Valuing CLX (Cholimex): hidden assets and the margin of safety

The market values all of Cholimex at 1,264 billion dong.

Its stakes in two listed companies alone are worth 1,648 billion.

Everything else, an industrial park, 35 hectares of land, 288 billion in cash, is thrown in free.

Here is the arithmetic, and here is why it could be wrong.

CLX is four things

CLX is the UPCoM ticker for Cho Lon Investment and Import-Export Joint Stock Company. It is not one business but four things sharing a ticker:

One, a portfolio of stakes. 40.72% of Cholimex Food (CMF, market cap 3,426 billion) and 20.05% of Tanimex (TIX, on HOSE), plus six smaller holdings.

Two, Vinh Loc Industrial Park. A wholly owned subsidiary leasing out 639 billion of investment property at a 72% segment margin.

Three, 35 hectares of compensated land, frozen since 2003 awaiting equitisation settlement.

Four, 288 billion in cash, against only 15.7 billion of borrowings.

The valuation table

A few notes on the method:

CMF is discounted 25% from market price because UPCoM liquidity is close to zero. TIX is discounted 10% because it is HOSE-listed with real liquidity.

Vinh Loc Industrial Park is valued as a 20-year annuity discounted at 11%, not as a perpetuity, because the 448.9 billion of prepaid revenue is shrinking by 19.5 billion a year, with roughly 23 years left.

Parent-company overhead has negative value. Take consolidated after-tax profit of 205.9 billion, subtract 133.9 billion of equity-method income from associates, subtract 92.1 billion from the Vinh Loc subsidiary, and you are left with minus 20 billion. That is the real result of everything the parent does directly, after carrying 78.5 billion of selling and administrative costs.

The asset floor: 14,560 dong

This is the most important number in the piece.

Give away the entire industrial park, the 35 hectares, and every discount assumption I have made. Take only net cash plus the equity portfolio at audited book value:

192 + 1,139 − 70 = 1,261 billion = 14,560 dong a share

Market price on 30 June 2026: 14,600 dong.

The market is paying exactly the asset floor and valuing the entire operating business at zero.

The margin of safety

A cash-flow cross-check: real owner cash flow in 2025 was 137 billion, or 1,585 dong a share. On a price of 14,600 that is a 10.9% yield, double the roughly 5% government bond yield.

But the dividend actually received is only 700 dong, or 4.79%, which is below the government bond. The gap between 10.9% and 4.79% is the entire risk of this case.

Six risks

1. CMF is 43% of the value. If CMF is worth only its book of 769 billion, intrinsic value falls to 25,000 dong. Management has said it has no intention of selling, so there is no route to realising the difference.

2. 92 billion of paper profit a year. Pre-tax profit is 229 billion, of which 134 billion is an equity-method entry for associates, while dividends actually received were only 42 billion. Accounting EPS is 2,302 dong; real cash flow is 1,585.

3. Land frozen for 23 years. Losing this component outright is minus 3,707 dong a share. The auditor A&C flagged an emphasis of matter on the equitisation settlement, warning the figures could change on approval.

4. Overhead is climbing. Accumulated tax losses are 63.16 billion, rising from 7.4 billion in 2021 to 17.5 billion in 2025. The group recognises no deferred tax asset because future taxable income is "not probable".

5. Tax can be reassessed retrospectively. In January 2026 the tax authority demanded an additional 58.3 billion of land rent covering a 9.5-year period. 2024 EPS was restated from 2,214 down to 2,121.

6. A liquidity trap. The state holds 49%, Transimex 28.11% and is selling steadily. Genuine free float is only 22.9% of the capital. No catalyst is in sight.

The sixth risk is the real one. The worst case is not losing capital, it is being right and not getting paid. If the 48% discount persists another ten years, you collect 4.79% a year in dividends, losing to a government bond buyer, while being entirely correct about the value.

The QuietVC lesson

Plenty of Vietnamese companies hold hidden assets: land valued twenty years ago, stakes in unlisted businesses, entries carried at the numbers of another era. They sit quietly on the balance sheet waiting for a chance to surface. CLX is one example.

This hunting ground is still wide, for three reasons: many equitised state enterprises carried over outdated valuations; UPCoM is full of companies nobody follows; and Vietnamese accounting records at historical cost, so the older the asset the deeper it is buried.

But the whole story has to be told. A hidden asset needs two things to surface: a mechanism, an administrative decision signed, a transaction, a move to a different exchange, and time. For CLX the mechanism is the equitisation settlement. It has been waiting 23 years.

And here is what is worth thinking about: precisely because the asset is hidden, few people look, and the surfacing mechanism is unclear, the opportunity exists. If those 35 hectares were revalued next week, the share price would have reflected it long ago. The market pays a low price precisely because it cannot see the road to the finish. That ambiguity is not a flaw in the opportunity. It is the opportunity.

Anyone who needs an answer within six months will never be able to own this. Someone who can wait ten years and sleep well while waiting buys at the price the first group creates. That is the spread Walter Schloss lived on for 47 years: not being smarter than the market, simply having a longer time frame than the market.

But patience comes with a condition. It is only a virtue once you have worked out the asset floor, listed the risks, and know exactly what you lose if every optimistic scenario is wrong. Patience without a spreadsheet is just stubbornness with a nicer name.

A margin of safety protects you from being wrong. Time is something you have to bring yourself.

If you find a company like this

QuietVC is looking for exactly this kind of situation: Vietnamese businesses holding assets the balance sheet does not fully describe. Land carried at twenty-year-old prices, stakes in unlisted companies, investments from the equitisation era that nobody has revalued.

If you are watching a company like that and would like a second pair of eyes on the balance sheet, leave a comment under this piece. We do not trade in information and we do not give recommendations. We simply go through the numbers together, check the asset floor, and look for the mechanism that lets the asset surface.

The best cases usually come from someone living right next door to the business.

This article is not a recommendation to buy or sell. All figures are from the audited 2025 consolidated financial statements issued by A&C on 12 March 2026; market price as at 30 June 2026. The discount assumptions are the author's and may be wrong. Read the originals yourself.

Silent discipline. Compound value.