Japanese investment giant SoftBank, which sold nearly 10 crore shares in Zomato, amounting to 1.17 percent of the company’s equity, is planning to exit the online food delivery platform fully in the next few months.
According to sources, SoftBank has around 2.18 percent remaining stake in Zomato, which it is likely to sell via block deals.
Money Control was the first to report on the development.
SoftBank bought Zomato’s stake in June last year for around Rs 71. For the company, Zomato is just an investment on which the company has made significant profits.
SoftBank and Zomato were yet to comment.
On Wednesday, around 10 crore shares of online food delivery platform Zomato, amounting to 1.17 percent of the company’s equity, changed hands at a total deal value of around Rs 947 crore.
Japanese company SoftBank’s SVF Growth Fund was the likely seller in this mega transaction.
SVF Growth (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. had a 3.35 percent stake in Zomato, totaling around 28 crore shares.
The fresh block sale came after another foreign institutional investor, Tiger Global Management, offloaded its entire shareholding of 1.44 percent in Zomato earlier this week.
The deal earned Tiger Global a total of Rs 1,123.85 crore.
The VC firm sold around 12.34 crore shares or 1.44 percent stake in Zomato at an average price of Rs 91.01 per share.
Brokerage firm HSBC maintained its buy rating on Zomato and raised its price target to Rs 120 from Rs 102 earlier.
The note said that hyperlocal can become a much bigger business for Zomato in the long term.
