PB Fintech founders Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal's share sale through a block deal saw muted response from buyers in the market, after only around 53 lakh shares of the 1.08 crore shares that were put up for sale found buyers. PB Fintech is the parent company of Policybazaar and Paisabazaar.
Moneycontrol had reported on February 10 that the co-founders were putting 2.4 percent of their stake worth $130-140 million (over Rs 1,000 crore) on the block in a bid to make tax payments towards ESOPs that are due.
According to publicly available data, only 1.2 percent of the stake changed hands across two large trades at approximately Rs 825 per share. According to sources, the demand is muted currently and the founders may find it difficult to sell the entire planned stake.
If the founders are successful in finding buyers for the balance stake, their cumulative stake will reduce to 8.01 percent on a fully diluted basis from 10.33 percent before the deals.
Dahiya and Bansal had planned this post-IPO stake sale before the stock listed on the exchanges. The co-founders, along with Dahiya's wife Shika Dahiya and a few other shareholders had reduced the quantum of their stake sale in the run-up to the company's IPO in November 2021.
Moneycontrol had reported that the founders and other shareholders had changed their minds over the quantum of the stake sale due to optimism that their business will be worth a lot more post the IPO.
The stock closed the day down by 10.28 percent on the back of reports of the share sale and the block deals.
Also read: PB Fintech shares fall over 10% after report of stake sale by founder
Post the listing, CEO Yashish Dahiya in an interview with Moneycontrol had said on the rationale behind reducing the stake ahead of the IPO, "A large part of our shareholding is in the form of employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and every time the ESOPs come due, there is a tax due on them at 43 percent and that tax has to be paid in advance of us selling our shares. There can be some challenges around that. And for that we need money."
"So, we had to, plan to sell something to make sure that we were prepared to pay the tax. Now when Alok and I discussed, our worry was that if we sell now, and we pay taxes later, what happens is the price fluctuates whether up or down. It didn’t make sense to sell shares, and keep money to pay taxes which are going to be due in the future. We would rather sell those shares and collect that money just when the taxes are going to be due," he had said.
Recently, the firm reported consolidated net sales of Rs 367.28 crore in the December quarter against Rs 212.09 crore a year ago. Net loss for the quarter stood at Rs 298 crore versus Rs 19.12 crore a year ago. EBITDA for the quarter was at negative Rs 283 crore from Rs 3.62 crore a year ago.
Its insurance premium grew by 68 percent year on year to Rs 1,796 crore while credit disbursals rose 94 percent to Rs 1,926 crore.
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