SCS: At a Glance
- Long Thanh status
- Confidential MOU with ACV signed, cannot be disclosed; no contract
- Govt. commercial launch target
- 1 Dec 2026
- Access bridge completion
- Q1 2027
- H1 2026 cargo volume, YoY
- −6.47% (Q1 alone: −5.4%)
- Qatar's share of cargo volume
- ~20% (official AGM figure; recovering since Apr 2026)
- 2026 ESOP
- 1,020,700 new shares (~1.0% of shares out.), approved 71.92% / against 28.04%
- Cash + deposits (30 Jun 2026)
- ₫1,746.3bn
- Fundamentals
- SCS company page
- Further reading
- SCS - Q2/2026 Snapshot · [Live] SCS AGM 2026
1. The MOU: What the Official Minutes Say
SCS's bull case for Long Thanh rests on one document that no outsider has read: a memorandum of understanding with ACV (Airports Corporation of Vietnam), the state-owned operator that will run the new airport. The company's own 2026 AGM minutes, an official filing with the State Securities Commission and the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, confirm the document exists and confirm nothing else about it.
The same official minutes explain why a cooperation deal, rather than a direct award, is the only route in: the state has already split the terminal ownership between two other parties.
Unofficial live meeting notes add color the minutes don't: the board recounted ACV's General Director telling a January gathering of airlines "ACV is a shareholder of SCSC, and ACV has a responsibility to support SCSC," cited Decree 68 (equal footing for private firms vs. FDI/state enterprises) as making a PPP-style arrangement more workable, and put SCS's Ho Chi Minh City market share at roughly 50%, "but we're waiting on ACV's decision."
2. Life With and Without Long Thanh
What "with Long Thanh" looks like, officially
The official minutes put a number on the upside scenario, and immediately hedge it:
SCS is also sitting on land that would become surplus once Long Thanh absorbs that traffic: 14.3 hectares total at Tan Son Nhat, of which about 5 hectares is apron currently leased to ACV. The official minutes describe a Lufthansa aircraft-maintenance (MRO) cooperation plan for that land, but one that is explicitly not close to signed:
What "without Long Thanh," or "Long Thanh delayed," looks like
I could not find an official-filing version of the board's plainest statement on this dependency, so this one is sourced to the live meeting notes rather than the minutes:
In the meantime, SCS is running its existing Tan Son Nhat operation without Long Thanh in the picture at all, and, per the official minutes (Q&A item 7), already has a stated playbook for a shrinking Middle East order book: "SCSC holds about 50% market share at Tan Son Nhat Airport; when cargo volume decreases, the BOM has response scenarios and cost optimization to ensure efficiency."
3. Risk or Chance? ACV's Own Phased Rollout
Asked, in effect, whether Long Thanh is a risk or an opportunity, the live meeting notes record the board leaning on IATA's position and then immediately qualifying it: "I've reviewed a letter from IATA, they support Long Thanh, but the airlines are also very conservative: everything has to be fully ready before they'll start." (unofficial notes, not the filed minutes). That reading is independently corroborated, in far more detail, by ACV's own official migration plan, disclosed to SCS shareholders in the company's Q2 2026 investor bulletin:
| Phase | Window | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dec 2026 – Mar 2027 | Airlines voluntarily register, mostly a small number of domestic routes |
| 2 | Mar – Oct 2027 | International + domestic carriers register under the summer schedule |
| 3 | After Oct 2027 | Long Thanh ramps from 50% toward full design capacity |
Source: ACV, disclosed in SCS's official Q2 2026 Investor Newsletter ("SCSC BẢN TIN NHÀ ĐẦU TƯ QUÝ 2 NĂM 2026"). The bulletin adds that allocation "will be driven by actual passenger demand rather than fixed rules," with no requirement that long-haul flights use Long Thanh exclusively; the same route can run from both airports at once.
4. My Opinion: I Don't Think This Goes Smoothly on Schedule
The government's target, as reported in June 2026, is specific: construction complete by September 2026, integrated trial operations from September to November 2026, and commercial launch on 1 December 2026.
I don't believe Long Thanh opens smoothly on this timeline. This isn't based on inside information, it's a personal read of the evidence below, and I could be wrong.
First, the access infrastructure isn't ready by the airport's own opening date. VEC (the state expressway operator building the HCMC–Long Thanh expressway widening and the new Long Thanh bridge) has repeatedly said the expressway will be "basically complete" by end-2026, but the bridge itself, the single most complex piece and the actual chokepoint into the airport, is targeted for Q1 2027, three to four months after the airport's planned 1 December 2026 commercial launch.
