India’s mutual funds now own a 6.15% stake in One97 Communications Ltd., parent company of payments aggregator Paytm, as per the company’s latest shareholding pattern on BSE.
They owned a 4.99% stake at the end of the December quarter, which back thenl, was the highest in the company’s history.
The increase comes despite the shares of Paytm falling as much as 50% during the January-March period to an all-time low of ₹318 before staging a minor recovery. Yet, the stock saw losses of 37% at the end of the March quarter.
Interestingly, while the mutual fund shareholding in Paytm increased, the number of funds that held stake declined. Currently, 18 funds hold stake in Paytm, compared to the 23 funds that had holdings at the end of December last year.
Nippon Mutual Funds and Mirae Mutual Funds, both existing shareholders of Paytm, have increased their stake during the March quarter.
Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) have also increased their holdings in Paytm during the March quarter. As per the BSE categorisation, “Foreign Portfolio Investors Category I,” which held a 17.69% stake in the company in December, now own 20.19% stake.
Some funds whose names appeared in the recent shareholding data and have a stake in excess of 1% include Tiger Pacific Master Fund, Goldman Sachs, Government Pension Fund Global among others.
cumulative Foreign Institutional Ownership, that figure has come down from 63.72% in December to 60.4% in March. That is because, SVF India Holdings, a SoftBank entity pared stake in the company during the quarter via block deals. From a 6.46% stake in the December quarter, SVF India Holdings (Cayman) Ltd. is now left with a 1.4% stake.
Paytm’s shares took a beating during the March quarter after the Reserve Bank of India barred Paytm Payments Bank from undertaking any banking activities ranging from deposits, to credit transactions to top ups from February 29, a date that was later extended to March 15.
In other developments, One97 Communications informed the exchanges on Tuesday that Surinder Chawla, the MD & CEO of Paytm Payments Bank has quit, citing personal reasons and better career opportunities.
Shares of Paytm ended 2% lower on Tuesday at ₹404.50. The stock is now down 81% from its IPO price of ₹2,150.