Vietnam’s agricultural giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai JSC (HAGL) has recently sold Hoang Anh Gia Lai Hotel in Pleiku City, the capital of the Central Highlands province of Gia Lai, to a newly-established enterprise at a reported price of more than US$7.3 million to repay its debts.

The purchaser is Ho Chi Minh City-based Hoan Sinh Gia Lai Investment Company Limited, which acquired the hotel for likely VND180 billion ($7.34 million), as it could be deduced from HAGL’s operating result report for the first nine months of 2023.

The report indicated a revenue of the same amount from liquidation of a property in September, during which HAGL’s management board passed a resolution to sell the same hotel for debt repayment.

As the first four-star lodging facility in the Central Highlands region, 117-room Hoang Anh Gia Lai Hotel is situated near Phu Dong Square in the heart of Pleiku City and was put into operation in late 2005.

Do Xuan Duc, director of Hoan Sinh Gia Lai, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that he had bought the hotel from HAGL but refused to disclose the purchase price as it is confidential.

Both sides of the deal could not provide its details for confidentiality reasons, news site VnExpress cited Duc as saying.

Hoan Sinh Gia Lai was established four months ago with a charter capital of VND200 billion ($8.15 million), whose business lines include animal husbandry, farming, fertilizer production, construction, transport, and others.

According to Doan Nguyen Duc, chairman of HAGL, the proceeds from the hotel sale will be used to pay the principal and interest on the bonds issued in 2016 at the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV).

The firm had earlier sold two resorts in Binh Dinh and Lam Dong Provinces, a hotel in Da Nang City, and another in Yangon, Myanmar.

Chairman Duc and HAGL withdrew from the hotel and tourism market over 10 years ago because of a financial hit.

As of the end of September, HAGL had delayed the payments of the principal and interest for the bonds issued in 2016 with a total value of more than VND4 trillion ($163.09 million)

The firm has recently paid VND380 billion ($15.49 million) for the principal and is expected to settle the rest by the end of this year. 

HAGL earned net total revenue of VND679 billion ($27.68 million) in September, and its nine-month after-tax profit reached VND710 billion ($28.95 million), down 20 percent from a year earlier.

When asked about his company’s debt of VND7.6 trillion ($310 million) at a recent investor conference, chairman Duc said that the debt is much lower than the firm’s total assets worth VND21,340 billion ($870.13 million).

“HAGL is handling the debt to get rid of noisy comments on it,” Duc stressed.

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