Business News. Uber Technologies on Wednesday sold its entire 7.78 per cent stake in Zomato in a bulk deal on the BSE in which two institutional investors – Fidelity and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance – bought stakes in the new-age stock.
Uber sold 61.22 crore shares of Zomato, that it had earned in 2020 by selling Uber Eats in an all-stock deal, today at a price of Rs 50.44 per share.
Fidelity’s emerging market fund bought 5.44 crore shares of Zomato today in the bulk deal at an average price of Rs 50.26. ICICI Prudential NSE 1.06 % Life Insurance bought 4.5 crore shares at Rs 50.25 per share.
Zomato’s June quarter shareholding pattern shows that Uber owned 7.78 per cent stake in the company by owning 61.22 crore shares.
Earlier in the day, Reuters reported that the list of buyers included around 20 global and Indian funds, including Franklin Templeton, in the transaction done through BofA Securities.
Zomato shares have lost over 60 per cent of its value this year. The company reported Rs 185.7 crore in consolidated loss for the quarter ending June 30, compared to a loss of Rs 359.7 crore in the previous quarter.
The consolidated revenue saw 67 per cent YoY increase at Rs 1,413.9 crore from Rs 844.4 crore in the same quarter last year.
Zomato Co-founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said they were never chasing growth at any cost.
“Spending unnecessarily is a short-term market share gain tactic which does not really last and we do not want to chase that anymore,” he told ET NOW.
The company is now aiming EBITDA breakeven by the second quarter of FY24. Amid the large deals, Zomato shares slipped down by 9.6 per cent to the day’s low at Rs 50.25, before closing flat.
Uber’s exit comes after the mandatory one-year lock-in for promoters, employees and other shareholders of Zomato who bought the stock before the IPO ended on July 23, 2021, ended recently.
Earlier on July 26, Zomato’s pre-IPO investor Moore Strategic Ventures had exited at a loss by selling 4.25 crore shares at an average price of Rs 44.
While founder Deepinder Goyal owns only 4.69 per cent in Zomato, other large investors include Info Edge (15.17 per cent), Alipay (7.10 per cent) and Antfin (7 per cent). Retail investors, as represented by those with investments up to Rs 2 lakh in the stock, own about 4.4 per cent.
With the drop in stock price, retail investors have been lapping up the stock. Giving Zomato’s example, Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath had recently said that every time the prices of retail favorite stocks fall, the number of investors who buy the stock goes up dramatically. “We saw this with Yes bank, Reliance ADAG stocks, and now with Zomato,” he had said.