Third, the government's own original target for this expressway was 2 September 2026, Vietnam's National Day, set by a Deputy Prime Minister directive in March 2025; that date was already quietly dropped in favor of "end of 2026" by the time of the project's formal launch five months later. Separately, land-clearance disputes in Ho Chi Minh City were reported in May 2026 as an active threat to even that already-relaxed goal.
Sources: VnExpress, "Phấn đấu hoàn thành mở rộng cao tốc TP HCM - Long Thành vào 2/9/2026," 20 Mar 2025, vnexpress.net (original target); Xa Luận News, May 2026, xaluannews.com (land-clearance report).
Put together: a government mandate to open a major international airport commercially on 1 December 2026, feeding into a highway corridor that its own builder admits will be congested through construction, over a bridge that isn't even planned to be finished until after the airport opens. I think "on schedule and smooth" is the less likely outcome.
5. The Real Risk: An Oil War, Not an Airport
SCS's own official Q1 2026 investor bulletin, not press commentary, states plainly that the Middle East conflict is already showing up in the cargo numbers:
The same bulletin devotes a full section, in the company's own words, to why: a systemic shock to global air cargo, not a one-off.
By Q2, the damage was visible in SCS's own headline cargo figures too:
| Metric | H1 2025 | H1 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total cargo volume (tonnes) | 131,369 | 122,867 | −6.47% |
| International cargo (tonnes) | 103,807 | 96,941 | −6.61% |
| Domestic cargo (tonnes) | 27,562 | 25,926 | −5.94% |
Source: SCS, Q2 2026 Investor Newsletter ("SCSC BẢN TIN NHÀ ĐẦU TƯ QUÝ 2 NĂM 2026")
SCS's Q2 2026 bulletin also runs a forward scenario for a separate, newer risk: a Houthi blockade threat against Saudi Arabia.
6. The ESOP: A Contested Vote, Years in the Making
SCS's 2026 AGM approved a new employee stock ownership plan. The literal filed numbers, not a rough approximation: 1,020,700 new shares issued at VND 10,000 par (issued at par, not below it), taking total shares outstanding from 102,076,982 to 103,097,682 (including 7,190,000 non-voting preferred shares held by 41 Aircraft Repairing Co., Ltd.), a ratio SCS's own filing states as 1.0% (1,020,700/102,076,982 rounds to that). The tranche was distributed to 165 employees and completed on 12 June 2026, confirmed by the State Securities Commission on 23 June 2026.
Source: SCS, Report on Results of Share Issuance under the ESOP, No. SCSC26/UBCK/BC/340 (16 Jun 2026); Board Resolution No. SCSC26/HĐQT/NQ/04 (11 May 2026); State Securities Commission Official Dispatch No. 5745/UBCK-QLCB (23 Jun 2026); AGM Resolution No. SCSC26/ĐHĐCĐ/NQ/01 (28 Apr 2026).
This isn't SCS's first ESOP, and the company's own board resolutions and SSC filings let me trace the full history back to 2017. It is not a yearly program: over roughly nine years, six tranches actually completed, and one planned tranche didn't.
| Completed | Shares | Ratio | Price/share | AGM authorization |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Nov 2017 | 533,700 (533,772 planned) | 1.08% | 10,000 (par) | 2017 AGM |
| 23 Sep 2019 | 380,000 | 0.76% | 48,000 | 2018 & 2019 AGM |
| Jun 2020 | 380,000 | 0.75% | 32,000 | 2018 AGM |
| Apr 2023 | 500,000 (505,000 planned) | 0.5% | 25,000 | 2021 AGM ("tranche 1") |
| Apr 2024 | 507,800 | 0.5% | 23,100 | 2021 AGM ("tranche 2") |
| Not completed | 1,020,700 planned | 1.0% | 11,970 | 2024 AGM ("tranche 1, 2025–2027") |
| Jun 2026 | 1,020,700 | 1.0% | 10,000 (par) | 2026 AGM |
Sources: SCS board resolutions and SSC filings for each tranche, 2017–2026 (see sources list below). The 2023 actual is back-solved from the share-count reconciliation between consecutive filings, not a dedicated completion report; the 2017 and 2023 shortfalls versus the planned figures both match SCS's standard rounding-down of individual allocations (per the company's ESOP regulations), not an error.
The 2019 and 2020 rows are two separate board resolutions, not one delayed tranche, nine months apart. The 2019 tranche (SCSC19/HĐQT/NQ/16, 17 Jul 2019) issued the full 380,000 shares to 66 employees at 48,000/share, confirmed complete by an SSC filing dated 23 Sep 2019, and is authorized jointly by the 2018 AGM (SCSC18/ĐHĐCĐ/NQ/01) and the 2019 AGM (SCSC19/ĐHĐCĐ/NQ/01, 14 May 2019). The 2020 tranche (SCSC20/HĐQT/NQ/03, 16 Apr 2020) issued another 380,000 shares at 32,000/share, authorized by the 2018 AGM alone and confirmed by a separate SSC letter dated June 2020.
