India's Paytm at near 6-month high as quarterly revenue surges

Shares of Indian digital payments firm Paytm jumped more than 6% on Monday to their highest levels in nearly six months, after the company's parent firm One 97 Communications Ltd posted an 89% surge in its quarterly revenue.
Higher number of monthly users, additional payment devices and more disbursal of loans lifted the company's revenue to 16.8 billion rupees ($211.16 million), from Rs 8.91 billion last year.

Investors appeared to show scant response to the company's wider loss of Rs 6.44 billion posted in its quarterly update after market close on Friday.

Paytm, which competes with Google's payment app and Walmart Inc's PhonePe in India's digital payments market, said it is on track to achieve operational profitability by September 2023.

"The notable print in the results was a sharply increased gross margin print in payments business resulting in an expansion in contribution margins to 13bps," J.P. Morgan analysts said in a note on Monday.

Processing charges of the company, backed by China's Ant Group and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, fell 10.4% to 6.94 billion rupees sequentially.

"The management clarified that it could negotiate better deals with their bank partners, and rationalised certain low margin online merchant accounts that resulted in lower payment processing charges," Macquarie analysts said in a note.

Shares of the company were up 6% at Rs 830.5 , as of 0648 GMT.