Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Company (code CII) has just announced that it will give gifts to investors attending the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on September 19. Although this move is considered positive, it still makes many investors worried that the company will continue to fail to gather enough voting shares needed to hold the meeting.

Promised to give money but still failed to gather enough shareholders to hold a meeting

In fact, this is not the first time CII has promised to give gifts to investors attending the meeting. In April 2023, the company also announced that it would give money to shareholders attending the 2023 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders.

However, by April 26, 2023, when the meeting took place, only 45.76% of the total number of voting shares attended the meeting. According to regulations, the number of voting shares attending the first meeting must reach at least 50%. Therefore, this 2023 annual general meeting of CII failed, even though the company promised to give money to encourage shareholders to participate.

According to the explanation of Chairman Le Vu Hoang at that time, the group of foreign shareholders owning 16 million CII shares and most of the ETF funds did not attend the meeting, so the company lacked a large number of voting shares to organize. It is estimated that the group of foreign shareholders holds about 10.26% of shares at CII.

Thus, with this precedent, it is not too difficult to understand if investors are skeptical about the extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on September 19, 2023.

Borrow 13,000 billion, pay interest up to 4 billion per day

Regarding CII's business situation, in the second quarter, the company recorded net revenue of only VND 843.4 billion, down 15.2% over the same period. Of which, cost of goods sold accounted for a large amount of VND 641.6 billion. Gross profit reached VND 250.6 billion, gross profit margin decreased from 45.5% to only 23.9%.

Notably, CII's financial revenue increased by 128.2% to VND461.9 billion. However, financial expenses also increased by 41.2% to VND454.8 billion. The majority of which was interest expense, accounting for VND363.6 billion. This interest rate is equivalent to CII having to pay interest of up to VND4 billion per day.

At the end of the second quarter, CII's total assets reached VND26,649.2 billion, down 6.7% compared to the beginning of the year. Notably, the company's short-term debt increased by VND615.6 billion in just 6 months, from VND5,166.4 billion to VND6,039.4 billion.

Long-term debt also accounted for VND7,112.3 billion. CII's total short- and long-term debt amounted to more than VND13,000 billion, 62.2% higher than the company's equity.