According to sources who spoke with CNBC-Awaaz on March 5, Antfin Singapore Holdings Pte, the Chinese subsidiary of Ant Group, is anticipated to sell up to 2% of Zomato (17.64 crore shares) for Rs 2,800 crore in a block sale. According to the channel, the floor price for the block transaction is set at Rs 159.4 per share, which is 4% less than the current Zomato stock market price.
Zomato’s shares on the BSE ended the day 1.8% down at Rs 166.8 on Tuesday. On Monday, the meal delivery platform’s shares reached a new high as rising profitability opened the door for further expansion and caused the market mood to shift. Zomato, with a market valuation of Rs 1.4 lakh crore, is the most valuable new-age IT firm in India.
Zomato’s Rapid Commerce Business Set to Drive Growth with Positive EBITDA Outlook
Investors see Blinkit, Zomato’s rapid commerce business that it purchased in 2022, as the company’s next growth lever and anticipate that it will provide EBITDA-positive results in the upcoming fiscal year. Due to the consistent performance of its core business and the rapid expansion of fast commerce, Zomato announced last month that it had made a consolidated net profit of Rs 138 crore for the third quarter that concluded on December 31, 2023. In the same fiscal quarter before this one, the business reported a combined net loss of Rs 347 crore.
The total amount of income generated by operations was Rs 3,288 crore. It claimed that a year earlier, it was valued at Rs 1,948 crore. The whole cost came to Rs 3,383 crore, which was more. According to the corporation, the same stood at Rs 2,485 crore during the same time last year. Zomato Managing Director & CEO Deepinder Goyal stated in a letter to shareholders that the food delivery Gross Order Value (GOV) growth returned to 25% Year-on-Year (YoY) in the third quarter.
About Ant Group
A subsidiary of the Chinese corporation Alibaba Group is Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial. With over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants served, the firm controls the largest mobile (digital) payment platform in the world, Alipay, whose total payment volume (TPV) is expected to surpass CN¥118 trillion by June 2020. It is the world’s second-biggest financial services company, only after Visa. According to a Wall Street Journal story from March 2019, Ant’s flagship Tianhong Yu’e Bao money-market fund has more than 588 million users more than a third of China’s population contributing money to make it the largest in the world.
The Wall Street Journal revealed on April 12, 2021, that Ant Group will become a financial holding company governed by the People’s Bank of China as a result of pressure from the Chinese government. With the intention of expanding the business’s investing activities in India and Southeast Asia, the company announced in November 2019 that it was seeking $1 billion for a new fund. The fund is intended to give firms late-stage capital, according to media sources.
