SK offloads Vietnamese holdings in hard pivot to chips, AI and EVs

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SK offloads Vietnamese holdings in hard pivot to chips, AI and EVs

Published: 06 Aug. 2025, 18:56 Updated: 06 Aug. 2025, 21:07

PARK EUN-JEE
[email protected]

SARAH CHEA
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Park Won-cheol, then head of SK Sout East Asia Investment, second from right, and Nguyen Viet Quang, CEO of Vingroup, fifth from right, sign a strategic partnership agreement at Vingroup’s headquarters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on May 16, 2019. [SK INC.]

[NEWS ANALYSIS]

SK, a conglomerate with core businesses in EV batteries and semiconductors, is accelerating the liquidation of its shareholdings in Vietnam by unloading its stakes in major companies like Vingroup and Masan Group.

The shift in its investment portfolio comes as the company is executing what it calls ‘financial rebalancing’ to pivot toward chips, AI and EV batteries, the segments that will require large-scale capital expenditures both at home and in the United States under the current trade landscape.

SK Inc., the group’s holding unit, confirmed on Wednesday that it has completed the unwinding of the holdings in the conglomerate Vingroup that it purchased for 1.1 trillion won ($791 million) in 2019.

“From January to early August 2025, SK sold its entire 6.05 percent stake in Vingroup to a third party through block trades between institutional investors,” the company said in a statement.

“SK had invested about 1.1 trillion won in Vingroup in 2019 via its Southeast Asia investment arm, and through this year’s sale, recovered its initial investment of 1.1 trillion won and then some,” it said.

Modest growth

Those in investment circles, however, had long anticipated SK’s exit, as the overall performance of the two Vietnamese companies has fallen short of expectations with limited potential for business cooperation.

The return on the Vingroup investment is far from significant, too, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

“The amount of the proceeds is modest, mostly boosted by the high foreign exchange rate,” the source said.

Chey Tae‑won, chairman of SK Group and head of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, delivers a welcome address at the Korea‑Vietnam Business Forum held at a hotel in Hanoi on June 23, 2023. [YONHAP]

SK made a similar move last November when it sold off a 5.05 percent stake in Masan Group after it acquired a 9.5 percent stake in the food and beverage company.

The Korean conglomerate will likely divest the remaining stakes given that SK’s annual report released earlier this year reclassified its holdings in both Masan and Vingroup as “assets held for sale.”

Both companies posted a decline in book value through most quarters based on electronic disclosures filed by SK and more severe equity method losses in 2022 primarily in the wake of the pandemic.

Things haven’t dramatically recovered.

Vingroup suffered a net loss in the second quarter, hit by heavy expenditures for its automotive subsidiary VinFast.

In a separate deal, SK sold a 65 percent stake in Imexpharm, a Vietnamese bio firm, to China's Livzon Pharmaceutical Group earlier this year for about $221 million.

AI and battery pivot

While the company has not disclosed the destination of the proceeds, market watchers expect the funds to be used to shore up heavily indebted affiliates and finance facility investments for SK hynix, its memory chip unit, and SK On, its EV battery arm. Both semiconductors and batteries require billions of dollars in capital expenditure annually.

SK plans to spend 80 trillion won on chips and AI by 2026 as was announced last June as the outcome of the top management meeting.

The core outcome of the strategy meeting was to concentrate the group’s full capabilities on AI and semiconductors.
“In the United States, the winds of change surrounding AI are so strong that there’s hardly any conversation about anything else,” Chey Tae-won said during the meeting.

Chey met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to discuss cooperation in AI businesses.

At the meeting, Chey went on to stress the need to “leverage the group’s capabilities to strengthen leadership across the AI value chain, from services to infrastructure.”

SK’s AI-related businesses range from semiconductors tailored for AI training, in which high bandwidth memory (HBM) from SK hynix serves as a key component, to AI data centers operated by SK Broadband, AI services such as personal assistants offered by SK Telecom and AI‑oriented energy solutions from SK Innovation.

BY PARK EUN-JEE, SARAH CHEA [[email protected]]