SoftBank to sell $215M worth shares in Paytm: Reports

Japanese multinational SoftBank is looking to sell $215 million worth of shares in payments company Paytm on Thursday, said media reports. This comes right after the lock-in period for investors in the company expired on November 15, a year after it debuted on the public markets and with a valuation of $18.7 billion. 

According to Bloomberg, BofA Securities has been appointed as the banker for the block deal, with share prices ranging from Rs 555 to Rs 601. SoftBank is expected to sell 29 million shares in Paytm. This is at an up to 7.7% discount at the lower end of range from the closing price of Paytm on Wednesday, which stood at Rs 601.55 per share on BSE. 

AntFin Holding BV, the Netherlands based entity of Alibaba’s fintech arm Ant Financial, is the largest shareholder in Paytm with 24.9% stake in the company, followed by SoftBank Vision Fund which holds 17.5% shares in the company. 

SoftBank Vision Fund I had invested $1.4 billion in Paytm, starting 2017, and had managed to cash out $220 million to $250 million during the company’s IPO last year. In May 2022, SoftBank Group Corp said that Paytm’s poor performance in the public markets had caused a loss of $600 million to its Vision Fund I portfolio for the fiscal ended March 31, 2022.

For the quarter ended June 30, 2022, SoftBank marked down its investment in Paytm by $400 million. The fair value of SoftBank’s investments in Paytm stood at nearly $1 billion as per statements from June 2022. 

Paytm shares have lost nearly 72% over the year, compared to its issue price of Rs 2,150. For the quarter ending September 2022, Paytm widened its consolidated losses to Rs 571 crore, compared to Rs 472.90 crore in the year-ago period. The company’s revenue from operations jumped 76% to Rs 1,914 crore on a year-on-year basis. 

(The article was updated to clarify discount.)