The jump between the 2020 and 2023 rows also isn't a missed ESOP tranche. In August 2022, SCS issued 43,133,482 bonus shares (100:85) to all existing common shareholders, funded from retained earnings and reserves, not employee cash. 57,935,700 + 43,133,482 = 101,069,182, exactly the base the 2023 tranche was measured against.In May 2025, SCS's board approved a plan to issue the same 1,020,700 shares at VND 11,970 each, under a 2024-AGM-authorized "2025–2027" program targeted for Q2 2025. It never completed: the board resolution approving the eventual 2026 issuance states, in a standard disclosure field, that there had been no ESOP issuance "in the last 12 months" as of May 2026. The 2026 tranche was re-approved fresh by the 2026 AGM at a lower price (par, VND 10,000, versus the 11,970 set in 2025). No document explains why the 2025 plan lapsed or why the price changed.
Ratios haven't grown steadily: the largest on record is the earliest, 1.08% in 2017, dipping to a roughly flat 0.75–0.76% in 2019/2020, down further to 0.5% for both tranches under the 2021 authorization, before jumping back to 1.0% in 2026, just short of 2017, in a year that followed one with no issuance at all.
The 2026 vote count shows real dissent, and not only on the ESOP:
| Resolution | Approve | Disapprove |
|---|---|---|
| Profit distribution 2025 (50% cash dividend) | 77.71% | 22.28% |
| 2026 business plan | 99.94% | 0.05% |
| ESOP 2026 share issuance | 71.92% | 28.04% |
Source: SCS, Minutes of the 2026 AGM, vote-counting results (official filing).
A roughly 1.0% dilution, approved with 28% of voting shares against it, doesn't strike me as an entitlement being rubber-stamped, it's a real, contested decision, and the history above shows it's genuinely irregular: six completed rounds and one lapsed attempt across nine years, not a yearly ritual. This isn't a new complaint about this specific board, either: the 2017 AGM resolution that authorized SCS's first tranche in the trace above passed with only 81.67% approval and a striking 17.35% "no opinion," after a shareholder asked directly why the company hadn't run an ESOP in the prior four years, and the 2018 AGM's ESOP renewal cleared at almost the same margin, 83.73% approve, 16.25% "no opinion."
| Plan year | PBT target | Prior-year PBT actual |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 960bn | 939.63bn (2025) |
| 2025 | 860bn | 782.68bn (2024) |
Source: 2026 AGM Resolution (2026 plan, 2025 actual); 2025 AGM Resolution (2025 plan) vs. the 2026 minutes' 2025-actuals table (2024 actual). The 2025 plan implies a +9.9% increase over 2024's actual, not the "exactly 10.0%" sometimes claimed.
I read this as a board setting conservative targets, one of which (2025's, per the table above) was cleared by close to 9%, asking for a modest, occasional top-up to retain staff. Reasonable people can vote no on dilution regardless, and 28% of this AGM's shares did.7. The Balance Sheet: Why I Think SCS Gets Through This
At the April 2026 AGM, per the live meeting notes, the board described SCS's cash position in blunt terms:
SCS's own Q2 2026 financial statements back that up with an audited figure: cash and short-term bank deposits stood at ₫1,746.3bn (₫71.91bn cash + ₫1,674.40bn deposits) as at 30 June 2026, up from ₫1,583.84bn at the start of the year.
Source: SCS - Q2/2026 Snapshot (this site), audited against the Q2 2026 financial statements.
Bottom Line
The MOU with ACV is real and officially confirmed, but confidential and non-binding on outcome; treat it as a strong signal, not a won contract, and note that the official minutes describe the Lufthansa MRO plan as gated by two unresolved government approvals, not "ready to sign." The airline migration to Long Thanh, by ACV's own official plan, is gradual through late 2027, voluntary at the outset, so neither a smooth nor a delayed opening is likely to swing SCS's results sharply in the near term, which is my opinion for why the government's December 2026 date matters less than headlines suggest. The bigger, live risk is jet fuel costs and Middle East carrier disruption, which SCS's own investor bulletins document in more structural depth than the Long Thanh story, and which is already visible in both Q1 and H1 2026 volumes. Underneath all of it, SCS remains overwhelmingly cash-rich, and its 2026 ESOP, while real dilution and nearly the largest single tranche by ratio in the nine years of history reviewed here, was a contested vote (28% against) rather than a routine formality.