Landmark Holding to be delisted from HSX over financial troubles

Landmark Holding will be delisted from the HSX for its poor performance over the years

Landmark Holding JSC (code: LMH), formerly known as Thang Long International JSC specialising in petrochemical products and real estate, has just sent its unaudited financial statement for 2019 to the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HSX).

However, Viet Values Audit and Consulting Co., Ltd. refused to confirm the accuracy of items in the statement, including VND53.5 billion($2.3 million) in short-term revenue from clients, VND214.3 billion ($9.3 million) in advance payments to vendors, VND20.7 billion ($0.9 million) in short-term receivables, and VND134.8 billion ($5.8 million) in advance payment from buyers, among others. The accuracy of these items will impact other items in the accounting balance sheet and business results.

Additionally, Viet Values highlighted that there is no contract to prove the accuracy of VND136.4 billion ($5.9 million) in receivables and VND31.1 billion ($1.3 million) in the balance of Landmark Holding (as of the end of 2019), which are unsecured loans without any collaterals or guarantee commitment of a third party. Notably, these questionable items have existed in the financial statement 2018 with bigger amounts.

Thus, if these items in the unaudited financial statement of Landmark Holding are not made-up, the heads of the company should be able to explain or make a comment after the refusal of Viet Values, to set investors and shareholders’ mind at rest, as well as change the audit firm's decision. However, so far the company has remained, and LMH is being forced to delist its stock.

In fact, business results in the fourth quarter and the whole of 2019 of Landmark Holding were quite a lot worse than in the previous year. At the end of 2019, the LMH stock dropped for the 25th consecutive session to VND2,000 (8 US cents) from VND12,200 (53 US cents) last December.

Moreover, the company's first-quarter business results showed that revenue was much less than its expenses, resulting in a VND7 billion ($304,000) loss.

Landmark Holding was listed on HSX in October 2018 with 23 million shares initially, which was raised to 25.6 million since then. However, over the last 19 months, the internal shareholders of the company purchased 4.1 million shares only and sold approximately 7.6 million ones. Besides, numerous big shareholders have also divested their holdings in LMH significantly, like Nguyen Thanh Tung, Luong Quan Vinh, and Tran Thanh Tung. This confirmed their lack of faith in LMH’s financial status.

In addition to financial troubles, hundreds of homebuyers who paid a lot of money to buy apartments of at Tower (21 Le Van Luong, Hanoi’s Thanh Xuan district), are dogging Landmark Holding for a refund, while the owner of the project – Ba Dinh Construction Consultancy-Investment JSC (Ba Dinh JSC) – has been sued by Global Petroleum Commercial Bank (GPBank) to recover the loans of VND290 billion ($12.6 million) (as of April 2019 only).

Entering the real estate sector several years ago, Landmark Holding seems unable to spot reputable and reliable projects and partners, which contributed to its present catastrophic business results. If it cannot quickly resolve and overcome these financial difficulties, the developer could very well go bankrupt, leaving investors, homebuyers, and shareholders empty-handed.