Fintech giant Paytm on Friday released its financial results for the third quarter of the financial year ending March 2024. Earnings report demonstrate the company posted a modest growth in its topline along with a significant improvement in its bottomline.
Paytm’s revenue from operations went up 13.2% to Rs 2,850.5 crore in the quarter ending December 2023 as compared to Rs 2,518.6 crore Q2 FY24, as per the firm’s consolidated financial results published on its website.
Operating revenue of Paytm surged 38.2% from Rs 2,062.2 crore in Q3 FY23.
The company made 38% of its income from payment services to merchants. Revenue from this vertical surged 69% to Rs 1,081 crore in Q3 FY24 from Rs 640 crore in Q2 of the same financial year.
During the quarter, the company made Rs 598 crore from payment services to consumers, Rs 514 crore from commerce & cloud services, and the remaining Rs 658 crore from other operations.
Employee benefit expenses accounted for 37% of the total expenses in Q3 FY24. This cost remained stable at Rs 1,187.2 crore. This also includes an ESOP cost of Rs 378.5 crore.
Payment processing charges were other major expenses which increased 20% to Rs 982.2 crore in Q3 while marketing and promotional stood at Rs 275.2 crore. Paytm also recorded software, cloud and data center costs of Rs 170.4 crore during the quarter which took its total expenditure 9.5% up to Rs 3216.3 crore. In Q2 of FY24, the total expenses were at Rs 2,936.7 crore.
Paytm managed to bring down its losses by 24% in Q3 to Rs 221.7 crore against Rs 291.7 crore in the previous quarter. Last year in the same quarter (Q3 FY23), it recorded Rs 392.1 crore loss. On a unit level, the company spent Rs 1.13 to earn a rupee of operating income in Q3 of FY24.
After achieving a 52-week high share price at Rs 990 per share in October 2023, the company’s share price slipped to around Rs 610 crore during December. Getting some momentum back, its share price currently stands at Rs 766 per share with a market cap of Rs 49,176 crore or $5.9 billion.
In December last year, Paytm had reportedly laid off 1,000 employees in a cost-cutting exercise. The company also decided to scale down its small-ticket loans of less than Rs 50,000.
