Alibaba Group has sold its final share in Indian digital payment company, Paytm, for approximately INR 13.78 billion ($167.14 million) via a block deal. The sale took place days after Paytm reported its first ever quarterly operating profit as a listed firm, ahead of its own target by nine months. Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce Pvt Ltd sold 21.4 million shares of Paytm at a price of INR 642.74 each, a 9% discount from the previous close, as shown by NSE stock exchange data. Paytm’s stock dropped 8% on the day to close at INR 650.55, but it has still risen nearly 23% this year. Morgan Stanley Asia (Singapore) Pte purchased 5.42 million shares of Paytm at INR 640 on Friday, according to the data. The reason behind Alibaba’s decision to sell its stake is unclear, as both Paytm and Alibaba did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. In January, Alibaba sold a 3.1% stake in the company worth $125 million via a block deal. Before that, the Chinese firm had a 6.26% stake in Paytm. Paytm, which is also supported by Ant Group of China and SoftBank Group Corp of Japan, has been facing pressure to become profitable following its listing in November 2021. The stock has declined 70% since its listing and 60% in 2022. However, earlier this week, Macquarie Research upgraded the stock to “outperform” from “underperform” and increased the price target by 80% to INR 800. According to Macquarie analyst Suresh Ganapathy, “We see a very visible change in approach by the management to deliver profits, as evidenced by the recent core EBITDA profitability. We were previously expecting losses to continue, but with the current rate of revenues and operating leverage, we expect accounting profits to be delivered by FY26.”
Alibaba exits from Paytm
