China's Antfin offloads 4% stake in Paytm worth $246 million: report
13 May 2025, 02:10 PMAntfin, which holds a 9.85% stake in One 97 Communications, has been steadily reducing its holding. In Aug 2023, it transferred around 44% of its Paytm stake to CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
Arti Singh
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China's Alibaba-owned company Antfin, which holds 9.85% stake in One 97 Communications, has reportedly offloaded 4% stake in the fintech worth $246 million through block deals.
The sale, completed at a price of Rs 823.10 ($9.69) a share, was equivalent to a 4% stake in Paytm, and the final price was a 5% discount to Paytm's closing share price on Monday of Rs 866.05 rupees, according to a term sheet reviewed by Reuters.
Antfin, the second largest shareholder in One 97 Communications, has been gradually reducing its stake in Paytm as part of regulatory pressures. In August 2023, Ant Group transferred about 44% of its stake in One 97 Communications to founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, a move seen as an effort to reduce the Chinese company’s ownership in the fintech giant.
Resilient Asset Management BV, an overseas entity owned by Sharma, had acquired the ownership and voting rights of 10.3% of the stake in the company held by Antfin (Netherlands), a unit of Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial. With this transaction, Sharma became Paytm's largest shareholder.
After the August 2023 transaction, a top Paytm official had told the author of this story at the time that Antfin’s equity in Paytm had been converted into debt in Resilient, and Sharma would pay interest to Antfin on this until maturity. "Vijay has got enough timeline where he can arrange for the money and pay. Antfin is doing a favour on us, and the timeline is in the number of tens of years," the official had said.
This marks one of the major sell-offs in Paytm over the past two years. The Noida-based fintech has earlier seen exit of its two investors -- Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank Group.
Last week, One97 Communications announced its Q4 and FY25 financial results. The company reported an operating revenue of Rs 6,900 crore during FY25, down 31% year-on-year from Rs 9,978 crore reported in FY24.
The company reported a net loss of Rs 663 crore for the financial year FY25, down over 50% from Rs 1,422 crore loss reported during the same period last year.
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