Paytm Shares Surge 9.9% Intraday After ESOP Pool Expansion

Continuing their upward momentum, shares of Paytm jumped almost 10% to INR 479.7 during the intraday trading on the BSE on Monday (July 8) after the fintech major announced an expansion of its employee stock option plan (ESOP) pool.

In an exchange filing on Sunday (July 7), Paytm said that it expanded its ESOP pool by allocating 2.81 Lakh shares to the employees. Based on the stock’s closing price on Friday, the new stock options are valued at over INR 12.2 Cr.

With the new ESOP allocation, the company’s issued, subscribed, and paid-up equity share capital has increased to INR 63.63 Cr from INR 63.60 Cr earlier.

After rallying about 9.9%, the stock pared some gains to end today’s trading session 8.1% higher at INR 472.05.

After largely trading sideways over the past few months, Paytm shares have started regaining momentum and are trading around the level last seen at the beginning of February this year, when the shares slumped following the RBI’s clampdown on Paytm Payments Bank.

Last week, Paytm shares jumped 8.5%.

The latest issuance of ESOP follows the 87,373 stock options allocated by Paytm under its ESOP 2019 plan in May this year. 

Amid the RBI’s regulatory action on Paytm Payments Banks and stricter regulations around unsecured loans, Paytm’s net loss more than tripled on an year-on-year (YoY) basis to INR 550.5 Cr in the March quarter of FY24. It reported a 2.9% YoY decline in operating revenue to INR 2,267.10 Cr in the quarter.

Last week, Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said that the RBI’s action on the payments bank wasn’t the worst setback faced by the startup. Conceding that the company should have done better in terms of compliance, Sharma said the right lessons have been learnt from the issue.

He reiterated that his vision is to turn Paytm into a $100 Bn company.

Shares of Paytm are currently trading 38% lower than the INR 760 level at which they were trading just ahead of the RBI’s clampdown on its payments bank business.

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