Recent reports reveal a troubling reality behind Vingroup’s aggressive expansion: the conglomerate is operating under a perilous level of debt.
The company, owned by Vietnam’s wealthiest man, Pham Nhat Vuong, is burdened with liabilities totaling US$31 billion. This figure requires $3.2 million in daily interest payments on its international credit loans.
This financial strain suggests that the glittering image polished by domestic media may be concealing a bleak and uncertain future, as Vingroup’s own Q2/2025 financial report and business results sketch a portrait of a high-profile conglomerate whose foundation appears to be riddled with risk.
Heavy debt load
Vingroup’s debt surged by approximately $4.7 billion in the first six months of the year, bringing its total liabilities to a staggering $31 billion by the end of Q2/2025. This figure represents 86% of the company’s total assets.
The immediate pressure comes from short-term liabilities, which comprise over $19.5 billion (63%) of the total debt and are approaching maturity. The cost of servicing this debt is substantial, with interest payments exceeding $295 million in the second quarter alone—equivalent to $3.2 million per day across Vingroup’s ecosystem.
The company faces significant deadlines next year, including $860 million in credit loans and $1.14 billion in bond interest coming due.
To manage these obligations with just over $3 billion in cash on hand, Vingroup has been actively raising capital. The company recently generated $1.6 billion by selling 41.5% of its shares in Vincom Retail.
Vingroup chairman Vuong also secured over $1 billion in new credit from international lenders like Deutsche Bank AG and the Asian Development Bank, with $510 million of that amount designated for the subsidiary VinFast.
Irregular figures
Despite immense daily interest payments, Vingroup’s recent business reports project an image of resilience, enabling the conglomerate to secure new loans for ambitious projects. The foundation for this confidence, however, appears to be highly irregular figures in its financial statements.
The Q2/2025 report provides a stark example. While it records a post-tax profit of 2.265 trillion dong ($85.5 million), this positive figure is entirely manufactured by a single line item: an “other income” entry of 18.516 trillion dong, which Vingroup vaguely attributes to “sponsorship funds.” Without this unexplained infusion, the conglomerate’s core business operations would have posted a massive loss of more than 13.9 trillion dong.
This reliance on non-business cash is a recurring theme. The only clarified major inflow came from chairman Vuong himself, who injected 23 trillion dong in the past quarter, just three months after a similar 5 trillion dong transfer. Likewise, in 2024, a personal cash injection of around 10 trillion dong from Vuong was what allowed Vingroup to report a profit.
This pattern of financial irregularities is not confined to the company’s domestic operations. In July 2024, its subsidiary VinFast was rebuked by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for inflating revenues in a filing.
The SEC rejected the report, forcing VinFast to admit that “accounting errors” had caused it to overstate sales by $33.9 million. (See Vingroup’s cash flow statement in Q2 of 2025 here.)
Foreign red flags
The red flags surrounding Vingroup’s financial health are not a recent development. The warnings began as early as 2019, when the credit agency Fitch Ratings downgraded the conglomerate’s outlook from “Stable” to “Negative,” citing the “cash-burning” investments in its subsidiary VinFast.
Instead of adjusting its strategy, chairman Vuong withdrew Vingroup from Fitch’s rating program, effectively removing a key mechanism for monitoring its soaring debt.
As the conglomerate’s debt continued to climb, the warnings have grown louder. Financial platforms like Alpha Spread now classify Vingroup as a high-risk company, while the German assessment firm Simply Wall estimates its business profits can cover only 40% of its interest expenses. Consequently, major foreign investors have begun to flee, dumping their Vingroup shares.
Recent filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reveal the severity of the current situation. Vingroup is acting as a guarantor for VinFast’s $2.54 billion debt and is obligated to settle over $1.6 billion of that amount in 2025.
This debt is made even more precarious by a significant currency mismatch: 41% of the interest on Vingroup’s total debt is in US dollars, while 92% of VinFast’s revenue comes from the domestic market, where the Vietnamese dong continues to depreciate.
To secure these massive loans, Vuong has pledged a vast portfolio of assets, including production lines in Haiphong, the VinES battery factory in Ha Tinh, and even the under-construction EV plant in North Carolina in the United States.
VinFast debt spiral
Since its founding in 2017, VinFast has never made a profit, acting instead as a massive financial drain on its parent company. This cash burn is the primary driver of Vingroup’s deteriorating financial health, which began in 2021 when the conglomerate posted its first major loss, after many years of steady profitability.
In the first half of 2025 alone, VinFast’s automotive business lost over 37 trillion dong—a deficit that Vingroup’s core real estate profits failed to cover. This situation is the direct result of Vuong’s ambition to expand electric vehicle sales into the US and European markets.
“We regard the US as the key market, a test to measure effectiveness. […] If we succeed in America, conquering other markets will be much easier,” Vuong stated in a May 2020 shareholders meeting.
The venture launched in late 2022 with a shipment of 999 VF8 vehicles and the groundbreaking of a factory in North Carolina. However, instead of “securing Vietnam’s place on the global automotive map,” VinFast’s American dream quickly soured. By May 2023, the entire initial shipment was returned for failing to meet safety standards.
Despite this, VinFast listed on the Nasdaq in August 2023 with a market capitalization of over $23 billion. The stock collapsed by more than 90% within two months. This implosion led to a class-action lawsuit by shareholders in May 2024, alleging the company had exaggerated its prospects, which in turn prompted an SEC investigation.
As of August 15, 2025, VinFast’s market cap has dwindled to $8.35 billion.
Operationally, VinFast has shuttered its US showrooms and postponed its factory construction. Financially, the net losses have been staggering at $2.4 billion in 2023 and nearly $3.2 billion in 2024.
Yet, Vuong remains defiant, vowing in April 2024 to “never give up on VinFast” with plans to make the company break even by the end of 2026. However, this would require recouping a cumulative investment of over $20 billion and settling over $10 billion in debt.
This raises an important question: given the financial realities detailed in Vingroup’s own reports, is Vuong’s plan to bring VinFast to break-even truly realistic?
This article was published in English by The Vietnamese and originally published in Vietnamese by Luat Khoa Magazine. It is republished here with kind permission.