130100In view of reduced inflation and expenses, will it be right to invest in IT stocks?
Motilal Oswal MF increases stake in Paytm in January 2024.
Sighting a report by stock market analysing firm, Fisdom Research, news daily, ‘Business Line’ has said in a news piece that as of January 31, 2024, South Korea-based Mirae Asset Mutual Fund had highest exposure to the tune of 2.11 crore shares of troubled fintech Paytm. As much as nine schemes of the South Korea-based AMC had exposure in the Vijay Shekhar Sharma founded fintech as on January 31, 2024. Mirae Asset MF upped stake by 33 per cent on month-on-month (MoM) basis in the fintech in month under consideration from 1.58 crore shares in December 2023. According to Business Line, other mutual funds have also upped stake in the troubled fintech to make cost averaging principle work in favor.
Some mutual fund schemes had got caught up by investing in Paytm before the RBI put restrictions on the payment bank business of the fintech on January 31, 2024. One97 Communications Ltd’s scrip stand halved at Rs 388 apiece as compared to the day the apex bank had given its diktat.
The Mutual fund AMC with the second highest exposure in Paytm is Nippon India. The Japan-based AMC has 1.06 crore shares of the plagued fintech. Nippon India had upped stake by 66 per cent MoM in January 2024 from holding 0.64 crore shares in the preceding month.
While, India’s native mutual fund house, Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund has upped stake in the plagued fintech by a massive 510 per cent MoM last month.
UTI AMC also augmented stake in Paytm in January 2024. While, Baroda BNP Paribas took fresh entry into the payment aggregator firm in the month under consideration.
Franklin Templeton and Mahindra Manulife also upped stake in the payment aggregator firm.
Mutual Funds which increased stake in Paytm in January 2024:
| AMC | Stake Hike (%) | Shares held in Dec 2023 | Shares held in Jan 2024 |
| Mirae Asset MF | 33 | 2.1 | 1.58 |
| Nippon India | 66 | 1.06 | 0.64 |
| Motilal Oswal | 510 | 0.35 | 0.06 |
| UTI MF | 454 | 0.23 | 0.04 |
Source: Business Line
Aditya Birla Sun Life MF also has considerable stake but the AMC trimmed holdings last month. The Mumbai headquartered fund house had held 0.20 crore shares of the fintech as of January 2024.
Overall, mutual funds’ stake in the fintech increased by 70 per cent MoM in January 2024 to Rs 3,384 crore.
As of December 2023 quarter, mutual funds stake in Paytm stood at 4.5 per cent.