Mekong Capital sells portion of Vietnam restaurant chain stake

Vietnamese private equity firm Mekong Capital has partially exited its stake in Golden Gate Joint Stock Company, a restaurant chain operator.

The firm claimed a 3.6 time gross multiple return and an IRR of 72.2 per cent on the investment, made through its Mekong Enterprise Fund II.

Golden Gate operates a series of mushroom hotpot restaurants in Vietnam, launching with five restaurants under the brand name Ashima, and expanding last year with the launch of fast food version of the brand, named Kichi Kichi. The company had scaled up to 30 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Singapore by October 2010, with a target to expand to 50 by the end of 2011.

Mekong Capital managing partner Chris Freund said, “We are delighted with the performance of Golden Gate, which has grown from around 5 restaurants at the time we invested in April 2008 to around 30 presently. We remain very excited about the long term future of the company, but as a lot of value had been created in a short period, we saw this as an opportunity to realise some of our profits while maintaining a stake in the company.”

Earlier this year, Mekong invested $9.1m in real estate developer Nam Long.