Zomato, Nykaa, Paytm shares fall to lowest levels since listing

Shares of India's top tech companies fell to their lowest levels since listing on Monday as domestic equity benchmarks nosedived amid growing fears over potential Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After a blockbuster listing in July last year, food delivery platform Zomato's share plunged as much as 8% to hit an all-time low of ₹81, just ₹5 more than its IPO issue price of ₹76. Shares of cosmetics and fashion e-commerce firm Nykaa tanked 9% to ₹1,493 apiece in the intraday trade, its lowest levels since its public market debut in 2021.

The stock of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Nykaa's parent, has been sliding since last week after the company reported a 58% fall in its net profit in the third quarter. The e-tailer's operating margin had contracted by 697 basis points to 6.3% in the quarter compared with 13.2% in the year-ago period.

Shares of One97 Communications, the parent firm of digital payments app Paytm, too fell nearly 5% to ₹862.40 on the National Stock Exchange. This comes at a time when Macquarie Capital Securities has further slashed the target price of Paytm to ₹700, an extremely bearish target for the stock which had ended Day 1 at 27% lower than its issue price of ₹2,150.

The brokerage has been bang on with his price targets for One97 Communications ever since it made a dismal public market debut on November 18, 2020.

"The path to profitability still remains the biggest concern," Macquarie analyst Suresh Ganapathy had told Fortune India earlier this month. The massive loss of ₹780 crore reported in the third quarter, led by large stock options cost of ₹390 crore prompted Ganapathy to cut his target price on the stock.

The analyst has been critical of Paytm's business model, especially the distribution business. "Loan distribution business is still subscale with the company distributing only 39,000 merchant loans, which accounts just 2% of the overall loans by volume," he had said.

One97 Communications, which launched the country’s largest-ever initial public offering (IPO) last year, has seen a selloff by anchor investors such as Blackrock, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Singapore's GIC ever since the lock-in expired on December 15, 2021.

Shares of food delivery app Zomato have been sliding after the company posted its December quarter results last week. While the company narrowed its net loss to ₹63.2 crore in the third quarter on account of a one-time gain of ₹315.8 crore from the sale of sports facilities provider Fitso to Curefit, brokerages have flagged its tepid gross order value growth. Average order value -- which includes customer delivery charges -- shrunk by around 3% quarter-on-quarter, mostly on account of reduction in customer delivery charges, the company said.

Zomato's average monthly transacting users also declined to 15.3 million in the December quarter from 15.5 million in the previous quarter.