One 97 Communications Ltd, the company behind Paytm, has turned into one of the most closely watched stocks on Dalal Street again. As of 2 December 2025, the PAYTM share price is hovering near fresh 52‑week and multi‑year highs, powered by a rare combo of regulatory relief, corporate rejigging and a wave of bullish analyst upgrades. [1]
Here’s a detailed look at what’s happening with the stock today, what the latest news means, and how analysts are now thinking about One 97 Communications.
One 97 Communications share price today (2 December 2025)
On 2 December 2025, LiveMint data shows One 97 Communications trading around ₹1,376 per share, up roughly 0.7% versus the previous close, with an intraday range between about ₹1,361 and ₹1,382. [2]
Key snapshot as of early trade on 2 December 2025: [3]
- Price today: ~₹1,370–1,380
- Market cap: ~₹88,000 crore
- 52‑week high / low: about ₹1,371 / ₹652
- Year‑to‑date return (2025): ~34%
- Last 5 trading days: up roughly 8–9%
- 1‑year price return (approx): above 50%, according to long‑term charts and Screener data. [4]
Intraday tracking from Angel One’s live blog shows the stock spending most of the late morning and early afternoon comfortably above ₹1,370, with only shallow dips being bought quickly. [5]
In short: PAYTM is trading like a stock in favour, not a turnaround nobody trusts anymore.
The big trigger: RBI’s Payment Aggregator licence for Paytm Payments Services
The single biggest structural change for One 97 in recent days is regulatory, not cosmetic.
On 26 November 2025, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) granted a Certificate of Authorisation (CoA) to Paytm Payments Services Ltd (PPSL), a wholly‑owned subsidiary of One 97 Communications, allowing it to operate as a Payment Aggregator under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. [6]
Why this matters:
- Earlier, RBI had imposed restrictions on PPSL, including curbs on onboarding new merchants. Those restrictions have now been lifted along with the final authorisation. [7]
- As a licensed payment aggregator, PPSL can now formally onboard online merchants and process digital payments at scale in full regulatory compliance, a critical requirement in India’s tightly regulated fintech space. [8]
Several media and brokerage notes highlight this as a major overhang removed for Paytm’s business model, opening the door to:
- a clearer long‑term compliance runway,
- more stable merchant acquisition, and
- better monetisation of payment flows.
Markets love three things: clarity, licences, and cash flows. This ticks at least two of those.
Structural clean‑up: shifting the offline business and consolidating subsidiaries
1. Transfer of offline merchant payments to PPSL
Shortly after the RBI licence, One 97 moved to transfer its offline merchant payments business—essentially QR, Soundbox and card‑machine transactions at physical stores—to PPSL through a slump sale. [9]
Key points from the company’s disclosures and coverage: [10]
- The transfer was executed at book value, with One 97 receiving a lump‑sum cash consideration.
- The business had a book value of about ₹960 crore as of 31 March 2025, roughly 7.5% of the company’s standalone net worth.
- The transfer became effective from midnight of 30 November 2025, after shareholder approval.
In practical terms, this does two things:
- Aligns the business structure with regulation – the core merchant acquiring business now sits inside the RBI‑licensed PPSL.
- Simplifies reporting and risk containment – payment aggregation and offline merchant flows live under one regulated roof instead of being scattered.
2. Acquiring full ownership of key subsidiaries
On 28 November 2025, One 97 Communications announced that it had acquired the remaining stakes in three group companies: [11]
- Foster Payment Networks Pvt Ltd – additional 9.99% stake
- Paytm Insuretech Pvt Ltd – additional 67.55% stake
- Paytm Financial Services Ltd (PFSL) – additional 51.22% stake
These entities are now wholly owned subsidiaries of One 97. PFSL’s own portfolio—covering investments in firms like Admirable Software, Mobiquest Mobile Technologies, Urja Money and Fincollect Services—becomes a set of step‑down subsidiaries under One 97.
The Economic Times notes that markets have broadly read this as a group‑simplification story, with a cleaner corporate structure and better line of sight on how value from payments, insurance and financial services flows back to the listed parent. [12]
Earnings check: revenue growth, shrinking losses, and a noisy profit line
The latest reported results are for the quarter ended September 2025 (Q2 FY26 on a March‑year basis).
