Paytm shares zoom 6% on Q4 business update

Shares of fintech major Paytm zoomed 6 per cent to hit an intraday high of Rs 648.95 after the company released its operating metrics for the fourth quarter.

Currently, the stock is still down 67 per cent from its all-time high of Rs 1,961.05. It opened 1 per cent lower at Rs 602.55 against the previous close of Rs 609.30 on the BSE. With a market capitalisation of Rs 41,890 crore, the shares stand higher than 5 day and 20 day moving averages but lower than 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO, believes that the company should be operating EBITDA breakeven in next 6 quarters (i.e. EBITDA before ESOP cost, and by the quarter ending September 2023), well ahead of estimates by most analysts.

"Against the backdrop of volatile market conditions for high growth stocks globally, our shares are down significantly from the IPO price," Sharma added.

He said that the entire Paytm team is committed to build a large, profitable company and to create long-term shareholder value. Aligned with this, my stock grants will be vested to me only when our market cap has crossed the IPO level on a sustained basis, he added.

The company also said that the lending business has scaled to 6.5 million loan disbursals, which is a 374 per cent on-year growth, during the quarter ended March. This aggregates to a total loan value of Rs 3,553 crore, which is a year-on-year growth of 417 per cent.

The offline payments business has accelerated by 90,000 devices this quarter, taking the total number of deployed devices to 2.9 million in three years.

Also, the total merchant payment volume (GMV) processed through the platform during the fourth quarter of FY 2022 aggregated to approximately INR 2.59 Lakh Cr ($34.5 billion), marking a year-on-year growth of 104 per cent.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led One 97 Communications made a tepid debut on November 18 last year. The scrip got listed at a discount of 9.30 per cent at Rs 1,950 on the NSE against the issue price of Rs 2,150 per share.