Look closely at the numbers from the September 18 session and something doesn't add up. Foreign investors net-bought more than VND 307 billion worth of PNJ shares, equivalent to 8.3 million shares, the highest of any stock that day and the highest in the ticker's trading history.Người Quan Sát Yet the closing price landed at VND 36,750 a share, exactly where it closed the day before. It didn't move.
These two facts don't contradict each other. They simply tell you the record net buying never happened on the order book.
The numbers don't match the ticker tape
During the morning session on September 18, PNJ briefly rose nearly 1.4% to VND 37,250, with matched volume of 3.8 million shares, roughly VND 140 billion.Người Quan Sát For the full day, PNJ's total traded volume came to 6,344,900 shares. Both figures fall short of the 8.3 million shares foreign investors net-bought, and that gap has only one reasonable explanation.
Most of the buying went through negotiated block trades, where a buyer and seller agree on a large lot off the order book at a price set in advance. Block trades don't put pressure on the matched price, so a flat closing price is entirely normal from a mechanics standpoint.
This is exactly where retail investors tend to misread the story. A headline reading "foreign investors net-buy a record amount" usually gets interpreted as buying pressure crowding the order book and pushing the price up. In this session, what actually happened was a pre-arranged transfer of ownership, not a bidding contest among market participants.
Where the diamond shock dragged the price
To understand why anyone would put up more than VND 300 billion for PNJ right now, you have to go back to early July. On July 2, 2026, the Investigation Police Agency of Thanh Hoa Province indicted the former director of a PNJ-affiliated appraisal company on smuggling charges, part of a cross-border diamond smuggling case. Customers then rushed to PNJ stores to return diamonds they had bought.
According to the reviewed semi-annual financial statement, PNJ repurchased VND 4,997 billion worth of merchandise between July 1 and September 3, 2026, and absorbed a VND 1,446 billion loss booked directly as an expense for the period.Tuổi Trẻ Earlier, PNJ's self-prepared Q2 report had already recorded an estimated VND 865 billion provision, pulling quarterly after-tax profit to a loss of VND 283 billion.VnEconomy After the review, first-half profit fell 38% from the self-reported figure.Soha The provision tied specifically to the buyback policy for previously sold merchandise was set at more than VND 2,200 billion.Người Quan Sát
The share price responded in proportion to these figures. From a peak of VND 64,800 on July 2, PNJ fell to a trough of VND 30,250 on July 31, losing more than half its value in one month. In August, the stock recovered to around VND 42,100. In September, it pulled back again and closed at VND 36,750 on September 18.
The door the sell-off just opened
This is the part that gets the least attention in coverage of the September 18 session. PNJ has been effectively closed to foreign capital for years, not because demand was lacking, but because there was simply no room left.
PNJ's foreign ownership cap sits at 49%. In early July, foreign ownership stood at 48.24%, leaving less than 0.8 percentage points of headroom.VietnamBiz At that level, any new foreign buyer needed an existing foreign holder to sell first.
July's sell-off did exactly that. From July 1 to September 17, foreign investors net-sold roughly VND 541.6 billion worth of PNJ shares, with the week of July 24 alone accounting for VND 716.9 billion in net selling, right as the stock broke through its trough. By September 17, foreign ownership had fallen back to 44.99%. A gap of more than four percentage points of charter capital had opened up, and fresh capital walked straight through it.
Some of the names behind this move have already surfaced. A group of investors represented by Sprucegrove Investment Management bought an additional 1.63 million shares, lifting its stake to 5.04%. A group linked to T. Rowe Price Associates raised its stake to 6.02%. Two Dragon Capital funds, DCDS and DCDE, together accumulated 745,100 shares in August, after exiting major-shareholder status in July.
This isn't index fund money
September 18 fell right as FTSE-tracking index funds finished rebalancing their portfolios, ahead of Vietnam's formal entry into secondary emerging market status on Monday, September 21. SSI Research estimates these funds will deploy roughly USD 240.49 million in the first wave.VietnamFinance
But PNJ isn't on the list of 27 Vietnamese stocks FTSE Russell added to its All-Cap index in this review.Vietstock In other words, not a single dollar of that USD 240 million was programmed to flow into PNJ. This is active-fund money, capital that reads a company's filings and takes responsibility for its own call, not passive flows following an index formula.
Who sold the other side of that block trade is a question the public data can't yet answer. At least three explanations look equally plausible. One, a foreign fund sold to another foreign fund, in which case foreign ownership barely moves. Two, a domestic shareholder sold a large lot, in which case foreign ownership genuinely rose. Three, this is part of the founding family's ownership restructuring: two daughters of Chairwoman Cao Thi Ngoc Dung of Phu Nhuan Jewelry Joint Stock Company (PNJ) registered to sell a combined 25 million shares in a window running from September 10 to October 10, to fund a loan to PNJ itself.Nhà Đầu Tư The post-session foreign ownership disclosure and the insider trading report will sort out which of these three actually happened.
The company is scrambling for cash of its own
Alongside the foreign capital story, PNJ is working through a liquidity problem of its own. Its board approved a plan to borrow more than VND 1,000 billion from the Chairwoman's family, unsecured, with a maximum term of 12 months and a cap of no more than 5% of total assets.Dân Trí The funding source is the very share sale mentioned above, with Vice Chairwoman Tran Phuong Ngoc Thao of PNJ having finished selling 7 million shares on September 11.Thị trường Tài chính Tiền tệ
On September 15, PNJ's board approved a plan to shorten the payment timeline for customers returning merchandise, replacing the current five-installment schedule spread over 120 days. Phan Quoc Cong, CEO of PNJ, said the company was under cash flow pressure as the volume of customers returning diamonds surged, so it was prioritizing product exchanges over immediate refunds. On the legal side, the Thanh Hoa Provincial Police Investigation Agency said PNJ holds complete import documentation for the merchandise involved in the case, and that its import and distribution process complied with regulations.
What to watch next
The broader market backdrop on September 18 didn't help this story: the VN-Index closed at 1,815.66 points, down 7.11 points, or 0.39%.
Foreign capital has come back to PNJ, that part is no longer in question. What's still unresolved sits on the company's side: whether the wave of customers returning diamonds has already peaked. That's the variable that determines how much further the provision could grow, and it's also the exact bet the active funds that just bought in are making. PNJ's Q3 financial report, due out by late October, will hold the answer in its line item for the merchandise buyback provision.