Temasek buys stake in Zomato, Alibaba sells

By Staff Writer

  • 01 Dec 2022

Singapore state-owned investment company Temasek through its wholly-owned subsidiary Camas Investments Pte has picked-up stake in Zomato on Wednesday, November 30, 2022. On the same day, Alipay Singapore, an arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba sold stake in online food delivery aggregator for ₹1,631 crore through an open market transaction.

Camas Investments Pte, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek acquired 9.80 crore shares (constituting about 1.14% stake) of the company at an average price of ₹62, taking the transaction value to over ₹607 crore, as per the National Stock Exchange's (NSE) bulk deals data. Post the deal, the sovereign wealth fund's stake will increase to 4% in the company.

On the other hand, Alipay Singapore Holding Pte offloaded a total of 26,28,73,507 shares, amounting to 3.07% stake in the company. The shares were offloaded at an average price of ₹62.06 apiece, taking the transaction value to ₹1,631 crore. As of quarter ended September, Alibaba through its affiliates, Antfin Singapore Holding and Alipay Singapore Holding, owned nearly 13% stake in the company, data with the bourse showed.

The development comes months after Uber Technologies sold its 7.8% stake in Zomato for $392 million via a block trade in August this year, as per a report by Reuters.

For the quarter ended September 2022, Zomato reported narrowing of its consolidated net loss to ₹250.8 crore for the second quarter ended September 2022, as compared to ₹434.9 crore loss in the year-ago period. Adjusted core loss, excluding figures for its recently acquired quick-commerce business Blinkit, losses narrowed to ₹60 crore from ₹310 crore. The transaction with Blinkit closed on August 10, 2022 and hence the financials for Blinkit were consolidated from that date.

Meanwhile, its revenue from operations increased to ₹1,661.3 crore during the July-September quarter, as against ₹1,024.2 crore in the corresponding period of the previous financial year. Gross order value, or the total value of all food delivery orders placed online on Zomato's platform, jumped nearly 23%.

Shares of Zomato, that made market debut in July last year, are down over 47% since listing. The stock, which hit a high of ₹169 in November 2021, is currently hovering around ₹65 apiece.