Japanese tech investor SoftBank on Friday offloaded an additional 2.54% stake or 11.4 million shares in Policybazaar’s parent entity PB Fintech Ltd through a bulk deal. The shares were sold at ₹762.8 apiece.
Prior to the stake sale, SoftBank held 4.39% in PB Fintech through its entity SVF Python II (Cayman) Ltd After the sale, SVF Python II (Cayman) will hold a 1.85% stake in PB Fintech. Financial service firm Societe Generale bought 0.58% or 2.6 million shares in the company at the same price.
In December 2022, Softbank sold 5.1% stake worth ₹1,043 crore of PB Fintech through an open market transaction. The shares were offloaded at an average price of ₹456.4 apiece. Goldman Sachs Singapore Pte, Societe Generale, Morgan Stanley Mauritius and Max Life Insurance Company were among the buyers.
PB Fintech, with a market capitalization of ₹34,303 crore, has outperformed the Nifty 50 index in the past year, delivering a return of 55% to investors, compared to the index’s return of 13.4%. However, the stock is still trading 21% below its listing price of ₹980 apiece on the NSE.
Founded in 2008 by Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal as a price-comparison platform, PolicyBazaar made its public market debut in November 2021 and gained 17% on listing. SoftBank had offloaded around 20% of its total stake in the insurance player during listing for as much as $250 million.
PB Fintech’s consolidated net loss for the June quarter was ₹11.4 crore, down significantly from ₹204 crore year-on-year (YoY). Operational revenues for the quarter were up 32% YoY to ₹666 crore. PB Fintech counts Steadview Capital, Falcon, Tiger Global, SVF Python, Tencent, Inventus Capital, and True North among its investors.
In August 2023 Mint reported that SoftBank sold a 1.17% stake (100 million shares) in Zomato for ₹947 crore.
