Quang Nguyen seems a bit like a renaissance man. He has a background in media and was a bit of a TV personality back in the 90s on a science show which I think was for kids. He said people still recognise his face and voice. He also has a lot to do with Vietnam's orchestra as a vice chairman, and his wife is a pro violinist. I would conclude that he is very well respected in Vietnam by both the government and the people, and I think this is very important. He attended Monash University and has an engineering degree from there. His MBA is from Manly Institute, I think. He is an Australian citizen but has been back in his home nation of Vietnam for the past 30 years. He actually came out of retirement to help BSX with this project because it excited him so much.
The ESG stuff was touched upon first and it was well established that BSX is doing right by the provincial communities. They are training local people in drilling and providing official education certificates to help develop careers for local people. And with the importance of ESG moving forward we can see that BSX has been on the ball with this from the get go, which not only shows fantastic foresight but more importantly highlights that BSX has an active conscience and wants to enrich the local community, as Quang stated these provinces can reap some significant benefits from working alongside BSX.
One of the major takeaways from the interview was that Vietnam was a welcoming region for foreign investment and, in fact, they rely upon it to help propel them into the next phase of their national growth. Quang made a point of stating the Vietnamese government are not authoritarian like other nations with socialist governments. He also inferred the Vietnamese government are not interested in jeopardising these foreign investment relationships which have been established over many years. My takeaway here is in line with what SW mentioned about Vietnam's GDP having a wonderful opportunity to grow, quickly, over the coming years, almost like a mini version of what China experienced a while back.
He also discussed Vinfast briefly and mentioned that two South Korean companies were currently touring the mine sites virtually, one of which was certainly Samsung, if I heard him correctly. Now, the Vinfast mention was NOT a general 'name drop', which SW has done casually on many occasions when discussing the region and what is happening there. Quang definitively stated: "We are going to partner with local companies like Vinfast". This is vastly (no pun intended) different from the allusions and inferences SW had been using to hint at the potential connections. Now, perhaps Quang was just being over-zealous, which is very possible, but my takeaway from this was more about 'vertical integration' strategies which seem to be taking place all over the world now when it comes to EV production. It only makes sense that a locally beloved company like Vingroup (and Vinfast) would have the favor of the government and the people.
Noel also asked about how confident Quang was about the mine, and proceeding forward with the operation as a whole. Quang said it wasn't "100%" yet, and there was still a lot of work to be done. He cited that some laws will require updating and how BSX is working with the government to address these issues/concerns to keep moving forward.
As to why the interview was taken down, I just don't know really, could be the language thing as I had stated in a previous post. I'm relatively new to this whole thing and I've been using BSX as my personal case study for learning and understanding mining stocks, so I apologise for my noobism in advance.
Overall, it was a super positive interview and it just reinforced for me that BSX is doing big things and attracting more than just attention from some of the big players in this EV revolution. If you want to know anything else let me know and I'll try and remember what was said.
Expand
(20min delay)