Top profitable businesses: How is Vietnam different from the US and China?

Big profit industries

As of early May, the first quarter 2025 profit picture of listed companies on the Vietnamese stock market has gradually become clearer. The banking industry continues to hold the top position, occupying 8/10 leading positions in terms of profit. If the list is expanded to the top 20, banks will contribute 12 names.

This has been a common phenomenon for many years, as Vietnam is an emerging economy that is growing strongly. The economy depends on bank credit to finance infrastructure projects, industrial real estate and personal consumption.

In the top 10 in terms of profit, Vietnam Exhibition Fair Center JSC (VEF) had the highest profit, reaching over VND18.6 trillion (US$710 million). Vingroup (VIC) - the group chaired by billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong - holds over 83% of VEF shares. Vingroup also ranked 5th in terms of profit in the first quarter.

The remaining 8 names are all banks, including Vietcombank (nearly 10.9 trillion VND), MBBank - MBB (nearly 8,400 billion VND), BIDV (7,400 billion VND), Techcombank (7,200 billion VND), Vietinbank (6,800 billion VND), HDBank (5,400 billion VND), VPBank (5,000 billion VND) and ACB (4,600 billion VND).

In China, according to incomplete reports, the banking group will still dominate in terms of profits in the first quarter of 2025 and the whole year of 2024. The leading names include Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) with profits of more than 11.6 billion USD in the first quarter of 2025, followed by China Construction Bank (CCB), Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), Bank of China (BOC) and Bank of Communications Banking Financial Group.

While technology corporations continue to dominate profits in the US, the banking industry holds the No. 1 position in Vietnam. Photo: Nikkei

However, China is starting to diversify with the emergence of technology companies, such as Tencent, which is expected to earn nearly $26.9 billion in 2024, or Alibaba, Xiaomi. The energy sector has Sinopec. Auto giants (BYD), utilities (China State Grid Corporation), and Maotai Liquor Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd. are also often in the top 10.

Meanwhile, in the US, tech giants still dominate the profit picture. In the top 10 most profitable companies, there are names such as Apple ($36.3 billion in the first quarter of 2025), Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta, Amazon, Nvidia.

Non-tech companies such as JPMorgan Chase (banking), Berkshire Hathaway (investment), ExxonMobil (energy), Johnson & Johnson (health care - medical pharmaceuticals) are in the minority.

Thus, it can be seen that in the US, technology is the "king of profits", while in Vietnam and China, the banking industry still plays a pivotal role.

In Vietnam, in addition to the banking sector, the real estate business group also appeared in the list of top profits, with two notable representatives. In China, the technology sector has grown strongly, becoming a major source of profits for corporations and billionaires in this country. In addition, energy and manufacturing are still traditional strengths, contributing significantly to profit growth.

The outstanding difference

It can be seen that the data of 80% of the most profitable enterprises in Vietnam belonging to the banking sector once again confirms the central role of credit in a developing economy. In many stages, macroeconomic and credit policies have been adjusted in a growth-supporting direction: credit has been loosened, interest rates have been maintained at low levels, thereby strongly promoting the demand for loans to invest in real estate, production and consumption.

Meanwhile, in China, the banking and energy sectors remain important, with state-owned banks such as ICBC and CCB serving as the main funding channels for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and strategic projects under the “Made in China 2025” plan.

These banks are supported by preferential policies and huge asset sizes, helping to maintain high profits. Loose fiscal and monetary policies, together with domestic stimulus strategies, create conditions for banks to provide credit at preferential interest rates, ensuring stable profits.

But the rise of Chinese tech giants (like Tencent, Alibaba) and electric vehicle/battery makers (BYD, CATL) shows a shift towards high-tech industries.

In the US, technology accounts for 60% of the top 10 most profitable companies, with giants like Apple, Microsoft and NVIDIA leading the way thanks to innovation and global scale.

The US is the world's leading economy in innovation and technology, research and development (R&D), especially in AI, semiconductors (NVIDIA) and cloud computing (Microsoft, Amazon). The Silicon Valley ecosystem, with its top universities (Stanford, MIT) and venture capital funds, fosters the emergence of billion-dollar technology companies. This is the ideal environment for the formation of technology corporations with trillion-dollar capitalizations. US technology companies have become global platforms (Google, Apple, Meta), playing a core ecosystem role.

Although Vietnam and China have made technological advances, their scale and influence are still not enough to generate outstanding profits like leading US technology corporations.

The rise of companies like BYD (electric vehicles), Xiaomi (AI, electronics) and Tencent (digital content) shows that China is gradually shifting from an economy based on large-scale production to one based on innovation and domestic consumption, bringing significant profits.

Despite this, China has made significant strides in the technology industry, notably in electric vehicles (BYD) and batteries (CATL) and more recently DeepSeek. However, the drawback is that Chinese tech companies, such as Tencent and Alibaba, are still dependent on the domestic market, with limited international revenue compared to the US giants.

With abundant financial resources and the largest number of engineers in the world, China is expected to be able to narrow the gap with the US in areas such as AI and semiconductors in the next 10-20 years.

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Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/top-businesses-that-are-biggest-in-vietnam-other-than-my-and-trung-quoc-o-diem-nao-2398548.html