On September 11, 2026, Vietnam Report and VietNamNet published PROFIT500, a ranking of Vietnam's 500 most profitable companies for 2026, based on pretax profit for fiscal year 2025.VietNamNet Compared with last year's list, this year's ranking includes 111 new names.Tuoi Tre
For individual investors, this kind of ranking is appealing because it puts large companies on the same yardstick. But that yardstick is also its limitation: the ranking only captures one year's profit trajectory, and a single accounting decision can shift a company several spots. ACB's case in this year's list is the clearest example.
A changing of the guard on both lists
On the national list, Petrovietnam climbed from 2nd to 1st, pushing Viettel down to 2nd; Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen held 3rd, Vietcombank held 4th.CafeF Among banks, VietinBank overtook BIDV to reach 5th, and Techcombank overtook Agribank to reach 8th. The notable shift came near the bottom: VPBank climbed from 11th to 10th, while ACB slid from 10th to 13th. Banks still hold 7 of the top 10 spots.
On the private-sector list, the reshuffle is sharper. Techcombank held onto 1st, VPBank rose to 2nd from 3rd, Vingroup rose to 3rd from 4th, HDBank rose to 4th from 5th, and Hoa Phat held 6th. ACB is the sole name moving the other way, falling from 2nd to 5th.
The numbers behind the rankings
Looking at 2025 pretax profit for the six names most familiar to individual investors, the gap between ACB and the rest becomes clear: Techcombank posted VND 32,538 billion, up 18.2% from 2024; VPBank posted VND 30,625 billion, up 53%; Vingroup posted VND 26,437 billion, up 57.9%; HDBank posted VND 21,346 billion, up 27.6%; Hoa Phat posted VND 18,041 billion, up 31.7%. ACB alone posted VND 19,539 billion, down 7% from the prior year.
ACB is the only name in this group with profit moving backward, and also the only one that dropped in rank.
Why ACB slipped
The entire decline traces to one line item: credit risk provisioning. In 2025, ACB raised this expense from VND 1,606 billion to VND 3,335 billion, more than doubling it.DNSE Pretax profit consequently reached only about 85% of the annual plan, the first profit decline the bank has reported since 2013.
The rest of the picture runs in the opposite direction: at the end of 2025, ACB's NPL ratio fell to 0.97%, the lowest since 2023, with the NPL balance down 23% from a year earlier, while total assets crossed VND 1,000 trillion.ACB Its loan-loss coverage ratio, provision balance divided by total NPLs, reached 114% at the end of 2025, placing it among 7 banks above the 100% mark.Bao Dau Tu
Set against the industry, the gap is even clearer: the sector-wide NPL ratio at the end of Q4 2025 was 1.85%, while sector-wide loan-loss coverage was 83.34%, down from 89.85% at the end of 2024.Tinnhanhchungkhoan In other words, ACB traded one year of profit for a cleaner balance sheet than the industry average, and the ranking only registers the first half of that trade.
VPBank and HDBank climbed on scale
On the other side of the ledger, VPBank posted pretax profit of more than VND 30,600 billion, up 53% and 121% of its annual plan.CafeF The main driver was scale: consolidated total assets reached VND 1.26 quadrillion, up 36.4% in one year, with ecosystem members contributing along the way, including FE Credit (profit above VND 600 billion) and VPBankS (VND 4,476 billion in pretax profit).
The price of that speed is a thinner buffer. Among large banks, VPBank has the lowest loan-loss coverage ratio, just 52.8% at the end of Q1 2026, largely a result of its choice to lean into higher-risk, higher-return segments, especially consumer finance.
To be clear, fast growth doesn't automatically mean a thin buffer. Techcombank grew profit 18.2% while still holding a loan-loss coverage ratio of 129.4% at the end of Q1 2026, one of four banks still above the 100% mark alongside Vietcombank, VietinBank and ABBank. A high rank and strong asset quality can go together. What the ranking alone doesn't tell you is whether they actually do, case by case.
The state sector tells the same lesson
The reshuffle at the top of the national list is also a story about a one-year yardstick. Petrovietnam reported consolidated 2025 pretax profit of approximately VND 66,000 billion, ahead of Viettel's VND 56,800 billion; a year earlier the order was completely reversed, when Petrovietnam's profit fell to VND 46,496 billion and it ceded the top spot to Viettel.MarketTimes Across the full 10-year run of this ranking, Petrovietnam has led 7 times, Viettel twice, and Samsung Thai Nguyen once.Tuoi Tre
The top spot among state-owned companies changes hands with the oil price cycle and output levels, not with an expanding or shrinking competitive gap. That's the lens worth keeping when reading any annual ranking: rank measures the speed of the last 12 months, not long-term competitive position.
The 2026 market is reading it differently
The ranking measures 2025. Stock prices have moved on through nearly nine months of 2026, and the two are telling different stories: from the last trading session of 2025 through the close on September 11, 2026, ACB rose 6.6% to VND 22,050, while the VN-Index gained just 0.6%. Over the same stretch, VPB fell 4.3%, TCB fell 7.6%, HPG fell 9.6%, and HDB fell 9.8%. On September 11 itself, all six tickers fell along with the broader market, as the VN-Index dropped 1.86% to 1,795.21 points.
Price action doesn't reduce to a single cause. For ACB, several factors are plausibly at work together: a low base after a year of declining profit, a 20% dividend plan for 2025 plus a VND 22,338 billion profit target for 2026 approved at April's shareholder meeting, and stronger asset quality at a time when the market is wary of a new bad-debt cycle.CafeF The available data isn't enough to isolate each factor's contribution; what can be said is that last year's results clearly aren't the only thing the market is pricing in.
The reverse also deserves mention: ACB's provision buffer hasn't stood still since the 2025 results were published. Its loan-loss coverage ratio fell from 114% at the end of 2025 to 75% at the end of Q1 2026, the sharpest contraction in the system alongside Bac A Bank. Only 4 banks industry-wide still held that ratio above 100% by that point, down from 7 at the end of 2025.
Read the ranking alongside two other line items
For individual investors, a profit ranking works as a scale filter, not a quality scorecard. When checking it against a holding, it's worth reading two additional line items in the financial statements: credit risk provisioning for the period, which sits right above the pretax profit line, since a sharp rise there can drag down rank even when the core business is fine, as in ACB's case; and the loan-loss coverage ratio together with the NPL ratio, which show how much cushion a bank has left to absorb a shock. The gap between Techcombank's 129.4% and VPBank's 52.8% is far wider than the gap in their PROFIT500 rankings.
The holding horizon determines which metric matters more: for a horizon under a year, profit growth and credit momentum tend to drive the share price; for a multi-year horizon, the provision buffer is what determines whether a bank has to sacrifice profit right when the market turns. There's no single right answer for every investor, only the answer that fits the horizon each investor is actually holding for.
This year's ranking carries one more detail worth noting on durability: 14 companies with an unbroken run from 2017 through 2025, including ACV and Duc Giang Chemicals, dropped off the 2026 list. On the other side, only 108 of the 1,828 companies that have ever appeared on the ranking have maintained an unbroken 10-year streak.
Q3 2026 earnings season arrives at the end of October. That will be the first look at whether loan-loss coverage among the top-ranked banks keeps contracting for a third straight quarter.