Singaporean firm F&N Dairy Investment Pte Ltd has filed an offer to purchase more than 17.4 million shares in domestic dairy producer Vinamilk (HoSE: VNM).

A Vinamilk farm in Don Duong district, Lam Dong province

F&N Dairy Investment plans to purchase the shares via put-through or order-matching transactions from April 8 to May 7.

If completed, the deal will increase the Singaporean firm’s ownership in Vinamilk to 18.69%, equal to 325.54 million shares, from 17.69%.

F&N Dairy Investment had previously offered to buy the same amount of Vinamilk shares between March 6 and April 3.

The original deal was unsuccessful and the company was only able to purchase 633,000 shares due to “unfavourable market conditions”, Vinamilk said in a filing to HoSE.

The Singaporean firm also failed to increase its stake in Vinamilk in 2019 and January 2020. In February and March, it bought six million Vinamilk shares.

Vinamilk shares edged up 0.5% to trade at VND95,500 (US$4.06) apiece on April 6.

The company's shares have lost 31% since January 30 as the spread of the coronavirus overshadows expectations for global economic growth and hits stocks markets hard worldwide.

As the company’s shares have continued to decline, leaders at Vinamilk have reportedly registered to raise their ownership.

CEO Mai Kieu Lien is buying Vinamilk shares to up her stake by 0.03 percentage point to 0.31%. Transactions started on March 24 and will end on April 23.

Director of material development Trinh Quoc Dung and CFO Le Thanh Liem want to buy 200,000 shares each.

The largest dairy firm by market capitalisation, Vinamilk reported VND56.3 trillion (over US$2.38 billion) in total revenue last year, up 7% year on year.

Its post-tax profit gained 3.4% on-year to VND10.5 trillion (US$445 million) in 2019.

Cash and cash-equivalent assets increased by VND1.14 trillion (US$48.3 million) from the previous year to VND2.66 trillion (US$112.7 million) at the end of 2019.

Short-term savings stood at VND12.4 trillion (US$525.5 million), up by VND3.76 trillion (US$159.4 million) from 2018.

Short-term savings, cash and cash-equivalent assets accounted for 33.78% of the firm’s total assets last year, up from 27.29% in 2018.