For HPG, key data points to track in the coming weeks include: the commissioning progress of the 500,000-tonne-per-year high-quality steel line, movements in domestic HRC sales volumes after the provisional anti-dumping measures take hold, and May NAV reports from major foreign funds to see whether the HPG allocation trend continues. Pyn has placed its bet by lifting its weighting to 13.7% and personally verifying the site. The remaining question is whether Dung Quat 2’s execution pace delivers on its promises in the second half of 2026.
