Alibaba Group’s Antfin to sell 4% stake in Paytm

Antfin, an Alibaba Group entity, will divest a 4% stake in Indian fintech firm Paytm through a block deal on 13 May, according to a term sheet. 

The transaction, valued at about ₹2,066 crore, will be managed by Goldman Sachs (India) Securities and Citigroup Global Markets India, the term sheet filed with the National Stock Exchange showed. The offer floor price for sale of about 25.5 million shares has been set at ₹809.75 apiece, a 6.5% discount to Paytm’s parent One97 Communications Ltd’s closing price of ₹866.05 on the NSE on 12 May.

The issue includes a complete secondary sale of shares, with no primary funding raised by Paytm in the transaction, the document showed.

This comes at a time when Paytm’s stock has seen an upward trend. On 15 April, Mint reported that the shares of One97 have surged from ₹651 to ₹840 apiece over the past four weeks, delivering a 29% return.

During its latest quarterly result announcement on May 6, Paytm’s CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma forecasted that the company would turn profitable from the ongoing quarter, after the fintech firm recorded a loss of ₹539.8 crore in the quarter ended March, driven by certain one-time exceptional charges. 

Paytm’s consolidated revenue from operations in Q4 dropped 16% year-on-year (y-o-y) to ₹1,911.5 crore from ₹2,267.1 crore. Its revenue rose sequentially. Paytm earns most of its revenue from payment, financial, and marketing services.

Mint in April reported that the overall institutional ownership in Paytm, including both domestic and foreign entities, grew by approximately 1 percentage point sequentially to 69% in the fourth quarter of FY25. 

Domestic mutual funds have led this growth, increasing their stake by 1.9 percentage points, taking their overall shareholding to 13.1%. Meanwhile, foreign institutional participation saw a marginal decline of 0.8 percentage points in shareholding.

Earlier in April, Paytm announced that its founder Sharma has foregone 21 million employee stock options granted to him, worth over ₹1,800 crore, months after the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) issued show-cause notices over violation of rules on the grant of share-based employee benefits.