Paytm Plans To Buy Back $103M In Shares After The Stock Price Fell

Indian digital payments giant Paytm is buying back up to $103 million worth of shares to stop its stock price from falling since it went public last year.

Paytm’s board of directors has approved a plan to buy up to 10.5 million shares at 810 rupees each. It is a 50% increase over Tuesday’s closing price but a 62% decrease from the IPO price of 2150 rupees in November 2021.

When Paytm went public on the Mumbai stock market, it was India’s biggest IPO. It raised about $2.5 billion, but shares fell by more than 27% on the first day and have kept going down since then.

Paytm was started in 2009 as a platform for digital payments. It has been at the forefront of India’s move to digital payments and has expanded into new areas, such as credit cards and wealth management, in recent years.

But making money has been challenging. The company had a net loss of 5.7 billion rupees for the quarter that ended in September, even though sales went up by 76%.

CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma says there has been clear business momentum over the past year, and we are ahead of schedule.

“Looking at the monetization opportunities in our core payment and credit business, we feel confident of generating healthy revenues and cash flows to invest in sales, marketing and technology.”