According to Capital Market’s summary of One 97’s consolidated results: [13]
- Revenue (sales):
- ₹2,061 crore in Q2 FY26
- up about 24% vs ₹1,659 crore in Q2 FY25
- Net profit (PAT):
- ₹21 crore in Q2 FY26
- vs a very high ₹928 crore in Q2 FY25 (a 97–98% decline)
Operating metrics also improved:
- Operating profit margin (OPM): turned positive at around 6.8% in Q2 FY26 versus a negative margin in the year‑ago period. [14]
On a trailing twelve‑month (TTM) basis, Screener data shows: [15]
- TTM revenue: ~₹7,700+ crore
- TTM operating loss: narrowed to roughly ₹100 crore, far lower than earlier years
- TTM net loss: about ₹600+ crore
- 1‑year stock price CAGR: ~53%
The short version:
- The P&L is still in the red on an annual basis, but losses have shrunk materially.
- Revenue growth remains double‑digit and healthy, but profit is volatile, influenced by prior‑year exceptional items and scaling costs.
For valuation nerds: LiveMint shows a negative trailing P/E (because net profit is negative on a 12‑month basis), while the sector trades around a mid‑20s P/E. [16]
So the market is not paying for current earnings as much as it is pricing future operating leverage and regulatory stability.
Analyst sentiment: upgrades, targets and trading strategies
Here’s where things have really flipped for Paytm.
Goldman Sachs: from Neutral to Buy, target ₹1,570
On 28 November 2025, Goldman Sachs upgraded One 97 Communications from Neutral to Buy, more than doubling its target price from ₹705 to ₹1,570. [17]
According to the Investing.com summary of the research note, Goldman cited: [18]
- A better regulatory environment post RBI approvals.
- Early signs of recovery in payments market share.
- Improved earnings visibility.
- Relaunch or ramp‑up of key products like postpaid services and potentially wallets.
- Expectation of >20% annual revenue growth for the foreseeable future.
- Strong cost control, which Goldman calls a “big positive surprise”.
- A forecast that EBITDA margins could more than double over the next 3–4 years, leading to at least 50% higher EBITDA estimates for FY26–FY30 vs previous models.
This is exactly the sort of language that tends to ignite institutional interest.
ICICI Securities: Buy with target ₹1,450
ICICI Securities has also reiterated a Buy rating on One 97 Communications, with a target price of ₹1,450, in a research report late in November 2025, published on Moneycontrol. The brokerage links its bullish stance to the RBI licence, improving profitability trajectory and growing contribution from higher‑margin financial services. [19]
Short‑term trading calls: LKP Securities, GEPL Capital, Chandan Taparia
The stock has also popped up on multiple daily trading recommendation lists:
- LKP Securities (Business Today) – For the 2 December session, LKP’s technical analyst recommended “Buy Paytm @ ₹1,365, Stop‑loss ₹1,310, Target ₹1,450”, citing a decisive close above the ₹1,350 resistance zone and strength above the 20‑day EMA as signs of trend continuation. [20]
- GEPL Capital (Moneycontrol “Trade Spotlight”) – GEPL’s report notes that Paytm is trading above a multi‑year trendline drawn from the August 2022 swing low, with volumes above the 20‑week average and the RSI above 60 across timeframes. The suggested strategy: Buy, with a target of ₹1,491 and stop‑loss at ₹1,313. [21]
- Chandan Taparia (Motilal Oswal, via LiveMint) – In a 2 December 2025 “shares to buy or sell today” column, derivatives expert Chandan Taparia also included Paytm among his trading ideas, reinforcing the stock’s presence on traders’ watchlists. [22]
Consensus ratings and average target
LiveMint’s stock dashboard shows: [23]
- 16 analysts covering One 97 Communications
- 7 with a “strong buy”, 2 with a “buy”,
- 5 holds, and 2 sells
Overall, the average broker stance is “Buy”.
