Paytm Loss Widens To Rs 761 Crore In March Quarter

Digital financial services firm One97 Communications, which operates under the Paytm brand, on Friday reported a widening of its consolidated loss to Rs 761.4 crore for the quarter ended March 2022 on account of rising in payment processing charges and employees benefit expenses.

The company had posted a loss of Rs 441.8 crore in the same period a year ago.

The losses, however, narrowed on a sequential basis. Its consolidated loss stood at Rs 778.4 crore in the quarter ended December 2021.

"As announced in April 2022, we believe we will achieve operating breakeven (i.e EBITDA before ESOP cost) by September 2023. This will be driven by continued revenue growth, along with moderation in costs as operating leverage kicks in," Paytm said.

"The company's EBITDA loss (before ESOP) for FY'22 saw an improvement of 8 per cent year-on-year to Rs 1,518 crore from Rs 1,655 crore the previous year. In addition, the company had Rs 809 crore of non-cash ESOP expenses," it added.

The revenue from operations of One97 Communications (OCL), however, jumped by about 89 per cent to Rs 1,540.9 crore during the quarter from Rs 815.3 crore in the year-ago period.

Expenses on employees more than doubled to Rs 863.4 crore from Rs 347.8 crore in the March 2021 quarter.

The payment processing charges increased by 52 per cent to Rs 774.2 crore in the March 2022 quarter from Rs 508.7 crore a year ago.

Marketing expenses more than doubled to Rs 248.9 crore from Rs 100.1 crore.

For the year ended March 31, 2022, OCL's loss widened to Rs 2,396.4 crore from Rs 1,701 crore in 2020-21.

However, annual revenue from operations jumped 77.49 per cent to Rs 4,974.2 crore in 2021-22 from Rs 2,802.4 crore earlier.

"We have leveraged our distribution and rich insights to offer financial products to our consumers and merchants, in partnership with financial institutions. One of the highlights of the quarter has been the rapid growth of our lending products which provides us with an attractive profit pool. In April 2022, we reached an annualized run rate of approximately Rs 20,000 crore of disbursement through our platform," OCL said in a statement.

Its average monthly transacting user (MTU) base increased by 41 per cent year-on-year to over 7 crore for the quarter, while its merchant base grew to 2.67 crore at the end of 2021-22.

"We continue to witness a massive growth in our GMV, which stood at Rs 2.6 lakh crore for the quarter, a growth of 104 per cent Y-o-Y," OCL said.

Its full-year gross merchandise value (GMV) more than doubled to Rs 8.5 lakh crore in 2021-22 from Rs 4 lakh crore in FY 2021, the statement said.