Paytm sees no impact from lock-in expiry

New Delhi: India's largest fintech company Paytm saw its mandatory lock-in expiry end on Tuesday, with 86 per cent of its shares becoming free to trade.

Trends showed that the lock-in expiry had minimal or no impact on the company's share price, which was trading at Rs. 637, down 0.2 per cent at 10:30 am.

In fact, details on BSE show that more shares were being bought than sold.

Paytm counts the likes of Warren Buffet, SoftBank, Elevation Capital, Alibaba as its long-term investors.

Top brokerage firms such as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, ICICI Securities, Dolat Analysis and Research Themes, and CITI have extended their confidence in Paytm's strong performance.

The company recently announced Q2 FY23 financials and had posted a 76 per cent yearly growth in revenue to Rs. 1,914 crore.

Meanwhile, the company's losses reduced by 11 per cent on a sequential basis. The company's contribution profit surged 224 per cent year-on-year to Rs. 843 crore.

Recently, in a shareholder letter, the founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, said: "We are now excited about the next year of our journey, as we get close to EBITDA profitability and free cash flow generation."

In fact, brokerages like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs expect Paytm to achieve its breakeven target ahead of September 2023.

On Monday, the company announced that it had disbursed 3.4 million loans in October, registering an yearly growth of 161 per cent.

The value of total loans disbursed in October grew to Rs. 3,056 Cr ($407 million, year-on-year growth of 387 per cent).

Paytm's leadership in offline payments strengthened further with its total merchant subscription devices deployed increasing to 5.1 million.