Trendlyne’s aggregation of research reports points to an average target price around the mid‑₹1,400s to high‑₹1,400s, implying a low‑to‑mid‑teens percentage upside from levels before the recent run‑up. [24]
From a sentiment perspective, a Trendlyne poll shows roughly two‑thirds of user votes (about 68%) marking Paytm as a “Buy”. [25]
Analysts aren’t unanimous, but the balance has clearly tilted bullish compared to the gloom of 2022–23.
Technical picture: four‑year highs, 52‑week breakout and momentum
Price action over the last few sessions has been textbook “breakout plus follow‑through”:
- On 1 December 2025, Samco reports that Paytm’s share price jumped 3.4% to around ₹1,365, its highest level since December 2021—a four‑year high—capping an 18% rally in two months and gains in seven of the last eight months. [26]
- LiveMint data shows a 52‑week high around ₹1,371, versus a low near ₹652. The stock has more than doubled from its 52‑week low. [27]
- An ET Markets analysis notes that Paytm is trading above all key simple moving averages (5‑day to 200‑day), with a 14‑day RSI around 58, indicating a bullish bias without yet being technically overbought. [28]
- Moneycontrol’s technical note highlights that the stock has broken above a multi‑year descending trendline and is now riding above that line with rising volume, a classic “structural improvement” signal for technicians. [29]
MarketsMojo also flags high value turnover and strong liquidity in One 97 Communications, with trading activity broadly in line with the positive trend seen in the fintech sector. [30]
Put simply: price, volume and trend indicators are in sync on the bullish side.
Ownership trends: mutual funds quietly accumulate, FIIs trim
Ownership data from Screener, Samco and LiveMint suggests an interesting rotation in who owns Paytm: [31]
- Foreign institutional investors (FIIs):
- Down from around 54.9% to 51.7% between June and September 2025.
- Domestic mutual funds (part of DIIs):
- Up from 13.9% to 16.25% over the same period (roughly 10.3 crore shares).
- Overall DIIs (including other domestic institutions):
- Around 20% of the company as of September 2025. [32]
- Retail / public shareholding:
- Down modestly from ~29.3% to 28.4%. [33]
Samco lists several large mutual funds with meaningful stakes, including Motilal Oswal Midcap, Nippon India Growth Mid Cap, Mirae Asset funds and digital‑theme index funds, signalling domestic institutional conviction in the structural story. [34]
The pattern looks like this:
FIIs and retail investors have trimmed a bit into strength,
while domestic mutual funds have bought that supply.
That’s often what you see when a story moves from “controversial” to “mainstream institutional holding”.
New growth levers: beyond pure payments
The recent news flow also underscores how Paytm is repositioning itself as more than a basic payments app.
Key growth themes highlighted across filings and commentary:
- Payment Aggregation at scale: With the CoA in place, PPSL can deepen its role as a full‑fledged payment aggregator, earning fees on growing online and offline payment volumes. [35]
- Offline merchant ecosystem inside PPSL: The transfer of the offline merchant payments business (book value ~₹960 crore) into PPSL brings QR, Soundbox and card machines under one licensed entity, potentially improving cross‑sell of credit, insurance and other services to merchants. [36]
- Financial services & cross‑sell: Goldman Sachs’ note expects high‑margin financial services—credit distribution, insurance, wealth products—to grow as a share of revenues, driving a more than two‑fold expansion in EBITDA margins over 3–4 years. [37]
- Product innovation & AI: Corporate news in recent months includes launches like Paytm AI Soundbox and a partnership with AI chip company Groq, signalling a push into smarter, hardware‑enabled merchant tools and AI‑assisted services. [38]
- NRI & international UPI play: Recent coverage notes that Paytm has enabled NRIs with NRE/NRO accounts and international mobile numbers to use UPI via its platform, opening a fresh niche of higher‑value, cross‑border users. [39]
The common thread: Paytm is leaning into higher‑margin, data‑rich services on top of its payments rails, which is exactly what long‑term bulls have always argued the business could become.
