Shares of Paytm’s parent firm One 97 Communications Ltd fell over 10 per cent on Thursday after SoftBank Group Corp of Japan sold 4.5 per cent stake in the company through a block deal.
The stock of the digital payments company closed 10.31 per cent down at Rs 539.55 per share on the BSE. On the NSE, it fell 10.78 per cent to end at Rs 536.6 per share.
The stock opened weak at Rs 563.25 on the BSE compared to previous close of Rs 601.55 apiece. It touched a day’s low of Rs 535.2 and a high of Rs 565.5 on the BSE.
SoftBank’s SVF India Holdings (Cayman) Ltd offloaded about 29.4 million of shares, or 4.5 per cent stake, in One 97 communications for about $200 million. It offered to sell shares at Rs 556 per share, sources said. Societe Generale – ODI, Morgan Stanley Asia Singapore PTE and BOFA Securities Europe SA were among the buyers of SoftBank’s stake in Paytm, sources said.
A block deal is defined as a single trade in which shares more than or equal to 5 lakh or a value greater than Rs 5 crore are traded.
SoftBank’s sale of 29.4 million shares in Paytm is led by Bank of America, according to the term sheet for the transaction. The sale came a day after the lock-in period for investors in Paytm’s November 2021 IPO closed.
As on September 30, SVF India Holdings held a 17.45 per cent stake in the company. It is the second largest shareholder in the company after Antfin (Netherlands) Holdings B V, which owned 24.88 per cent stake as of September end, according to the information on the BSE. In the quarter ended September 2022, Paytm’s net loss widened to Rs 571 crore from a loss of Rs 474 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal. Its revenue from operations grew 76 per cent to Rs 1,914 crore in the period.
The sale is the latest in a string of divestments that SoftBank has made in the past few months after its flagship Vision Fund unit booked nearly $50 billion in losses in just six months. SoftBank raised $2.4 billion selling shares in T-Mobile US earlier this year.
