With the benchmark Sensex touching an all-time high, company insiders are on a selling spree. The management at Info Edge is no different. Info Edge has under its fold, job portal Naukri, matrimonial site jeevansathi, real estate site 99acres, educational portal Shiksha and a 46% holding in online food guide Zomato. The promoters included have sold 419,000 shares worth Rs.39 crore since the beginning of June.
Of that founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani and CEO Hitesh Oberoi have sold 150,000 and 200,000 shares respectively. What is interesting in Info Edge’s case is that Akash Prakash of Amansa Capital recently pitched the stock at the 2nd Ira Sohn India Investment conference on June 5. Amansa holds about 3.3%. Since then the stock has jumped 15% from Rs.906 to hit a 52-week high of Rs.1,127 and is up about 30% over the past one year..
Info Edge’s net sales declined 5.4% to Rs.888 crore in FY17 compared with Rs.938 crore in FY16. It made a profit of Rs.147 crore without accounting for the loss made by its associate companies. That considered, it lost Rs.21 crore. Revenue from recruitment solutions grew 13% in FY17 while revenues from 99acres grew 11.38%. Zomato mentioned on its blog that its revenue for FY17 was $49 million a ~80% growth vis-à-vis FY16. It has also managed to reduce its operating burn by ~81%, from $64 million in FY16 to $12 million in FY17.
Though promoter holding has declined from 43.11% to 42.43%, HDFC Equity fund has increased its stake from 2.23% to 2.42% and so has Axis Long Term Equity fund from 1.14% to 1.7%. ICICI Prudential Balanced Advantage Fund also had a stake of 1.78% for the quarter ended March 2017. FIIs, in tune with the promoters have reduced their stake from 35.25% to 33.32%. The most prominent among them, Matthews India Fund has reduced its stake marginally from 2.69% to 2.67%.
