Paytm Stake Sell: Ant Group To Offload 4% Stake For Rs 2,600 Cr After Fintech Firm Narrows Q4 Losses - Reports

Paytm Stake Sell: Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is set to sell a 4% stake in payments firm Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd) for around Rs 2,627 crore ($242 million), according to a term sheet seen by Reuters.

The shares will be offloaded at Rs 809.75 apiece, a 6.5% discount to Paytm’s closing price on Monday. The buyers of this stake have not yet been disclosed.

Investment banks Goldman Sachs India Securities and Citigroup Global Markets India are leading the sale. Neither Ant Group nor Paytm have commented on the transaction yet.

Paytm Past Stake Sale

This move follows a string of major investor exits from Paytm in recent years:

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had acquired a 2.6% stake at Rs 1,279.70/share for about Rs 2,179 crore ($318 million). It exited in November 2023 at a loss, selling shares at an average of Rs 877.29, realising Rs 1,370.63 crore ($200 million).

Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund also exited in the June 2024 quarter with an estimated loss of $150 million. SoftBank had invested about $1.5 billion in 2017 and held a 18.5% stake pre-IPO. Its SVF Panther unit sold its entire stake during the 2021 IPO for Rs 1,689 crore ($225 million).

Ant Group had earlier offloaded a 10.3% stake in August 2023 to Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

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Paytm Q4 Results FY25

Paytm reported a consolidated loss of Rs 545 crore for the January–March 2025 quarter, down from Rs 551 crore in the same period last year. However, this includes a notional loss of Rs 522 crore ($48 million) largely due to an ESOP expense stemming from Sharma voluntarily surrendering 2.1 crore ESOP shares.

Revenue from operations declined 15.7% YoY to Rs 1,911.5 crore ($176 million) in Q4 FY25, and FY25 revenue dropped by 31% YoY to Rs 6,900 crore ($636 million) from Rs 9,977.8 crore in FY24.

Excluding this exceptional item, Paytm's net loss narrowed to just Rs 23 crore ($2.1 million). The company also reported an operational profit of Rs 81 crore ($7.5 million) after excluding ESOP costs.

"Paytm's PAT has improved by Rs 185 crore quarter-over-quarter to negative Rs 23 crore in Q4 FY25, excluding a one-time exceptional ESOP charge of Rs 522 crore," the company said.

Employee costs were also down by nearly 33% YoY to Rs 748.3 crore ($69 million), attributed in part to the use of AI to reduce non-sales workforce expenses.