Vincom, Vietnam’s largest mall operator, is brimming with confidence. When it released its fourth-quarter results on 26 January, it indicated to investors that it expected double-digit growth in leasing revenue this year. It has hired 30 new management-level staff to strengthen its leasing and operations divisions. If it all works out, the vacancy problem that continues to haunt the company’s operating metrics might fade away. Certainly, occupancy improved in the fourth quarter, helping revenues and net profit to grow strongly.
Vincom Retail is the sibling company of Vinfast, which is Vietnam’s largest producer of electric vehicles. Apart from the fact that Vincom uses Vinfast showrooms and service centres as paying tenants in its malls, there is another thing they have in common. There is something in the culture cutting across both companies that isn’t particularly healthy: they both try to do things at speed, and the quality is sometimes sloppy. Vinfast, for its part, quickly attempted to expand into highly competitive Western markets such as North America and Western Europe before it raised the quality of its vehicles to international standards; it inevitably acquired a reputation for poor quality, software glitches, and uncompetitive pricing, causing it to delay its plans. Likewise, Vincom Retail saturated Vietnam with its shopping malls, attempting to sew up the market before anyone else could get a toehold. It, too, though, is not famous for its quality. Its malls, even its most recent ones, would not generate much envy among its international peers, although they might have if they had been opened 30 years ago.
This penchant for not doing best-of-class is odd, because Vietnam’s mall boom has been going on for two decades now – Vincom opened its first mall in 2004 – and this is plenty of time for the company to get up to international standards. Everywhere you look, to the west, to the east, to the north and to the south, superior malls are being built. Siam Piwat, The Mall Group, and Central Pattana are developing world-class retail platforms in Thailand. Aeon and Chip Mong are doing it in Cambodia. Ayala and SM Prime are doing it in the Philippines. Throughout the region, these and other major commercial developers have emerged over the past couple of decades and have excelled, making these countries prime destinations for the world’s leading retailers. Part of their success is due to entrepreneurial nous, and part of it is that their founders weren’t so arrogant that they believed in their own inherent superiority: they travelled, observed, learned from what they saw, and used their learnings as a basis for building something even better, often drawing on overseas expertise. (Witness, for example, the brilliant design of Bangkok’s Siam Discovery by Japanese architect Nendo.)
Vincom’s playbook is different.
Vincom doesn’t seem to operate from the same playbook. It replicates tried-and-true formulas and promotes them as innovative, like putting a different label on the same wine bottle. But since its malls are becoming ubiquitous and the Vietnamese consumer is getting richer, Vincom will consistently be able to churn out half-decent results despite itself, at least while it still has breathing space because of limited competition. Thus it was in 2025. Momentum is holding in some key areas affecting operational and financial performance, most notably demand for space from new brands, limited new retail property in the pipeline, and the resilient macroeconomy. Occupancy and rental growth are both up, and one-off financial transactions are juicing bottom-line profit.
The company was therefore able to tout its results for the fourth quarter and the full year as a triumph. For the quarter, Vincom generated total revenue of 2312.3 billion VND (US$88 million), up 8.7 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2024. Revenues for the full year slipped a little, by 1.1 per cent, to 8837.4 billion VND (US$338 million). Net after-tax profit, though, grew sharply for both the quarter and the full year, much of which was accounted for by finance income from the divestment of one of its retail projects in Hanoi. Indeed, in the fourth quarter, nearly 80% of operating income was attributable to finance income.
Leasing revenues were up 7.6 per cent for the quarter and 6.6 per cent for the year, partly due to a 270 basis-point increase in occupancy to 88.1 per cent, still poor by global industry standards, but at least Vincom is trying. The Vincom Center format, designed to serve high-density neighbourhoods in major cities, continues to maintain occupancy above 96 per cent. Occupancy has risen to a respectable 92.7 per cent at the Mega Mall centres. The formats serving secondary locations – Vincom Plaza and Vincom+ – have historically suffered from high vacancy rates, but even they are getting better.
The improved occupancy picture is partly attributable to a shift of food and beverage brands from streetfronts to malls, more leisure tenancies, and the aforementioned preference of Vincom Retail for placing VinFast showrooms and service centres in malls to occupy space.
Revenues were also boosted during the year by the opening of three new shopping malls (Ocean City, Royal Island, and Vincom Plaza Vinh), collectively adding 119,000 square metres of gross floor area to the portfolio. It also renovated malls in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
By the end of 2025, the company operated 90 malls in all but one of Vietnam’s 34 provinces and cities.
The economy is growing fast, maybe
According to government statistics, Vietnam’s economic performance was among the best in ASEAN in 2025, with GDP growth just above 8 per cent and retail sales more than 9 per cent. This, incidentally, was the third consecutive year in which retail sales grew in the 9-10 per cent range, if the government’s bean counters are to be believed. Unfortunately, as in the case of neighbouring China, Vietnam’s official economic data have long been subject to widespread mistrust, partly due to methodological shortcomings and partly due to intentional window-dressing. Undeterred, the Asian Development Bank recently upgraded Vietnam’s GDP growth from 6.0 per cent to 6.4 per cent, the fastest in ASEAN.
If that view holds, retail companies such as Vincom can expect further improvement this year, and the nation’s consumers will see more international brands than ever.
Further reading: Vincom Retail’s leasing strategy shifts to experiences as competition heats up
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