Alibaba exits India’s Paytm, promoting shares for $167 million
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BENGALURU (Reuters) -China’s Alibaba Group has offered its remaining stake in Indian digital funds agency Paytm for about 13.78 billion rupees ($167.14 million) via a block deal, inventory trade knowledge confirmed on Friday.
The exit comes days after Paytm posted its first-ever quarterly working revenue as a listed agency, 9 months forward of its personal goal.
Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce Pvt Ltd offered 21.4 million shares of Paytm on Friday at 642.74 rupees apiece, a 9% low cost to Thursday’s shut, NSE inventory trade knowledge confirmed.
Paytm’s inventory tumbled almost 8% on Friday to shut at 650.55 rupees, however it’s nonetheless up almost 23% to date this yr.
Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte purchased 5.42 million shares of Paytm at 640 rupees on Friday, the information confirmed.
It was not instantly clear why Alibaba offered the stake. Paytm and Alibaba didn’t instantly reply to Reuters requests for remark.
In January, Alibaba offered a 3.1% stake within the firm via a block deal price $125 million. Earlier than that, the Chinese language agency had a 6.26% stake in Paytm.
Paytm, which can also be backed by China’s Ant Group and Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp, has been below stress to show worthwhile ever since its dismal itemizing in November 2021.
The inventory has declined round 70% since itemizing, and tumbled 60% in 2022.
Earlier this week, Macquarie Analysis double-upgraded the inventory to “outperform” from “underperform”, and bumped up the worth goal by round 80% to 800 rupees.
“Maybe the final bear on the inventory on promote aspect, we alter our view and we double improve PayTM to outperform,” Macquarie analyst Suresh Ganapathy mentioned.
“We see a really seen change in method of the administration to ship income as evidenced by core EBIDTA profitability reported lately. We have been earlier anticipating losses to proceed however at present fee of revenues and working leverage kicking in, we count on accounting income to be delivered by FY26.”
($1 = 82.4480 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Dimpal Gulwani and Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Enhancing by Devika Syamnath)
