Alibaba exiting India? Paytm among other Alibaba-owned stocks seeing selloff

• Paytm's stocks saw a sharp downside movement after a block deal that took place where 259,930 shares were sold.
• Sources have confirmed that Chinese group Alibaba is behind the block deal.
• According to sources, Alibaba seems to be making an exit from India as it had sold shares in other investments as well
  

Paytm's stocks on Thursday saw a sharp downside movement after a block deal that took place where 259,930 shares were sold.

The shares were sold at Rs 535.90 worth Rs 13.93 crore.

Sources have confirmed that Chinese group Alibaba is behind the block deal, thereby selling about 3.1 per cent of its total
equity of about 6 per cent. With this block deal, Alibaba, the sources said, seems to be making an exit from India as it had sold shares in other investments such as BigBasket and Zomato.

This is expected to bring cheers among investors. With Chinese shareholding reducing their stake, it will benefit the company in their Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) aspect.

Paytm shares' intraday low was Rs 528.10. In fact, immediately after the block deal it soon recovered some part of the losses.

Paytm's shares had been steadily rising for the past few days after there were several good news floating about the company. Its associate Paytm Payments Bank has received RBI approval to appoint Surinder Chawla as its Managing Director and CEO.

The company had posted a strong operating performance update for the October-December quarter.

The Paytm Super App continued to see growing consumer engagement with the average Monthly Transacting User for the quarter that ended December 2022 at 85 million, registering a growth of 32 per cent on a yearly basis.

The total merchant Gross Merchandise Value processed through the platform for the quarter ended December 2022 aggregated to Rs 3.46 lakh crore (USD 42 billion), marking a year-on-year growth of 38 per cent.

The number of loans grew 117 per cent yearly to 3.7 million for the month of December, and 137 per cent to 10.5 million cumulative loans for the three months ended December 2022.

As a result, total disbursements for the three months ended December 2022 was Rs 9,958 crore, a growth of 357 per cent on year.

Paytm believes it continues to be on track for its profitability plans, with robust revenue growth driven by its strong business model.

Meanwhile, brokerage and global investment firm Morgan Stanley, in a report, pegged Paytm's shares target price to be at Rs 695 going ahead as against Rs 579 at Wednesday's close. It essentially means there is an upside potential of about 20 per cent returns on investment for investors.

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