Over five weeks, VCI shares of Vietcap Securities Joint Stock Company received two conflicting ownership signals. The numbers tell the story cleanly: one side is VND 680 billion in cash already spent, the other is VND 11.6 billion registered to sell. Placed side by side, these two orders are not in the same weight class, and misreading their relative scale is the fastest way to draw the wrong conclusion about Vietcap.
The biggest bettor is sitting on a paper loss
Mr. To Hai, Board Member at Vietcap Securities and the firm's former CEO through November 2025,VnExpress bought 31.05 million VCI shares via negotiated transactions between August 4 and August 24, 2026.CafeF The actual cash outlay was over VND 680 billion,Người Quan Sát at an average negotiated price of VND 21,742 per share.Fili After the transaction, his ownership stake rose from 15.13% to 17.84%, equal to more than 205.4 million shares.
The VND 4,600 billion figure widely quoted in late-August coverage is the market value of his entire VCI holding at that point in time, not the cash he spent on the purchase itself. The two numbers are easy to conflate on a quick read.
By the September 11 session, VCI closed at VND 20,050, down 5.87%. At that price, the 31.05 million-share block he just bought sits roughly VND 1,692 below the average cost per share, an estimated paper loss of around VND 52 billion. The market value of his entire stake has also slipped from VND 4,600 billion to roughly VND 4,120 billion.
From August 3 to September 11, VCI slid 7.82%, while the VN-Index gained 1.84% over the same stretch. The stock is under pressure specific to itself, not tracking the broader market.
A VND 11.6 billion sell order is not in the same weight class as a VND 680 billion buy
On September 10, Ban Viet Fund Management Joint Stock Company (VCAM) registered to sell its entire 580,500 VCI shares, equal to 0.05% of charter capital.Tuổi Trẻ The trade is planned via order matching from September 15 to October 9, 2026, with the stated purpose of portfolio restructuring. Ms. Nguyen Thanh Phuong chairs the boards of both Vietcap and VCAM.
At the September 11 closing price, the shares registered for sale are worth roughly VND 11.6 billion. Set against the VND 680 billion Mr. To Hai already spent, the sell side is about 58 times smaller.
A few more details deserve proportionate weight. This is only a registration to sell, not a completed transaction. The seller is a fund management entity, and liquidating a position worth 0.05% of a listed company's capital falls well within that entity's routine operations. More importantly, Ms. Nguyen Thanh Phuong still personally holds nearly 31 million VCI shares, equal to 2.67% of capital,VnExpress and remains chairwoman of the board.
That doesn't make the string of sell-side moves meaningless. In May 2026, the Ban Viet Discovery Fund (VCAMDF) sold its entire 135,000 VCI shares. Before that, Ms. Truong Nguyen Thien Kim, Mr. To Hai's wife, sold all 16.91 million VCI shares she held between April 15 and May 4, 2026,VnEconomy bringing her stake to zero. Read as a sequence, share ownership has been flowing away from entities and related parties and concentrating into a single individual: Mr. To Hai.
Why profit rose 36% while the stock kept sliding
In Q2 2026, Vietcap posted after-tax profit of VND 251 billion, up 36% year-on-year, with the after-tax margin improving from 16% to 21%. But operating revenue grew just 1% year-on-year to VND 1,176 billion, and after-tax profit fell 26% quarter-on-quarter. Looking at these numbers, the profit growth didn't come from broad-based improvement. It came from one segment covering for the slack left by another.
The composition underneath that headline number is what's worth reading closely. Lending and receivables brought in VND 463 billion, up 80% year-on-year, becoming the largest revenue source. Brokerage delivered VND 226 billion, essentially flat with 2% growth. Proprietary trading, meanwhile, is provisionally recording a loss of over VND 430 billion from FPT, KDH, and MWG positions.Báo Mới
In other words, Vietcap is swapping its profit engine: the steady income from margin lending is filling the gap proprietary trading left behind. For the first half of the year, pre-tax profit reached nearly VND 675 billion, only about 29% of the full-year 2026 target of VND 2,300 billion. More than half the year has passed, but under a third of the target has been met. That's the gap the market is now pricing into the stock.
On the September 11 session specifically, it's worth acknowledging the 5.87% drop wasn't driven solely by the VCAM sell registration. The VN-Index fell 1.86% that same session with 304 losing tickers, and VCI had just rallied to around VND 22,850 on August 28, leaving it exposed to additional profit-taking pressure. Trading volume hit 18.7 million shares, the highest since August 24, showing an unusually large amount of stock changing hands. These three factors compounded together, and the sell registration was the smallest of the three in dollar terms. The real driver of that session's drop was profit-taking and the broader market, not the VND 11.6 billion of registered divestment.
Where Vietcap is strong, and where it's paying a price
The firm's clearest edge is in institutional clients. Vietcap holds the number-one position in this segment with over 28% market share,CafeF even as its overall HOSE brokerage market share sits at just 7% for Q2, ranking fourth behind VPS, SSI, and TCBS.
There's also room to keep lending. Margin lending balance stood at VND 16,646 billion as of June 30, 2026, with a margin-to-equity ratio of 0.97x,CafeF well below the regulatory cap of 2x. For comparison, margin balances stood at VND 51,522 billion for TCBS, VND 40,473 billion for SSI, and VND 31,300 billion for VPS. Vietcap still has headroom to expand the one segment growing fastest.
The cost of that lending expansion is already showing up on the balance sheet. Short-term borrowing rose from VND 16,065 billion at the end of 2025 to VND 21,704 billion by the end of Q2 2026, pushing Q2 financial expenses up 134.6% year-on-year to VND 360 billion. Charter capital also just increased from VND 8,501 billion to VND 11,476 billion, dragging book value per share down from VND 20,373 to VND 14,933. The stock got cheaper on price, but the capital base behind each share got thinner too.
Signals worth watching
October 9 is the deadline for VCAM's registered sale. The completed transaction will show whether the firm sold out entirely at a given price range, or stopped short because the price didn't meet expectations. It's a small but clean data point: the volume, at just 580,500 shares, isn't large enough to move the price on its own.
The bigger data point sits in the Q3 report, expected around late October. Two lines are worth placing side by side: the proprietary trading result and margin lending revenue. If the proprietary trading loss narrows while lending revenue holds its 80% growth pace, Mr. To Hai's VND 680 billion bet at VND 21,742 per share will have a business case behind it. If proprietary trading stays negative and nine-month cumulative profit remains far from the VND 2,300 billion target, the largest shareholder's current paper loss may not be the bottom.