Share price of Zomato rallied over 5 per cent in early morning trade on Monday amid reports of a block deal in the shares. Zomato stock rose as much as 5.56 per cent to a high of Rs 96.00 apiece on the BSE on Monday. At 11.05 am, the shares, however, pared some of their gains and were trading at Rs 92.80, up 2.05 per cent on Monday.

According to news report, nearly 3.2 crore Zomato shares worth Rs 288 crore changed hands in the block deal window at Rs 90.10 per share. However, the buyers and sellers in the block deal were not known. Earlier, it was reported that Japan’s SoftBank was likely to sell food delivery aggregator Zomato shares through block deals as the lock-in period after the Blinkit deal ended on August 25.

SoftBank holds 3.35 per cent stake in Zomato, which it had received during the Blinkit deal for selling its holding to the company.

Zomato had last year issued fresh equity shares to all the Blinkit’s selling shareholders as consideration for the M&A, at an implied value of Rs 70.76 per share. As per the deal, the lock-in period of 12-months ended on Friday and the shares received by Softbank during the Blinkit deal will be unlocked for trading on Monday.

Following the transaction, Zomato had negotiated a 12-month lock-in for these shares, compared to the statutory lock-in requirement of six months. A majority of these shares are owned by just three venture capital investors, namely, Softbank, Tiger Global, and Sequioa.

Meanwhile, for the quarter ended June, Zomato turned in a profit after tax of Rs 2 crore for the first time. Zomato’s revenue came in at Rs 2,416 crore, up 70.9 percent from the year-ago period, as demand growth recovered on cooling inflation and the strength of the food delivery platform’s loyalty programme.

At 11.05 am, Sensex jumped 150 points, while Nifty was trading over 19,300 tracking volatility.

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