Report summary

We prioritize consumer staples stocks over discretionary stocks in 2025 for the following reasons:

• Although consumer confidence may improve slightly, Vietnamese consumers still appear cautious. Economic pressures such as moderate inflation and interest rates, along with the depreciation of the VND, are expected to persist into 2025.
• We expect consumer staples products to benefit more from the growth of tourism, the popularity of convenience store chains, and the growth of consumer credit (driven by small consumer loans). Consumer staples products are also less affected by the aftermath of Yagi storm in 2024.
• Many consumer discretionary stocks saw significant increases throughout 2024, while consumer staples stocks remained flat during the same period. As consumer discretionary stocks have reached high price levels, we predict that investors will begin to focus more on consumer staples stocks.

We anticipate that the VNCONS (consumer staples index) stocks will outperform the VNCOND (consumer discretionary index) stocks in 2025.We recommend VNM as a stock pick and assign an ACCUMULATE rating to VNM with a target price of VND 70,000 for the next 6 to 18 months, representing a +13.4% upside compared to the current trading price of VND 61,700 (reference price on January 9, 2024).

LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE REPORT: (EN) GTJASVN Research_Consumer Sector Outlook 2025_Jan 2025