With arguably the best EBITDA margin among Asian beverage chains, what could the Q1 2027 listing be worth? Our read on the multiple, the comps, and the turnaround that sets up the story.
Key takeaways
- The event: Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC), which holds 60% of parent SuperFoods Group, has confirmed Highlands Coffee’s board is evaluating a Vietnam IPO targeted for Q1 2027.
- The edge: A ~22% EBITDA margin (Koru est., FY24) — best-in-class among Asian beverage chains — delivered on an ~85% owned-store base, not a franchise-light model.
- The story: A same-store sales turnaround from −12.3% (Q3’23) to +17.2% (Q3’25) proves the unit economics work at scale.
- The number: At 12–14x FY27E EBITDA, Koru’s illustrative exercise implies VND 18–21tn (US$680–795m), or roughly VND 36,000–42,000 per share — with the company likely to push for a high-teen multiple.
JFC has confirmed that Highlands Coffee is evaluating an initial public offering, with the board targeting a Vietnam listing in the first quarter of 2027. Fifteen years after JFC first invested, the chain has gone from 56 to 985 stores — an 18x expansion that has quietly built Vietnam’s largest coffee chain by store count. Bloomberg has reported a target raise of up to US$400 million, with Morgan Stanley and Ho Chi Minh City Securities (HSC) engaged as advisers. Here is how we view the upcoming IPO.
A best-in-class margin profile among Asian beverage chains
Highlands’ EBITDA margin of roughly 22% (FY24, Koru estimate) sits at the top of the Asian beverage-chain peer set. What makes the number unusual is not just its level but how it is earned: franchise-heavy comparables such as Mixue post similar margins, but Highlands delivers this on an ~85% owned-store base. That is materially harder to do — and, we would argue, more durable, because the economics are real rather than a function of upfront franchise fees.
The pre-IPO turnaround is the real story
The headline margin is the backdrop; the turnaround is the plot. Highlands has reinvented its same-store growth engine over the past two years, swinging from a deep decline to clear positive momentum heading into the listing window.
Crucially, the recovery shows up at the unit level too. EBITDA per store fell about 6% in 2024, but the company turned that around to roughly +1.5% versus the same quarter a year earlier in Q3 2025. Against a genuinely challenging year for Vietnam’s F&B sector, that is a strong outcome — and the clearest evidence that the unit economics hold as the network scales.
What could the Highlands Coffee IPO be worth?
With the IPO clock ticking, we ran a prediction exercise on the implied equity value. At 12–14x FY27E EBITDA, the business screens at roughly VND 18–21 trillion (US$680–795 million), squarely in HOSE upper-mid-cap territory. Layered against a typical mid-cap share count of around 500 million shares, that implies an IPO price of roughly VND 36,000–42,000 per share.
Given its dominant position and growth narrative in Vietnam, we believe the company will likely seek a richer valuation, plausibly a high-teen multiple. But with a bumpy capital-markets backdrop and a heavy IPO pipeline ahead, pricing power and timing will decide how much of that the market is willing to pay. The full comp set, multiple selection, and underlying assumptions are unpacked in our supporting analysis.
Buy on IPO day, or fade? And where do you anchor the multiple?
Our base case treats Highlands as a scarce, category-defining consumer asset in a capital market hungry for quality F&B exposure — but one listing into a crowded pipeline. Where you land on the multiple ultimately depends on how much credit you give the owned-store margin profile versus the cyclical risk in Vietnam consumer spending.
