The biggest loss in the listed history of Phu Nhuan Jewelry Joint Stock Company (PNJ) did not come from a bad quarter of sales. It came from customers walking back into stores to sell their diamonds, and from an accounting rule that forced the company to book a cost that had not fully happened yet.
In Q2 2026, PNJ posted net revenue of VND 8,484 billion, up 11.9% year-on-year.VietnamBiz Sales kept running fine. But by the end of the quarter, the company reported a net loss of nearly VND 283 billion, a full reversal from a VND 437 billion profit in the same period last year, and its deepest quarterly loss since PNJ listed in 2009.VietnamBiz The right question isn't "was PNJ's selling bad", but what created the gap of more than VND 700 billion between those two numbers.
A provision, not a bad quarter of business
What created that gap was a single accounting entry. PNJ booked an estimated provision of about VND 865 billion for a diamond-buyback obligation that arose after the June 30 balance-sheet date.VnEconomy The cost technically belongs to July, but conservative accounting pulls it back into the Q2 report. That makes it an estimate, not money that has already been spent.
Starting in early July, customers rushed back to stores with jewelry and loose diamonds to sell, and the total value PNJ paid out to buy them back exceeded VND 7,000 billion in July alone.VietnamBiz That figure is roughly 82% of the company's entire Q2 net revenue. In four weeks, a jewelry retailer had to play buyer at a scale nearly matching a full quarter of sales, and that is what strained the balance sheet, not the sales counter.
On a cumulative basis, PNJ was still profitable in the first half: revenue reached VND 25,729 billion, up 49.4%, and net profit reached VND 1,185 billion, up 6.3%.VietnamBiz A strong Q1 carried the weak Q2, which is why the half-year numbers look fine even though the quarterly numbers look bad.
The root cause: one case, one chain reaction
The buyback wave did not appear out of nowhere. In early July 2026, investigators indicted a cross-border diamond smuggling ring that included the former director of PNJ-LAB, PNJ's grading subsidiary. That news made holders of PNJ diamond jewelry worried about provenance, and their first move was to sell. The Q2 accounting loss and the July case are, in other words, the same shock moving from a legal problem to a balance-sheet problem, not two separate stories.
Markets reacted even faster. PNJ shares fell from VND 63,100 on July 2 to VND 30,750 on July 24, a drop of about 51% in three weeks with several consecutive floor-limit sessions. On August 20, Thanh Hoa provincial police announced preliminary findings: more than 28,000 smuggled diamonds never entered PNJ's retail system, the company held full import documentation, and the violations were attributed to individuals.CafeF PNJ shares hit their daily limit up immediately after, rising 6.97% and 6.89% on August 21 and 24 respectively.VnExpress
Management moved to reassure the market while it was still rattled. On July 3, PNJ Chairwoman Cao Thi Ngoc Dung said the company was ready to help customers re-verify diamonds they had already purchased.Tuoi Tre On July 16, the board approved hiring an international organization to run an independent review of the entire diamond business and audit 2025 taxes.CafeF The cost of that trust-rebuilding effort landed squarely in the second half of the year.
What the October special meeting is really about
PNJ will hold an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in October to submit a revised 2026 business plan for approval.Vietstock The original 2026 plan, approved at the annual meeting, targeted revenue of VND 48,660 billion and net profit of nearly VND 3,409 billion.Thoi Bao Tai Chinh Vietnam
With VND 1,185 billion in profit after six months, PNJ has covered only about 35% of its profit target, while revenue has already reached nearly 53% of its goal. That gap between the two ratios is the shape of the provision, and the reason the special meeting had to be called early.
The detail that matters more to shareholders is a specific date: August 25, the record date for voting rights at the meeting.Vietstock Anyone who bought PNJ shares after that date still carries the company's full risk and upside, but has no seat in the room where the year's revised plan gets decided. That is something the resolution itself never spells out, and it's the detail most likely to slip past retail investors.
PNJ's major shareholder base also turned over completely within those same two months. In July, three foreign fund groups exited large-shareholder status: Dragon Capital, T. Rowe Price, and VinaCapital.CafeF The opposite move came in August: a fund group represented by Sprucegrove Investment Management bought net and crossed the 5% threshold before August 14, becoming PNJ's new large foreign shareholder.Dan Tri Around the same time, PNJ CEO Phan Quoc Cong completed the purchase of 1 million shares before that date, raising his direct stake from 0% to 0.2%.Vietstock Both trades closed before the August 25 record date, meaning the people who bought in while the investigation's outcome was still uncertain are exactly the people with a vote at October's meeting. That's a natural consequence of how record dates work, not a violation of any rule, but it makes clear who actually has a voice in the plan revision ahead.
The risk that hasn't been resolved
The August 20 police findings closed only the diamond case. A separate file remains open. In a gold-trading inspection report released in early August, the Government Inspectorate referred information about six companies, including PNJ, for allegedly misreporting taxes and retained earnings, with a combined estimated amount of nearly VND 94 billion, to the Ministry of Public Security for review.Tuoi Tre This is information referred for investigative review, not a finding against PNJ specifically.
The second risk is purely an accounting one, and it's the part with the most direct near-term effect on the share price. The VND 865 billion provision was built on an estimate of how much value PNJ can recover from the diamonds it bought back. If diamond prices keep falling, or if the buyback wave stretches into Q3, that figure may need to be topped up. Conversely, if prices recover and the buyback wave stops, the excess provision could be reversed and become a profit boost. The Q3 report is the only place that question gets answered.
The market is repricing again
On September 3, PNJ shares fell 5.46% to VND 39,800 on matched volume of 8.08 million shares. That price is about 29% above the July 24 trough of VND 30,750, but about 37% below the July 2 peak of VND 63,100.
That single-day decline was not entirely PNJ's own story. In the same session, the VN-Index fell 4.4 points and foreign investors sold a net VND 1,562 billion across all three exchanges, concentrated in large-cap names.Nhan Dan Broad foreign selling pressure, profit-taking after the rebound off the July low, and market caution ahead of the plan revision are all explanations that can coexist. The available data isn't enough to isolate which one contributed more.
What to watch
PNJ's selling capability isn't what's damaged here. Revenue is still up nearly 50% after six months, the clearest evidence that consumer demand for jewelry hasn't collapsed. What's damaged is the balance sheet, specifically the provision already booked and the portion that may still need topping up if conditions worsen. That's the line worth keeping clear: a business with a sales problem is a completely different animal from a business paying an accounting price for a confidence shock.
Three checkpoints ahead will decide most of this story: the October special meeting resolution will show how management itself rates the second half, the Q3 financial report will show whether the VND 865 billion provision was enough, too little, or too much, and progress on the tax file referred to the Ministry of Public Security will determine whether the remaining legal risk gets closed out.
Until those three checkpoints arrive, PNJ's current price still reflects a cost estimate, not a settled number.