BENGALURU: of China alibaba The group sold its remaining stake in the Indian digital payments company pay for about 13.78 billion rupees ($167.14 million) through a block deal, stock exchange data showed on Friday.
The pullout comes days after Paytm posted its first quarterly operating profit as a listed company, nine months ahead of its own target.
Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce Pvt Ltd sold 21.4 million shares of Paytm on Friday for Rs 642.74 per share, down 9% from Thursday’s closing price, exchange data NSE securities showed.
Shares of Paytm fell nearly 8% on Friday to close at Rs 650.55 crore, but it is still up nearly 23% so far this year.
Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte bought 5.42 million shares of Paytm for Rs 640 crore on Friday, data shows.
It is not clear why Alibaba is selling the shares. Paytm and Alibaba did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In January, Alibaba sold a 3.1% stake in the company through a block deal worth $125 million. Prior to that, the Chinese company had a 6.26% stake in Paytm.
Paytm, also supported by China Ant’s nest and of Japan SoftBank Corporationhas been under pressure to be profitable since its dismal listing in November 2021.
Shares have fallen about 70% since listing and are down 60% by 2022.
Earlier this week, Macquarie Research doubled the stock to “outperform” from “underperform” and raised its price target by around 80% to Rs 800 crore.
“Perhaps the last drop in stock on the sell side, we changed our mind and we doubled PayTM to perform better,” said Macquarie analyst Suresh Ganapathy.
“We see a very clear shift in management’s approach to profitability, as evidenced by the recently reported core EBIDTA profits. We previously predicted losses would continues but at the current rate of revenue and operating leverage, we expect to deliver an accounting profit by FY26.”
The pullout comes days after Paytm posted its first quarterly operating profit as a listed company, nine months ahead of its own target.
Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce Pvt Ltd sold 21.4 million shares of Paytm on Friday for Rs 642.74 per share, down 9% from Thursday’s closing price, exchange data NSE securities showed.
Shares of Paytm fell nearly 8% on Friday to close at Rs 650.55 crore, but it is still up nearly 23% so far this year.
Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte bought 5.42 million shares of Paytm for Rs 640 crore on Friday, data shows.
It is not clear why Alibaba is selling the shares. Paytm and Alibaba did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
In January, Alibaba sold a 3.1% stake in the company through a block deal worth $125 million. Prior to that, the Chinese company had a 6.26% stake in Paytm.
Paytm, also supported by China Ant’s nest and of Japan SoftBank Corporationhas been under pressure to be profitable since its dismal listing in November 2021.
Shares have fallen about 70% since listing and are down 60% by 2022.
Earlier this week, Macquarie Research doubled the stock to “outperform” from “underperform” and raised its price target by around 80% to Rs 800 crore.
“Perhaps the last drop in stock on the sell side, we changed our mind and we doubled PayTM to perform better,” said Macquarie analyst Suresh Ganapathy.
“We see a very clear shift in management’s approach to profitability, as evidenced by the recently reported core EBIDTA profits. We previously predicted losses would continues but at the current rate of revenue and operating leverage, we expect to deliver an accounting profit by FY26.”
