Alipay, the Chinese payments group, on Wednesday sold its entire stake in Zomato for Rs 3,336 crore through an open market transaction.
According to bulk deal data from the BSE, Alipay Singapore Pte Ltd offloaded 148,036,997 shares each of Zomato in two transactions at Rs 112.70 apiece. Details of the buyers were not available. Alipay held close to 3.50 per cent of Zomato and with the stake sale, it has fully exited the company.
In October, SoftBank of Japan sold 1.1 per cent of Zomato in a block deal worth Rs 1040 crore.
Shares of Zomato which have performed well this year were unperturbed from the Alipay sale. It ended at Rs 116.60, a gain of 2.55 per cent over the last close.
Zomato had reported a consolidated profit after tax of Rs 36 crore for the second quarter ended September 2023, driven by strong revenue growth. It had posted a loss of Rs 251 crore for the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year.
Revenue from operations was Rs 2,848 crore in the quarter as against Rs 1,661 crore in the year-ago period.
In a letter to shareholders, the company said that its quick commerce business (Blinkit) has turned contribution positive for the first time, for the entire quarter. The contribution margin as a percentage of gross order value (GOV) in the business improved from -7.3 per cent in the second quarter of the last fiscal (when it acquired the business) to 1.3 per cent in the July-September quarter of 2024.
