Japan’s investment management firm Softbank and China’s Jack Ma-backed Ant Group is considering selling stakes in One 97 Communications aka Paytm via a block deal. This comes after China’s Alibaba exited Paytm by selling its remaining stakes earlier this month.
According to Economic Times, both firms were in talks with Bharti Airtel founder-chairman Sunil Mittal with an offer to sell their stakes which later turned into a failure.
Paytm, ever since its IPO in late 2021, has been under pressure to turn profitable as its share price is down nearly 70 percent since listing (IPO prices: Rs. 2080 – Rs. 2150 per share). Paytm’s share price closed at Rs. 635.10 on Monday, as per the NSE stock exchange.
Alibaba.com Singapore e-commerce, after selling a 3.1 percent stake in the company in January this year, exited the company earlier this month by selling its remaining stake (21.4 million shares) in the digital payments firm at Rs. 642.74 apiece. The exit came after Paytm posted its first-ever quarterly operating profit as a listed firm.
And now Paytm’s largest stakeholder Ant Group with about 24.86 percent of stakes and Softbank with 13 percent are likely to offload their holdings in the market gradually as part of their plan to reduce their holdings in the firm.