ESOP allotment: small dilution, standard tech‑company move
On 2 December 2025, the company also disclosed an allotment of 225,559 equity shares under its employee stock option schemes, a routine ESOP exercise. [40]
The quantum is tiny relative to total equity and fits the usual tech‑company pattern of stock‑based compensation. The market has largely shrugged this off as normal course.
Risks: what could still go wrong?
For all the hype, this is not a risk‑free story. Some key watchpoints:
- Regulatory risk is lower, not zero
RBI’s CoA and the structural shift to PPSL are big positives, but fintech remains under intense regulatory scrutiny in India. Any new guidelines on charges, data use, credit distribution or KYC could alter growth and profitability assumptions. [41] - Profitability is still emerging, not entrenched
- Competition in payments and fintech is brutal
Paytm faces aggressive rivals in UPI and payments—PhonePe, Google Pay, banks’ own apps, and newer fintechs—plus competition from listed peers like SBI Cards and Muthoot in broader financial services. [44] - Valuation embeds a lot of optimism
With a negative trailing P/E and a stock that has more than doubled from its lows, a big chunk of the upside case depends on the earnings and margin expansion that brokers like Goldman and ICICI are forecasting actually materialising. [45] - Execution risk in new verticals
Scaling credit, insurance and wealth safely while managing risk and compliance is hard. Missteps here could hurt both profitability and regulatory goodwill.
Anyone treating Paytm as a quick “no‑brainer” buy is skipping a lot of nuance.
Should you buy Paytm / One 97 Communications now?
Putting it all together, the current bull case for One 97 Communications rests on:
- Regulatory overhangs on payments largely resolved, with the payment aggregator licence in place. [46]
- Corporate structure simplified, with key subsidiaries fully owned and offline merchant business parked in the licensed PPSL entity. [47]
- Losses shrinking and operating metrics improving, even if bottom‑line profits remain bumpy. [48]
- A wave of analyst upgrades and trading buys, with medium‑term targets clustered between roughly ₹1,450 and ₹1,570. [49]
- Strong price momentum, multi‑year breakout on charts, and growing domestic institutional ownership. [50]
The bear / cautious case counters that:
- The company is still loss‑making annually,
- the valuation assumes years of clean execution, and
- regulatory and competitive risks remain high for Indian fintech.
This article can’t and shouldn’t tell you what to do with your money. What it can do is summarise where the story stands on 2 December 2025:
Paytm has moved from “regulatory accident in progress” to
“licensed, reorganised, and back on the growth/margin narrative” —
and the stock price has followed that narrative very closely.
For anyone analysing PAYTM, the real work now is to stress‑test those bullish earnings and margin forecasts under less rosy scenarios, and to decide whether today’s price compensates for the very real uncertainty still built into the business.
References
1. www.livemint.com, 2. www.livemint.com, 3. www.livemint.com, 4. www.screener.in, 5. www.angelone.in, 6. paytm.com, 7. www.business-standard.com, 8. www.financialexpress.com, 9. paytm.com, 10. www.moneycontrol.com, 11. m.economictimes.com, 12. m.economictimes.com, 13. www.capitalmarket.com, 14. www.capitalmarket.com, 15. www.screener.in, 16. www.livemint.com, 17. www.investing.com, 18. www.investing.com, 19. www.moneycontrol.com, 20. www.businesstoday.in, 21. www.moneycontrol.com, 22. www.livemint.com, 23. www.livemint.com, 24. trendlyne.com, 25. trendlyne.com, 26. www.samco.in, 27. www.livemint.com, 28. m.economictimes.com, 29. www.moneycontrol.com, 30. www.marketsmojo.com, 31. www.screener.in, 32. www.screener.in, 33. www.samco.in, 34. www.samco.in, 35. paytm.com, 36. www.moneycontrol.com, 37. www.investing.com, 38. www.capitalmarket.com, 39. www.latestly.com, 40. www.capitalmarket.com, 41. www.financialexpress.com, 42. www.livemint.com, 43. www.capitalmarket.com, 44. www.livemint.com, 45. www.investing.com, 46. paytm.com, 47. m.economictimes.com, 48. www.capitalmarket.com, 49. www.investing.com, 50. www.samco.in
