INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
BENGALURU: Chinas Alibaba Group has actually offered its remaining stake in Indian digital payments firm Paytm for about 13.78 billion
rupees ($167.14 million) through a block offer, stock market information showed on Friday
The exit comes days after Paytm posted its first-ever quarterly operating earnings as a noted company, nine months ahead of its own target
Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce Pvt Ltd sold 21.4 million shares of Paytm on Friday at 642.74 rupees each, a 9% discount to Thursdays
close, NSE stock market information revealed
Paytms stock tumbled nearly 8% on Friday to close at 650.55 rupees, however it is still up almost 23% so far this year
Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte purchased 5.42 million shares of Paytm at 640 rupees on Friday, the data revealed
It was not instantly clear why Alibaba sold the stake
Paytm and Alibaba did not right away react to Reuters requests for remark
In January, Alibaba offered 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, which is likewise backed by Chinas Ant Group and Japans SoftBank Group Corp, has been under pressure to turn lucrative ever since its
dismal listing in November 2021
The stock has actually decreased around 70% because listing, and toppled 60% in 2022
Previously this week, Macquarie Research double-upgraded the stock to exceed from underperform , and bumped up the price target by around
Perhaps the last bear on the stock on sell side, we change our view and we double upgrade PayTM to outperform, Macquarie analyst Suresh
We see a really visible modification in technique of the management to deliver earnings as evidenced by core EBIDTA profitability reported
We were earlier expecting losses to continue but at existing rate of profits and operating take advantage of kicking in, we anticipate
accounting revenues to be delivered by FY26
