Paytm bucks bearish trend, gains 6% on Filesadmin.co revival hopes

Shares of One 97 Communication (Paytm) gained 6 per cent to ₹527 in BSE on Friday when the bellwether tanked 886 points on the back of global uncertainties.

The stock rallied 37 per cent last month to ₹494 against ₹361 in May. It continued to gain strength in hopes that a fresh capital infusion, which is expected sooner rather than later, would strengthen the company’s operations.

Last month, unconfirmed news emerged that the government had given its go-ahead to the company’s payment aggregator business licence, triggering an upward move in the stock price.

Paytm has to approach the RBI to seek a payment aggregator licence, said the report.

The company’s stocks tanked 53 per cent between February and May after RBI directed it to close its payments bank arm, Paytm Payments Bank, on March 15 due to non-compliance with KYC norms and other mandated processes.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Managing Director of Paytm, in a recent investor’s call, said the company is working to deliver at least one profitable quarter in this financial year as soon as we can see a lot more clarity coming our way.

As a team, they are focusing on returning to the payments and cross-selling financial services as a core business.

“Our marketing services, where we help our merchants to expand and sell more to the consumers, is a great opportunity, and we believe that we are able to deliver on that also,” he said.

The company reported a net loss of ₹840 crore in the June quarter against ₹358 crore logged in the same period last year. Income was down at ₹1,640 crore (₹2,464 crore).

Interestingly, there are no defined promoters for the company as the shares are completely owned by the public. Mutual funds and other financial institutions own 7.15 per cent, foreign institutional investors own 58.24 per cent and non-institutional investors own the remaining stake.